After 20 years of organising this monthly show, you learn a couple of things along the way. One of them is; when the very cold weather suddenly makes way for a warm sunny day on the weekend of an Africa Night, you can expect some people to choose to enjoy the sun and skip an Africa Night. After all, while Africa Night comes 12 months a year, the sun shines in Europe only 1 month in a year! Well, this was one of those rare months. On the other hand, there is also an unwritten rule, if you are at Africa Night, no matter whether it is a full house or not, you have to embrace the dance floor and dance like there is no tomorrow.
Those 2 preceding statements were true of the April edition of Africa Night Tilburg. What was also true, is that there were lots of new faces from far and wide like we have seen in the past year. English speaking people from England, French speaking people from France, people from almost all of the Dutch and Belgian provinces. If you were there during this edition of Africa Night Tilburg, we hope you enjoyed yourself. We certainly enjoyed ourselves watching you enjoy yourselves.
Normally, in our blogs, you will find some videos and pictures of shining, happy people. Not this one. When you read the next paragraphs you will understand why we have different pictures (and at the end of the blog this time around) We hope it shows the readers a bit about how we see/treat every one of our guests. You are not a number when you come to Africa Night. You are a human being and more. That is why we try and make contacts with as many people as possible. Along the line, many become more than a guest at Africa Night. Many of you become friends. Part 2 of this blog is dedicated to such a friend.
Life is not always full of joy. An old Africa Night dancer and friend passed away last week. He was one of the early supporters of Africa Night. He has been there when Africa Night was on the Boat. He is one of the few we remembered vividly who was there when Africa Night was held for about 14 months in The Paradox. He was with Africa Night in Bosvreugd, in Partycentrum Oase and in the present location, Horeca T Kwadraat. He was a guy we were always happy to see. He was a big guy with a ready smile on his face. Even when he became sick, he still came to Africa Night to have fun. He was a gentleman. He was a friend. He was a father, he was a husband. Today as we write this piece, he would be buried. And he would get a hero’s burial in Tilburg. Smart, you were one of those rare breed of Nigerians whom we could count on. You never complained about anything whenever you came. You did your thing and you left like you came; with a big smile. At 48, you were too young to die. But now you are gone, we hope you have found peace. We hope your young children and their mother will be strong to weather this tempest. The world has lost a true gentleman. Africa Night has lost a friend. Smart, wherever you are now, please keep dancing. Bye bye warrior!
PS. We just came back from his burial. It was a moving and as beautiful as a sad day could be!
