Boys and girls from Zua Primary School are very good at dancing and singing. On 20th of October 2016 we had a cultural performance day at the school to show different local dances to our friends in Estonia and other countries.
In front of the schoolhouse boys did the traditional War Dance. It is a dance usually performed on funerals. The tradition comes from old times when different tribes of our area were always fighting. When a person who had married to a different tribe died, their family members would suspect that somebody from the new tribe might have killed this person. To make sure if this had happened, they would dress in menacing war costumes, take weapons like bows and arrows with them and go to the funeral. There they would perform a dance to threaten the people of the new family and see if somebody gets scared of them. It was believed that he who shows fear might be the killer. These days the dance is performed as a traditional ritual, not out of necessity and is an important part of every funeral. Of course we did not have a funeral at the school, but because students have seen the dance done many times, they could show everybody what it looks like.
Then we gathered under the baobab tree where boys and girls showed different local dances.
Later in the day Godfred from class 5, who is a very talented musician, built a Kolog (local guitar). To do it he used a calabash, goat’s skin, pins, string and wood for the handle. When the instrument was finished we could sing and dance some more. We also learned to play one of estonian traditional instruments, the Parmupill (Jaw harp).
PS! We will add videos of the dances later, in December 🙂
Food for Thought Mondo 