One of the regular rituals on any given Africa Night is the taking of the pictures at the show. We take the pictures for a variety of reasons. These include just capturing the spirit of the night, letting those who have been at the party to have some memories to hold on to. We also do this to let those who could/would not come to have a sense of what they are missing. These picture- impressions also help to give the people who have never been there and may be willing to come an idea of what they can expect. This has helped to reinforce or dispel some preconceived ideas about Africa Night; like the kind of people who come there and even the dress code. Pictures, after all, tell a million stories.
Over the years we must have taken like tens of thousands of pictures. The best pictures are meticulously selected and every Monday after an Africa Night, they are placed online. It goes without saying that the picture pages are the most visited pages on the Africa Night website. We take great care to make sure the pictures that are placed, are ones that are good and not ones where the subjects in the picture are in any kind of unflattering pose or position; you know those kinds of pictures where you think you are posing right and then you see the result and your eyes are closed, of sweat is just dropping on your nose or even someone or something shows up in the background that is not supposed to be there. These kinds of pictures are always deleted. The result is that sometimes someone actually poses for a picture with the intention of seeing it online on Monday and finds out, rather to his surprise that his/her picture is not there. Most of these people are kind enough to ask during the next Africa Night what happened to their pictures. Of course they are always grateful that we did not upload pictures of them looking..eh..stupid.
Generally, people don’t mind being on the pictures, for which we are grateful. But as with nearly every rule, there is always an exception. A very tiny minority really will go a long way not to be in our snapshots. Some just dive for cover, while some approach us to ask politely that their pictures not be taken. Some are not polite at all! There are people who have threatened to smash our cameras. And once in a while we have people calling us on Tuesday to demand, politely or otherwise, that their pictures be removed. Some of the reasons people give for not wanting to be in the snapshots vary from the reasonable to the ridiculous. You’ll be surprised at some of the rationale behind it. But it is not our place to divulge the details here.
It goes without saying however, that we sometimes, perhaps cheekily, ask these “conscientious objectors” how they came to know about Africa Night. To a man, their answer is that they found out online via either our website, forum, blog, Hyves, Netlog and or Facebook. They have seen the pictures and they could see that the atmosphere at the Africa Night is really great. Which begs the question; if everyone would object to his picture being taken, how would these naysayers have been able to have a sense of the Africa Night experience? But do you know who the people are, who are always the first to check out the photos on Mondays? Yes, our objectors! They spend loads of time ogling at the pictures of others while wishing to stay anonymous themselves! To those of our guests who allow us to share their experience and capture the true mood of the Africa Night, we are extremely grateful. End of our digression!
Ok, this is the part you may have been waiting for. How was this last Africa Night? In short, it was hot. The current Ramadan ensured that some of our Muslim guests did not show up. Thank goodness for that! We still had an almost full house though. If everyone had showed up, we would have moved Africa Night outside, to the gardens of Partycentrum Oase, just to ensure that no harm was done through the heat. It was an unusually warm August night. And even with the in-house cooling installation blowing at full power, it just stayed hot. Did this affect the dancing of the people? Probably. But you’ll have to give our guests lots of credit for their endurance. Even with sweat streaming over from their faces to every part of their bodies, they went on dancing, hanging on to every beat DJ Aziz was dishing out.
But the highlight has to be the group of 10 who came for the first time to Africa Night because the wife of one of them was celebrating her 40th birthday and he wanted to surprise his wife. We think it was a very successful treat, not only for his wife, but for all of them in the end. You could see that they had loads of fun and the pictures do really show this. All in all we had another unforgettable Africa Night.
Sorry folks, we all have to wait another month for an encore!
Discover the joy of African music & dance!
