English Club Festival

March 20, 2004

The invitation arrived on Thursday:

The Association of Teachers of English in SENEGAL (Dakar regional Branch) is organizing its annual festival of English Clubs on March 20, 2004, from 2:30 at C.I.S.E.S. This year the them of the Festival is Poverty and Education.

In fact, we chose that theme in order to help our young students grasp this relevant issue and promote the English language.

For that great event, we would be very pleased to have you among the jury members. Indeed, this festival will see the participation of all the English clubs of Dakar (both High Schools and Middle Schools will be competing).

Therefore, your contribution to the success of the Festival will be most valuable.

With my Best Regards,

The President, Mawa Samb

I was looking forward to the first day in a long time with nothing scheduled. I guess that would have to wait until Sunday. I was delighted to accept. I was told the festival would last about one and a half to two hours, and to arrive at the festival a little after 2:30. I had Manga drive me to C.I.S.E.S., which is Dakar’s version of a convention center, on the outskirts of town, not far from the airport. I arrived a little after 2:30, as requested. There was a large crowd of high school age students waiting to enter the auditorium and I was immediately ushered in. I recognized a teacher from the Senegalese American Bilingual High School, who welcomed me and ushered me into the hall. This was a very large auditorium, complete with stage and rows and rows of theater seats. I joined a few of other judges in the front row. These included Ruth from the American Cultural Center, two English teachers from the British Council, and my friend, Ambassador Seck, former Senegalese ambassador to the United States.

We watched as the technical people set up the stage, tested the sound system, etc. Eventually the doors were opened and the mass of students entered the hall. We inquired among ourselves and with some of the organizers if there were any sort of judging criteria that we were to use. We eventually created some categories to judge the skits on, including creativity, use of English, humor, and consistency to the theme.

By 3:15 PM two MCs came up on stage and made introductions and attempted to entertain the crowd, while prompting various clubs to get ready for their skits. By 3:30, the skits began. For the next three hours, we watched nine high school and middle school groups present very theatrical stories around the theme of Poverty and Education. The general theme of each was quite similar. We were shown some sort of scene in a village school. The story was that there was usually one outstanding student who could no longer attend school because she was needed by her family to work, or the family couldn’t afford the small fees required of students.

Recurringly, the actors screamed, “Oh, my Got!”, “Education is the key to ending poverty”, and my favorite, “Oh, no, I am forced to be a prostitute!” Students dressed like beggars, blind men, prostitutes, and local villagers as they enacted these stories. Most of the stories had music, often with drums or kora (a local stringed instrument) in the background. There were three hand-held wireless microphones that were passed among the actors as they shouted their lines.

Each skit lasted 15 minutes, and the MC was very strict at stopping a skit if it went over 15 minutes. At the intermission, a college English Club presented a similar skit, not quite as good as the high school ones. There was also a “Boys to Men” look-alike group that lip synched a few songs.

The skits thankfully ended by around 6:30 PM. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one, however by the seventh skit or so, they were all a blur and I was worried whether I could remember which was which when it came time to decide the winners. It was also quite hot in the hall and I was dripping under my suit coat.

Once the skits ended, the judges were ushered into a small room, brought some cold drinks (nowhere enough to replenish any fluids I had lost in the afternoon), and left to judge. I am reminded of the classic movie about the men in the jury trying to decide on life or death! I think Lee J. Cobb was one of them, but can’t remember the rest. So luckily the British Council women were quite assertive about the process we would use. After much discussion and several iterations of voting, we agreed on first, second and third prize winners. There was general consensus on the first two, but much discussion on the third. Opinions of the other judges were similar to mine, which was encouraging to this non-English major. I was also happy to find out that the first prize winner was a new comer to the competition and a relatively poor high school. Also, the third prize winner was an all-girl middle school.

Manga retrieved me around 7:30 PM, so I made it home just in time for dinner. So how did you spend your Saturday afternoon?

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