Saturday, August 22, 2009

Cocktails and a shadow show in German lady's home in Senegal...normal?


For those of you who have met Barbara, I have another one for you. A few weeks ago we were sent formal paper invitations to have cocktails at her house with a special presentation. Barbara LOVES nice things, so we took the hint from the invite and all got dressed up, the best we could, and arrived fashionably late (something Barbara does not appreciate).

The adults were directed to use the back entrance to the house, while the young Bode girls were taken with Barbara through the front entrance. For the week prior Barbara and the Bode girls had been rehersing for the night's performance.


We sat in Barbara's living room and were passed a tray of beverages from underneath a sheet separating the living room from the dining room. This sheet served as the focal point of our evenings entertainment which featured shadows of fish, birds and trees projected onto the screen. This was accompanied by some very festive classical music played on a tape player, which inevitably malfunctioned and was beaten back into submission by Barbara's helper.
After the shadow show there was scarf dancing of which we did snowball style, meaning slowly each member of the audience was beckoned to the dance floor and given a silk scarf to dance with.

Somehow the boys managed to evade inclusion.

As a gift, Barbara let the girls keep their silk scarfs of which they promptly turned into wraps.

Just another day in Malika. Man, America is going to seem boring after this!!!

2 comments:

Wubby said...

just wait till you experience excercise ball interprative dancing... just ask heather or jenna about it!

Petite Maman said...

I like the demonic gleam in our eyes during the scarf dance--strangely fitting.