This edition of Africa Night Nijmegen (ANN) was not the best of shows in terms of attendance. To be quite honest (which is what you expect from us), it took ages before any kind of life came into the show. Somebody already warned us a couple of months ago about having ANN on Saturday May 5. It was going to be an enormous challenge because it fell on the day when The Netherlands was having her annual Liberation festivals. So long as May 5 fell on the weekdays, it was not a problem. This year (and it is the first year of ANN) we had the double challenge of facing these traditional festivals and the fact that it was also a school holiday period. We can go into an analysis of why these 2 events have so much influence on the attendance of ANN. We will spare you the boring stuff. To make matters worse, something happened to make our website www.africanight.nl not reachable the whole of that day.
We had about maximum of 90 people who came to have fun during this edition. (140 is the average since Nijmegen began). It could easily have been 120 this time around but at least 30 people arrived at the door before midnight, took a look inside, saw it was still not busy and just went back! This is a phenomenon we are used to but will never understand; people waiting for others to activate their own fun. We always try to explain that if everyone who comes first leaves because there is no one before them, there will never ever be a party. One might as well stay home. Few want to be pioneers. This is why we are always appreciative of those; whom we call dancers; who just come in, hear the music and just do their own thing without caring if 200 or 2 people are there. They are the ones who make the world go round!
Is this turning out to be a depressing blog? That is no our intention. But we have always been honest with you whenever we sang hosanna (which is a lot of times), so it figures that we must be honest when things do not go as hoped. Otherwise we will just be like those other shows that say their shows are great while the pictures and the people who have been there tell other stories! The good thing about this edition was that even though it came really late to life, we had the feeling that those who came had great fun. We were scheduled to stop at 03.00 hours but we went on 30 minutes longer. This was because the people were having so much fun they did not want to leave.
Nijmegen has had some bumpy ride so far. However the feeling we had at the beginning is still as strong as ever. ANN always reminds us of the beginnings of ANT (Africa Night Tilburg) which we did not have with ANA for example. The first year of ANT was like this too. That was 14 years ago. You all know that ANT is now the longest running, best visited, Africa themed party in this part of Europe! We think Nijmegen has the potential to achieve this legendary status too! We have the patience.
Join us on Saturday 2 June and be a part of a new history in the making.
Discover the joy of African music & dance!
