Circus Camp and Show!

Raphoka Primary School - Circus Camp

I left off with two days til show time… and what a busy two days! Have I mentioned that we’re two instructors working with 151 kids? What was I thinking?!

Me’ Penney is our principal helper, and we’ve hijacked two Standard 7 boys to assist us throughout. They have turned out to be fabulous – their English is improving, they are proud to help and they are GOOD at it.

After some deliberation ($$$) we decided to order green t-shirts for all the students. Raphoka is poor and the kids are ragamuffins, especially compared to the other local schools, whose uniforms tend to be um, less holey. Our t-shirt transaction was very satisfactory – we ordered them in Hlotse, paid the deposit and returned three days later to collect them. Very satisfactory indeed.
More on just how fabulous they looked on show day later!

A typical day begins with Standard (grade) 1 and we go class by class til school’s out, and beyond. We’ve abbreviated the one-hour lunch so the kids get as much time with the gack as possible. Our circus zone is mainly under an expansive tree, that is, until about 1pm when we’re left working under the blazing sun. The kids don’t seem to mind – they are impervious to the heat and we remain mystified by the layers of clothing they wear. Unrelated: the shepherd boys wear full-face masks and blankets over their shoulders in the fields… people, it’s 32 degrees out!

We end each day with dancing: we bought two Lesotho music CDs and we crank the volume on the car’s CD player. It’s hilarious – the kids swarm the car and we boogie to the accordion/rap/zydeco-esque tunes. I can pretty much guarantee that none of these kids have electricity let alone access to a stereo.

The students are dedicated and delightful to work with. There is minimal conflict (we don’t count the stick fighting or the girl in Standard 4 who pounds on the back of the boy she climbs in the pyramid… you think he’d learn to flatten out his back!), they share the juggling gear and they help each other out on stilts. And so… we practice!

My ladder:
Hahahahha! Oh dear. Robin, earmuffs! The boys drag it out each day so I can hang the trapeze bar. It’s 15’ long and made of branches. Wood, sure enough, but not in the form we’re accustomed to. The horizontal sticks (AKA steps) are nailed or lashed to the vertical sticks, which themselves are lashed at the halfway mark, else the ladder would be 7’ long! They hold it tight while I climb up and sling the (nice, thick, strong, live) branch off of which we hang.

The pyramids:
We’re proud of our pyramids! (Thanks, Peter and Ninon: visuals are imperative here.) Classes 2, 3 and 4 all do pyramids and despite a shaky (okay, pathetic!) dress rehearsal, they totally pulled through at show time.

The posters:
We made several posters announcing the show and had the artistic students copy them and post them around the village. Mum has a good supply of arts and crafts materials so it was a poster board and marker job all round! Very effective…

Show day:
8:15 am arrival at the school. The curtain fabric was hung, kids hauled benches out for the visiting teachers and we set up backstage. That is, behind the tree and the flashy fabric panels! The Raphoka classes were assigned a hunk of grass to sit on and they were called backstage in groups to prep for their acts. Genius! And also, the “toilet field” I have previously referred to is just another 100 meters away, so we couldn’t venture too far back behind the tree…

The dress was a bit rough, but the kids stayed focused. We made a couple changes to the running order, did some notes (“Don’t cut through centre stage when you run off to the toilet!”), broke for lunch and hoped for our invited audience would show up for the 1:00 pm curtain.

At 12:45 the kids were given their t-shirts. At 12:55 the Help Lesotho contingent arrived in a 4 plus 1 (taxi). At 1:00 pm we were still staring at an empty field but with a couple weeks under our belt here in Africa, were not worried. Pontmain Primary School was suddenly spotted traipsing across the field and as Dean greeted and seated them, our proud Standard 6 and 7 students emerged from their classroom singing. They marched over to the performance area just wailing their well-rehearsed tune, and the effect was astounding. All 151 Raphoka students were glowing in their new green t’s. The show had begun!

Standard 1’s scarf dance had just wrapped when Guardian Angel School arrived. We quickly assembled them in the audience and carried on. In all, we performed for over 500 people! Dean hosted and we dazzled them with trapeze, juggling, diabolo, yo-yo, hacky sac, spinning plates, acrobatics and stilt walking. The teachers were thrilled and proud; the visiting teachers were just plain jealous, and our kids made a mark. As the hundreds of visiting students headed home (smudges of maroon and navy for miles – uniforms are big here) we assembled our circus stars and wrapped up our stay with three cheers. The teachers told us it would be a blue day on Thursday. That’s today, the day we leave. ;(

We’ve left the stilts and the juggling gear for the students at Raphoka along with instructions on how to keep things in working order. Mum will visit them again next week to create an equipment sign out sheet, and it’s our hope the teachers really will incorporate circus practice into their schedules. They sure are keen to… we have to hope the kids will make certain of it!