Our fearless team leader, Jim, suggested we do a talent show for the locals. “Um, Jim, we have no talent,” was the collective, reluctant and, unfortunately, mostly silent reaction of the team. “Trust me!” he exclaimed with boundless enthusiasm. “You’ll be surprised what we’ll be able to throw together. The locals will love it,” he assured us. Well there’s a little lemming in every Habitat volunteer. How else can you explain volunteers travelling to the other side of the world to do construction work (that none of us is actually trained in)?
With only a day or two to spare everything came together – more or less. First the Catholic church volunteered its space for the event. Then the Anglican choir volunteered to perform on behalf of the locals. This was a significant development in my mind as it was the Anglican minister who snubbed us just days before. Perhaps the choir wanted to make up for the minister’s nonsense. The big obstacle was figuring out what the volunteers would perform. With no musical instruments and no collective repertoire (not to mention that our team consisted of people from the U.S., Canada and an Englishman living in Japan), we cobbled together the following song list:
She’ll be coming around the mountain, Take me out to the ballgame, Yellow submarine, 2 local children’s songs and the Hokey Pokey (as our finale).
With little time to practice and no promotion on our part (we definitely wanted this event to fly under the radar of the locals), weren’t we surprised to find the church FULL for our performance. Kids and adults, Catholics and non-Catholics, even some gawking teenagers none of us recognized – we were THE event for a Monday night in Humjibre.
Sadly for us, the Anglican choir started off. I say sadly as we were clearly upstaged immediately. They were awesome, switching between local and Western liturgical music. Their harmonies were polished, their phrasing was excellent and their song selections were challenging – the conductor had them singing out of the palm of his hand. They were far beyond what anyone would expect out of a town of 3,000 people. And then it was our turn.
What we lacked in harmony, we gained with the unexpected. When we lacked common phrasing – “uh i think we missed our intro” – we just started again. And what we lacked in challenging music choices, we had the house on their feet with our wacky and amusing renditions. Jim was right all along. The locals loved the fact that we had a show to put on. It didn’t matter much what it was. The Hokey Pokey and the local children’s songs were a hit. For the rest of our time in Humjibre we were greeted by children AND adults singing the songs back to us. Sadly, the priest probably had to petition the Vatican to reconsecrate the church LOL.
sedativegunk 