[the kid]

Any funny stories from Africa or drumming classes or what ever. (beerfola your one about the remo in mamadys class was well funny

When i was in Gambia first time i lived with Africans for 2 months. I missed my freedrom and wanted to explore the area and look after myself.

One time i decided to go to check out the market in a nearby town. I was sorted, got all my shit and returned home. All the guys were looking forward to seeing what i had bought.I got 3 skins for my djembes but one turned out to be a sheep skin after the tabaski. felt pretty silly..
Afro sheep aint like the irish sheep at all. Irish sheep look like clouds, afro looks like a goat. seriously

My gambian friends say they saw one white handin jumbo cubes(msg stock cubes) with the green tea thinking they were biscuits or something

[martin73]

Not really a funny Africa story...but a humorous tale involving an African. I was raised in Northeast Wisconsin and there we have a soup of Belgian origin that is quite popular in the region. It is generally made in large, custom made 20+ gallon cast iron kettles and can feed 250+ people. A very social event. Anyway, the soup is named Booyah and I made a kettle several years ago and had a big party and invited over a whole mess of people to experience a Booyah Fest. I invited my drum teacher and several classmates as well and the party was a great time. I asked my teacher if he enjoyed the soup and he liked it a lot, the communal nature of the large meal really appealed to him and he suggested that something like this would go over great in the village. The only problem, he informed me, was we would have to change the name. As it turns out Booyah translated in his language to "shit here". We laughed for hours about that. I'm impressed that given my faux pas he actually came to the event and ate the food

He was telling me that on a trip to Africa with some students one of the ladies was playing peek-a-boo with some small children and every time she did it the children began to cry and run away. Again another problem with the work "boo"....she was saying to "shit" to all of these little children and making them cry

[bops]

I've got one or two stories that I wouldn't want to share in a public forum...

Martin, let me know when the next Bouyah party is, I'll be there.

[Waraba]

Funny stories from Africa. Well, there was this one time... (blurry camera, arpegiated strumming)

I had just returned from using the latrine for the evening, when the walls were torn down by a thief running from an angry mob. The thief then jumped onto my roof and tramped across all the roofs of the compound, followed by the angry mob. They finally caught him. In the morning, the latrine had no wall and was exposed fully to the street, and so was unusable for days. I often think how different this story would have been, had I spent just a half minute more about my business that fateful night...

Never did find out what happened to the thief. My host told me the good citizens escorted him to the police, but I think that may have been a euphemism.

[djembeweaver]

In 2002 I was travelling over-land from The Gambia to Guinea. For some reason I'd decided to take a full-size didgeridoo on my travels (which I ended up lugging round West Africa for 3 years). I kept the didge in a padded case which was strapped carefully to the top of the luggage heap on the roof rack when travelling by taxi.

At the last police checkpoint in the Gambia the police hauled everyone out of the car and had begun the usual extortion process when one of them noticed something suspicious on the roof. Then they started freaking-out - they thought my didge was a rifle.

Of course I owned-up to it as soon as I realised what was going on and I tried to explain what it was while being frog-marched into the police station. When they calmed down a bit I explained that it was a musical instrument so they took it out of the case, passed it between them for a few minutes then passed it back to me. If it is a musical instrument, said one of them, play it.

So I sat down on the floor of the police station and played my didge. It was quite a hit a can tell you, especially when I started doing the animal calls (which elicited reactions from ranging from awe to terror). When I finished they started shaking my hand and slapping me on the back. I asked if I could leave yet and was told they had not finished with me yet. One of them ran off to get some friends and I was told to play again. The acoustics were amazing, due largely to the bare concrete room, and before long half the village were cramming in the doorway of the police station trying to see where the sound was coming from.

One moment that will stick in my mind for ever was when a man was pushed to the front of the crowd just as I played a kookaburra call. His face contorted in pure terror as he turned and shouldered his way back through the crowd screaming. The police thought that was hilarious.

Finally, after about an hour, they let me go, first making me promise to come back to visit.

That was one of the most surreal experiences I had in Africa!

[Michel]

This is a great story. Thanks for that. It reminds me of the story when my teacher went to Senegal to visit his family, he brought his kamalen'goni. The customs asked him also what it was, they thought maybe a bow and arrow or something (how stupid can you be). When he was asked to play the instrument he did, and when after 30 seconds the employee said he could stop, because he was convinced it was an musical instrument, my teacher replied: but I'm not finished! He played his song, entertaining the whole line of people waiting for the security check for a while....

[Waraba]

djembeweaver, that is awesome.

Why were you in Africa for 3 years?

And, why is the didge so often linked to African music? For example, at djembedirect.com, they seem to have a didge department.

[djembeweaver]

Why were you in Africa for 3 years?

That's a long story...here's the very short version:

In 2002 I turned down an academic post and instead bought a one-way ticket to Gambia to follow my heart (sounds a hippy but that's the truth). I'd saved up a bit of money and 6 months later ended up in Kissidougou in Guinea playing with the local drum troupe. Through this I met some French NGO workers and ended up landing a job with Premier Urgence providing food aid to refugees in the Kountaya camps. I did this for a year and a half then bought a desert bike (and learned to ride it in Conakry...I'd never riden a bike before) which I rode to Mali and up into Mopti and Dogon country. I ended up back in Gambia for the last year playing with my teacher Maitre Samsou (3 hours a day, 5 days a week, gigs in the evenings, for a year). That's it in a paragraph!

why is the didge so often linked to African music? For example, at djembedirect.com, they seem to have a didge department

No idea. Probably because hippys are drawn to both. Most places that sell didges and djembes have only poor quality specimens of both.

Cheers for the other stories - all very good. 'Shit here' takes the biscuit though. Now then, if Waraba had put on the 'Booyah' event it would have been more appropriate what with his latrine story!