BOOGIE BOYS

It's common knowledge that it is mainly girls who dance. But do boys like dancing and how did the year 9 boys feel about a whole day of African dance? Chris Gillett and Richard Buller investigated.

The thumping drum beat and lively atmosphere certainly sparked our interest. It wasn't quite as expected.

Most students were literally in the swing of things! It was also surprisingly really good fun. The drum music was really fresh and original and a change from typical chart music. It had such a strong rhythm and beat, that even those of us with two left feet found themselves tapping along. We asked dancer Rory Wilson, what he thought of the whole experience. He said, "I think that most boys feel embarrassed dancing in front of their friends because they might look a bit silly!" Patrick Dunne disagreed and said; "I feel that other boys like dancing, as well as  me." He added, "I also feel that boys feel embarrassed in front of girls, but girls do not feel embarrassed in front of boys."

Interestingly dance is an important part of courtship ritual in African life as well as in England! In one old fashioned African dance movement, young unmarried girls followed a complicated series of dance steps, including shaking their bottoms at potential husbands-to-be to attract them! Dance is also used in many family and social cele brations, as Rubba the instructor says "in Africa everybody dances and men are not inhibited about it."

So if you've got your day of dance to come you are certainly in for a treat!

Bhajan-Artist in Residence

We decided to interview Bhajan, our artist in residence to get her opinions on Arts Week. The students were making African animal sculptures out of MDF wood and were planning to put the animal sculp tures around the school. We thought this would be a really wild idea to liven up Theale Green. The students seemed really motivated. Bhajan commented that this was a great opportunity for students to research Africa, develop their artistic skills and also raised awareness of endangered species. Bhajan is well qualified to run such a workshop, as she comes from a town called Nanyuki in Kenya. She studied art in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, before coming to England to study at Reading University and Slade School of Art in London.

African
Adventure

Mr.Jennings has travelled to many exotic countries such as Kenya and the Gambia in Africa.  Mr Jennings told us some basic facts of what he saw and heard whilst in the Gambia. Many of the people in Gambia are unemployed and there are extremely large families (often more than 10 people). Due to the very high unemployment, normally only one or two adults work in each family. These two adults share their wealth out between many families, so that children can go to school and that families can feed and clothe themselves. We think that this is extremely generous and kind and if this happened in our country, many people's lives would become much better.

Mr Jennings also witnessed a very sad aspect of Gambian life- game hunting. He noticed that there were no large animals or game. There were only monkeys and crocodiles, as all the other large game were extinct, due to excessive poaching years before. Mr Jennings witnessed the re-introduction of a pair of lions into the wild by Caledonian Airways. They were a British pair of lions from Longleat. This introduction of lions was a project to try and preserve the native animals of the Gambia and guarantee a healthy population of lions and other animals in the future.

Today Mr Jennings is helping out with art. We asked him about Kenyan arts and crafts. He told us that there was art work jumping out at him wherever he went, because people would make and sell art work for a living. He told us different methods of art like carving out of wood. Ivory carving used to be popular but is now illegal, which is good to know. They use papyrus instead of paper with dyes to make their own paintings, He also noticed a lot of stone carving as well. A lot of the statues and paintings concentrated on animals and the landscape. I can understand this as they are both beautiful. Mr Jennings is very knowledgeable about Africa and we enjoyed talking to him.

Kiss 'n' Tell

As you all know, today is National Kissing Day and as we were on the trail for some adorable men, we came across Isibor, the friendly professional nurse helping out at Theale for Arts Week. Luckily for us, he happened to be quite cute as well!

Nigerian born Isibor was quite happy to talk to us about his heritage and experiences of Africa. We started off by asking him to compare the different ways of life between European and African culture. He started off by describing life in the villages; how many people survive without what we consider necessities such as television, Playstation and McDonalds. He told us how we are all considered to be extremely lucky, with proper schools and education. The school buildings back in his home are made of wooden rods and packed with mud. Many people walk around barefoot but think nothing of it. They don't have the resources to be able to live life any 'better'.

Isibor tried to explain to us about the different ways his and our cultures relate to one an other. He commented on how some places in Africa, in towns and cities, are built up and developed like many places in Reading. The difference is, even though our houses are built so close together, we hardly know our neighbours or even make the effort to get to know them. However, over in Africa everybody makes the effort to get to know everybody else, regardless of whether they live in a town or a village. They ask questions about people: how they are feeling or how their family is and nobody thinks anything of it. If some one who you didn't know asked you that you'd tell them to mind their own business! Isibor also finds it hard to understand the way we treat our old people. He said, 'back home in Africa we are very family orientated and understand how much wis dom the old have to give and how much they can teach us. He can't understand why some are put into homes when they have so much to give.

Listening to Isibor's thoughts and feelings it makes us wonder how people in the same world can live and see life so differently. We didn't forget about our kissing tally though and made sure we got a big smacker at the end. SORRY ISIBOR!

Today's roving reporters were:

Sam George, Chris Gillett,
Sian Wijeratne, Kate Dutcher,
Emma Corbett, Nick White,
Alex Moss, Melissa Beckett,
Alex Townsend, Richard Still,
Nat McCormick and Richard
Buller.