Trip to Expo 2008. My One Love moment
Posted 08-04-2008 at 08:45 AM by Elisa Keisha
Greetings Camrades!
I dont know if you ever heard of the international exposition that its celebrated every two years in different cities of the world. Well, this year the city is Zaragoza, my hometown!
Leaving aside that i am against it because, as always, they talk about the envioroment, balance and ecoblah, and they destroy, unbalance and waste.
I been twice, and the really good thing of it is that is a very wiiiiiiide place, with different "houses" for every country that has participated. Some of them have a common house like "Caribbean countries", "Latin America", "Subsaharian Africa", etc. So every countries shows a lil bit of its culture (most of them are made by companies and they just exhalt the "jamaican's innate ability for business! visit us for you next investment!" lol, but they also organize concerts, so i have been blessed to see, for example, for the first time in my life, a Steel Band from Trinidad playing Calypso, live!
that is awesome!
And i have also spent half my salary in the stores!! image a whole store with different sections for the different afrikan countries, each one of them attended by a person from them. Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique, Senegal... all together...
So i got me a lot of ethipian stuff, coptic crosses, incense and burners, bags and foulards. and i also got painted batik for the walls from uganda and tanzania, colorfull baskets, jewelery (nice jewelery in Colombia! btw) teas, etc.
Not to mention what i got me in egypt and latin america (but thats easier to find in town)
But that is just the nice but material consumer culture part of it.
The best best thing was, the people!! First time io met so many people from such diverse countries in the same day. The musicians of the steel band, after seeing i was the only one really dancing and enjoying and not taking picture and moving, came to me and i could share with them, even if it was just for a minute, it was nice.
Also the rastafari musicians of the senegal band, which magnificently played the bolong, the bongo ma, the marimba, the djembe..., aproached to say hi.
I started a conversation with the woman in the nigerian store after she saw my uhuru pin, she spoke swahili! and i could use for the first time the few sentences i have learn here (asante sana!!) and of course get a discount for my mama's bag!
I know these are just few minutes encounters, but they really blessed my soul, and increased my need to travel.
I have heard in spite of wars, hate and hells, most people in the world are good, and nice. could it be true?
lol
PS: Im goin to post some pictures soon
I dont know if you ever heard of the international exposition that its celebrated every two years in different cities of the world. Well, this year the city is Zaragoza, my hometown!
Leaving aside that i am against it because, as always, they talk about the envioroment, balance and ecoblah, and they destroy, unbalance and waste.
I been twice, and the really good thing of it is that is a very wiiiiiiide place, with different "houses" for every country that has participated. Some of them have a common house like "Caribbean countries", "Latin America", "Subsaharian Africa", etc. So every countries shows a lil bit of its culture (most of them are made by companies and they just exhalt the "jamaican's innate ability for business! visit us for you next investment!" lol, but they also organize concerts, so i have been blessed to see, for example, for the first time in my life, a Steel Band from Trinidad playing Calypso, live!
that is awesome!
And i have also spent half my salary in the stores!! image a whole store with different sections for the different afrikan countries, each one of them attended by a person from them. Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique, Senegal... all together...
So i got me a lot of ethipian stuff, coptic crosses, incense and burners, bags and foulards. and i also got painted batik for the walls from uganda and tanzania, colorfull baskets, jewelery (nice jewelery in Colombia! btw) teas, etc.
Not to mention what i got me in egypt and latin america (but thats easier to find in town)
But that is just the nice but material consumer culture part of it.
The best best thing was, the people!! First time io met so many people from such diverse countries in the same day. The musicians of the steel band, after seeing i was the only one really dancing and enjoying and not taking picture and moving, came to me and i could share with them, even if it was just for a minute, it was nice.
Also the rastafari musicians of the senegal band, which magnificently played the bolong, the bongo ma, the marimba, the djembe..., aproached to say hi.
I started a conversation with the woman in the nigerian store after she saw my uhuru pin, she spoke swahili! and i could use for the first time the few sentences i have learn here (asante sana!!) and of course get a discount for my mama's bag!
I know these are just few minutes encounters, but they really blessed my soul, and increased my need to travel.
I have heard in spite of wars, hate and hells, most people in the world are good, and nice. could it be true?
lol
PS: Im goin to post some pictures soon
Total Comments 2
Comments
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I looooove Calypso. And the best way to learn a language is to use it so I'm glad you got to actually use Swahili. Sounds like you had a blast.
Being around people with like spirits is always refreshing.Posted 08-04-2008 at 11:29 PM by Fenix
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i loved the music. but now im thinkin, im not sure it was calypso... cause calypso is more like a band with different instruments, guitar, voice, etc, and this was a plain steel band, plain percussion.
i never heard anything like that before. people there didnt know how to dance to it, lol.
the story its interesting as well. think i read something in "ready for revolution" by kwame ture about its origins, something about slaves not being alowed to have and make drums, so they started inventing this kind of instrumentsPosted 08-05-2008 at 11:08 AM by Elisa Keisha
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