Day 6: The High Commission Concert

Please excuse the lack of photos. There is not currently enough wifi to upload them however, we will be sure to share them with you as soon as possible. On our third day of teaching at Ballanta, we were a bit tired but still excited. Today I ended up teaching bass in the drum room with Orlando which turned into an hour long jam session, and one of Sasha’s students taught me twinkle twinkle little star on the violin. After a quick trip to the supermarket to buy essentials (ice cream, crisps + sweets) and a pit stop at Crown Bakery we went back to Family Kingdom for a surprise 17th birthday party for Sasha which included a nearly life size piano cake. In the evening we were treated to a trip to the British High Commissioner’s house where we performed a concert (with special guests Ruben Ashton and Noah JB on vocals) and were followed by our guide Moussa’s excellent band Groovy Colours. They got everyone dancing with some reggae and highlife. Noah wins the award for sweatiest dancer on the trip (grim). Tomorrow we go for our last day at Ballanta, and then a 30th anniversary performance in the evening! Written by Barnaby.

Unfortunately our dear friend Noah fell ill this morning which meant we headed to JTR with a team of 6. I was teaching a class of Prep 6 students with Mr Ashton and Chris, where we were teaching an assortment of different languages - German by Chris, French by Mr Ashton and Korean by myself. After the lunch break, we all gathered to teach the children in reception. Harry taught them the wiggly worm song, which we all joined in on doing actions on words, and the kids especially loved when they had to show us their best wiggle when singing 'his name is wiggly woo!'. We then went to Ballanta academy to meet up with everyone and have (yet another) delicious rice dish for lunch. Feeling perfectly satisfied from rice, we headed off straight to a well known bakery in Freetown which had lots of fresh delicacies. Feeling properly satisfied now, we went back to family kingdom resort to have a Birthday party for Sasha and we were treated to mini pizzas and a massive piano cake. After all of this food we needed a little nap so we had about 30 minutes before we headed off to the High Commissioners for our concert. After our bands had finished performing there was an incredible Sierra Leonian band, where we truly got drunk off of the Sierra Leone spirit and got incredibly sweaty dancing to some more amazing music! Written by Alvin