A Broad Abroad: Language barriers

I had the last weekend off, so a couple of friends and I decided to go out in town. We headed toward the grand marche, the large open air market, but along the way stumbled upon a celebration in the soccer field and decided to check it out. We were at the gate looking around trying to figure out what was going on, the french speaking ticket seller was not much help. Nor were all the french speaking locals handing in their tickets. Luckily there was a man that spoke English at the gate to help us buy our tickets and he explained that there would be live music, singing and dancing, that we would enjoy seeing their culture, so he invited us to join. He said he would be in one of the groups performing. It sounded good to us! We paid our 1000 CFA and headed in.

The music had already started, so we were standing in the back, taking it all in. Then our English speaking friend from before found us and told us he had a spot where we could sit and see everything. So he ushered us to the very front row! We sat under a fancy looking tent with who looked like very official people. It is not unusual in Point Noire to see people dressed up in dresses and suits, but the people we were next to took dressed up to the next level and were looking sharp. We were the only white people there, so everyone was staring at us. This is not unusual here, but I am still not used to it. There was electricity wired to the field to power the speakers and amps, and it also powered the media team with their cameras, which were pointed at us 93% of the time.

Many people there had flags and t-shirts with a specific man on them, so we thought that maybe we were at some sort of political thing. We had heard earlier that we wouldn't be able to take a cab close to the grand marche due to roads being shut down for a government function. So we guessed what we were at had to do with that. Then Solveig, my Norwegian friend, decided to text a friend back in Norway to look it up for us. She said that the man was the founder for a religion, that he was sort of the "profit" for this group. So, we put five and seven together and decided we were at some sort of cult like religious group.... We had a lot of fun listening and dancing to the music, and took comfort in the fact that there were a lot of kids present. So we went with it! Plus we felt if we had left from our front row seats we would be acting very impolitely! We enjoyed all the music and laughed a lot at the cameras in our faces, and I was even asked to dance by one of the guys in the crowd (the camera caught every second of that!) Thankfully there was no "koolaid" to be drank, because we maybe would have jumped right on that band waggon! "Note to self: Learn French!"

The language barrier is so difficult! Here is a youtube video (please know there is very explicit language) that perfectly describes how I feel most of the time in Congo! Me in Congo

Here is a link to the group Guy Emile Loufoua Cetikouabo