Ramadan, Tilburgse kermis (funfair), the summer vacation period, the heat wave, Kwaku festival and some Tom-Tom not displaying the address; these were some of the major obstacles Africa Night Tilburg had to face during this July 2013 edition. We knew going into this edition it was going to be a tough one. Because of our experience, we estimated beforehand that we would be happy if 100 people would show up. In the event we were more than happy because the figure was closer to 180! The Africa Night crowd never disappoints! 🙂
What is very satisfactory and humbling is the diversity of the guests and the efforts some of them put into coming. It makes you happy when a lady comes on her own from Limburg with the train knowing the first train back the next morning leaves at 8 in the morning! What’s more; she even arrived at Africa Night earlier than we did! Happily she seemed to enjoy herself too! Or take the lady who used to assist us at the gate. As some of you will recall, she stopped last month because she got a job in the north of Holland. While we were talking about how we were missing her, in she comes with the widest smile ever. She had driven all the way from Groningen to Tilburg so as not to miss Africa Night!
How lucky we are with people who make these kinds of effort just to be with us. To paint the right picture; one of the strengths of Africa Night Tilburg is the fact less than 20% of our guests actually live in Tilburg. The people from Belgium account for about 20% of the guests. Amsterdam is really beginning to represent big time. (We thought they had everything in Amsterdam? Turns out that Africa Night Tilburg is a million kilometres better than anything in the capital city, so we are being told every time!). The Germans don’t want to be left behind too!
We always make pictures at Africa Night. The reason we do this is to record the moments and to give other people an idea of how Africa Night looks like. We respect your privacy and realise that you are giving us a bit of yourself by letting us take snapshots of you to put on our website for one month (all pictures are deleted for ever after one month). So if someone objects to his/her pictures being taken, we always do our best to respect their wishes. If someone does not want it and tells us, it almost never happens that the person wakes up in the morning to find his/her full face picture on our website.
Almost! We are humans too and sometimes (once in 20000 times) we forget and a picture slips into the bunch. That apparently happened last month and this time around the guy involved came to tell us in no uncertain, intimidating and threatening terms that he was not amused. Neither were we. It was a honest mistake. But hey, why is it some people cannot just be gracious winners? We gave our heartfelt apology at least 10 times but this dude just kept on and on! At a point we thought he was going to hit us! But happily he finally seemed to hear the sincerity in our voice. Phew! That was close. I bet he will be one of the first to do a cross examination of the July pictures to see if we offend again?
We have to round up now by thanking those of you who came and those who wanted to come but couldn’t. We are happy with your love and kindness. Please keep spreading the nice words about Africa Night. We are bringing the party closer to you. Starting in October, the Africa Night party train will touch base in Utrecht. 5th October marks the beginning of Africa Night Utrecht. Africa Night Rotterdam will make its long awaited comeback in November. No one can accuse us of not trying and with your love we shall succeed.
See you again in Tilburg on Saturday 17th of August 2013. Whatever you do, enjoy your summer.
