I was the main organizer of the Awards Assembly and my intention was to plan a stellar event that would be worthy of the efforts by all involved in our school in making this past school year the best in the school’s history. I envisioned an event that would be grandiose in its simplicity, classy in its unpretentiousness, and memorable in its warmth and fuzziness. One of those feel good love fest when you get a group of parents in a room with their kids on stage.
We had invited not only the parents to this kinder love fest, but also a variety of people from the expat community who had been involved and had helped us in making this such a memorable year. We had also invited a substantial and interesting list of distinguished guests (aka: Ambassadors) and to our surprise, 9 of these V.I.P.‘s accepted our invitation. Most of these guys (and gals) Madeleine and I had met at various official functions throughout our séjour here in Conakry and of course, we had always boasted about our school. I guess they had decided to come and see for themselves if this little school was all what we had said it was. With 9 of our ambassador friends accepting the invitation, the stakes were all of a sudden brought up a few notches. A group of mothers were given the mission of organizing a luncheon that would follow the event. Of course, the event we were planning warranted more than the usual hot dogs and fries menu. I knew that feeding 80 kids, 50 adults, 15 distinguished guests, and 9 ambassadors would be a challenge; a challenge that I was not up to. Who better to ask than a group of mothers when it comes to feeding people?
A substantial amount of time was spent rehearsing during the week leading up to Saturday’s big extravaganza. Nothing was left to chance. I had just finished reading Steve Jobs' biography, and Steve was a compulsive nutcase when it came to planning and organizing presentations. Steve was infamous for his irrational, often mercurial behavior and demands when preparing for the dramatic unveiling of the latest Apple product. The rehearsals were gruesome for those involved in its preparation due to Steve’s obsession with the most minute detail, from lighting to sound to movement on stage to scripted addresses. He would traumatize his crew. Nothing was left to improvisation or chance. But in the end, in every case, his anal and obsessive conducting led to stellar performances that were almost magical in their timing. That’s the kind of spectacle we would be aiming for on Saturday.
By Friday afternoon, with a whole week of rehearsal under our belts, everyone was pretty well confident that our Awards Assembly was going to be nothing short of stellar. The songs were well rehearsed, the walk to and from the stage to get the awards were practiced, the nursery kids were instructed not to pick their noses, and I had worked hours putting together an impressive knock-your socks-off slide show, soundtracked by the spectacular music of the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver winter olympics. This slide show would undoubtedly leave the parents, distinguished guests and 9 ambassadors breathless. Steve Jobs would have been impressed.
Then it happened. The first hint of the WAWA factor and possible derailment of ‘the event of the year’ unexpectedly slithered in on us Friday evening. Madeleine and I were at the German Ambassador’s residence where we had been invited to celebrate His Excellency’s wife’s birthday. At one point during the evening, the Ambassador walked up to me and apologetically informed me that he would probably be late for the Awards Assembly the following morning. That afternoon, he had just received an official summon to report to the airport Saturday morning at 8:30 to welcome the President of Niger who was arriving for an official state visit. Not good. If the German ambassador had been summoned, then chances were that all the other 9 ambassadors who had rsvp’ed to our extravaganza were also called upon to stand and sweat profusely the following morning on that hot tarmac, dressed to the gills in their splendid national regalia dress (hence the sweating profusely), waiting for the President of Niger’s plane to arrive. Furthermore, like in the past, every time some President arrived or left Conakry, the whole city would literary shut down due to the sudden show of military security force and hardware lining the streets. I am the first one to admit that those ground to air missile launchers do look rather impressive lining the side of the road! But are they really necessary? Especially on Saturday morning, when we are holding the most important event in the history of our school? And furthermore, why would the President of Niger want to come and visit the President of Guinea, now? Aren’t these guys head of two of the poorest and mismanaged countries (according to the UN Livability index) of West Africa? What do these Presidents talk about when they meet? Do they just sit around and discuss the dismal state of affairs in their respective countries...a bit like a Messed Up Country Anonymous meeting? Must be kind of depressing. Or maybe they just sit around and compare missile launchers? Was this summit really necessary? In any case, it all started to smell WAWAish.
We left early Saturday morning for the school and sure enough, tons of military guys with big guns and menacing looking headgear and other riot paraphernalia were setting up along the main road leading into the city. And let us not forget to mention the few dozen helicopters thrown in for good measure buzzing around like flies buzzing around a pile of je ne sais quoi. Considering the city we’re in, I’m sure you get the imagery I’m getting at. Times like these, it is always nice and reassuring to enter the blue gates of our campus to suddenly be embraced by the peaceful and lush safe haven of our little school.
The kids were programmed to arrive at school by 10AM SHARP (foreign word seldom used and seen here in Africa) and be sitting in their assigned bleachers by 10:30AM SHARP (probably only the second time this foreign word has been used in the history of Africa) for the beginning of the Awards Ceremony. It was 10:15 and we had barely a dozen kids who had arrived (so much for the emphasis on SHARP...) and no distinguished guests anywhere to be seen. Staff were trickling in and all lamented about how horrendous the traffic was due to the President’s motorcade basically paralyzing the whole city. Finally, two embassy cars drove through the gates, one with the flag of Saudi Arabia fluttering on the right fender and the other with the Nigerian flag. Our first two Excellencies had arrived. We were in business. I greeted them at their cars and both were dressed in their impressive national regalia dress. They explained that they had come directly from the airport which was the reason why they were dressed the way they were.
We finally got the show started at 11AM, even though there were many kids, parents, and vip’s that were still stuck in traffic. However, since the American Ambassador had arrived and she was the one giving the keynote address, we decided to begin and let the latecomers quietly find their places when they arrived.
The performance began with kids beaming with pride as they sat quietly in their assigned seat (they had been gently and subtly reminded that if they moved, they would meet a painful death), waiting to be called to receive their awards. The American Ambassador gave a classy opening address which warmed everyone’s hearts. We were definitely off to a very good start.
It was then time for the knock-your-socks-off slideshow, and this is when WAWA reared its ugly head again. We had had two dry runs of the slideshow at the rehearsal yesterday, and just to be on the safe side, once again Saturday morning. The slide show began and within barely 10 seconds into it, the computer froze...the music continued, but the images froze. After a minute of watching the tech guy nervously fidgeting and trying to get his computer to work, I grabbed the mike and ad-libbed a semi apology for the technical difficulties that we were experiencing and then smoothly (as in slick, really slick) proceeded in formally introduce the distinguished guests who had just arrived which included two very good looking young Guinean Beach VolleyBall athletes who seemed to have obviously caught the eyes of the ladies of the Chinese Embassy. The Chinese ladies were snapping pictures of these eye-candy guys as if there was no tomorrow. By that time, our tech guy, who was well past the first stages of a full blown nervous breakdown, was pushing buttons and sweating profusely. I ran out of people to introduce, so I quietly instructed the poor tech guy to move the projector installation to the side and that we would proceed with the program and forego the slide show all together.
The rest of the assembly proceeded without any further hitches, other than the kindergarten class having issues with an uninvited errant gecko who had made it’s way into their bleachers and was causing minor havoc with some of the girls. As we were nearing the end of the distribution of awards, it began to bug me that these fine people assembled here were not going to see and inevitably appreciate the knock-your-socks-off video that I had put together. So I ran to the tech room and summoned the tech guy who, by that time, had exiled himself in his room and was comfortably wobbling in a mixture of shame, disappointment, and embarrassment. I asked him to pull himself together and that, if he succeeded in doing that, I would like us to attempt the slide show again. This is where Steve Jobs and I differ: Steve would have pulverized the poor guy to a pulp; I chose to tactfully tell him to get a grip, deal with the situation, and that we could all learn from this WAWA bump on the road, and that to live here is to always walk in uncertainty and for the sake of sanity, it is best to laugh at your failed plans than to mourn them. Sounded good. Perhaps what I said at the time didn't sound as good and wasn’t quite as tactful nor insightful sounding (get your crying derriere out there and make the thing work), but the message was clear because next thing I knew, we were blowing socks off everyone in the crowd. By that time, all the latecomers had arrived, all the empty seats were full, and everyone would have the opportunity to see this multi-media tic masterpiece. I had warmed the crowd before the slide show by asking them if they wouldn’t mind if we tried the slide show again, because, considering these were photos of their kids, and after all, these were the cutest kids on the face of the planet, and besides, if they did not let me show them the slide show, I would ask the guards to deflate the tires of their cars. Slick, very slick. Hence, socks knocked off.
Despite the two non-negligible WAWA moments that almost foiled our gathering, we were able to avoid derailment. Ironically, rather than undermine it, WAWA enhanced the whole proceedings. Contrary to being upstaged by the President of Niger, the 8:30 arrival of the presidential plane assured us of the presence of our 9 ambassadors. The school happens to be located close to the airport, so our distinguished excellencies were able to make it to our distinguished excellent event, still glowing in the aftermath of standing on a hot tarmac to eventually get to shake the hand, curtsey, bow, or whatever else one does on a tarmac when meeting a president. The tardy start of the event due to people being stuck in traffic fed well into the anticipation and excitement building that we would otherwise have to pay a warm up act to do. And of course, the malfunctioning slide show was a huge blessing in disguise. If we would have shown the slide show when it was intended to be shown, half the crowd would not have been there. The multimedia epic slide presentation turned out to be the climatic part of the whole event. Steve Jobs has taught me well.
At the very end of the day, on my way to the car, I encountered Alkhaly, our campus gardener. This is a guy whom I have never seen smile nor heard speak since my arrival here two years ago. Alkhaly was not only smiling, he was beaming. He was stary-eyed with this awe struck look on his otherwise sad face, as if he had just seen something magical, like a 7 year old would look when exiting the gates of Disneyland after spending his first day there. “I have never seen anything like this before," he said. "I’ve seen it on TV, but never in real life. So many ambassadors. So many cars with fluttering flags on their fenders. I have never seen anything like this before.”
Take that WAWA!
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