Patience, patience, patience. Those are the 3 words that we have learnt are the keys to success in the years that we have been organising Africa Night. Every once in a while we forget those 3 words and we as organisers let our heads hang when things do not go as we hoped or planned. Happily our forgetfulness never last more than a few days before we are reminded of those words. The road to success is a very hard, long road. There is no short cut to it. Getting there requires vision, big sacrifices and patience, patience, patience! That is what almost 15 years of Africa Night has taught us.
Sometimes we have let our heads hang during the past half year with how Africa Night Nijmegen was going. We wanted to achieve in 1 year in Nijmegen what took several years to achieve in Tilburg. We have been tempted to look for that short cut. But when you are running a marathon, you cannot run like Usain Bolt. No. You cannot run a marathon in 9.59 seconds. You need patience, patience, patience! You build up your race and your pace. In the end if you stay focussed, you will get there.
The reason for the whole philosophical stuff above has to do with how the February 2013 edition of Africa Night Nijmegen. It was the first time we started at 23.00 hours because In Nijmegen people almost never came before 23.30 hours. (It was a good time to start at 23.00 hours too because starting a few days back, you had to pay for parking till 23.00 hour while until a month ago it was free from 18.00 hours). It was a good choice we made because once our guests started arriving at around 23.30 hours they just kept coming. It has been a long time since our security guard had that much to do within a short space of time! He loved it too!
You see there were so many new people there who have heard of ANN and wanted to have a go at the atmosphere. That was like music in our ears! A couple of people even said the reason they were not there earlier was because they wanted to be sure that it was not just going to come and go like some of the other Africa themed parties that sometimes spring up in Nijmegen.
Well one thing we know is, we had some very inspiring conversations with many of our guests last Saturday. It was so inspiring that we completely forgot we were at work and once in a while joined in the dancing! Patience, patience, patience! We already saw from November that things were looking upward. That trend is continuing. We can be happy with the numbers last Saturday. More so because we knew that there was a 90’s R’N’B musical group of granddaddies (Blackstreet) playing in Nijmegen that same evening. We knew many of our regular guests went to see these old guys but happily we had a whole set of new clients who more than compensated for those visiting the grandpas.
We hope you all had as much fun as we did. We have another date next month in Nijmegen. We are looking forward to welcoming you again on Saturday 02-03-2013. Thank you all. We are getting there together. Surely. All we need is patience, patience, patience!
Discover the joy of African music & dance!
