AERG/Turikumwe Party

A few Saturdays ago I attended a 'party' of one of the student organizations at my school. I had been coming home on Friday night and I saw the girls cleaning up the library, and I asked what they were doing. They told me that on Saturday morning they would be having a party for the candidate students in their club. Candidate students are students in the S3 and S6 year who will take the national exams for O and A level when the school year is finished. In this case the party was more for the S6 girls since they would be graduating/leaving school at the end of this year. Some of my students invited me to attend, so of course I said yes.
This party went from 9 am to 12 pm. In my head I thought that I could go to part of it and then leave just because Saturday morning is normally a very productive time for me. Come Saturday morning I found out that what they might call a party is not exactly what I(we) would call a party.
This event had a program. Some alumnae were there, and a few family members were there. Not to mention some other students in the same club, but at different schools, then a whole bunch of important people were there too.

Before I go on, I think that I should explain what AERG and Turikumwe are.

AERG (Association des Etudiants et Elèves des Rescapés du Génocide) is an association that was created in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide on October 20, 1996 at the National University of Rwanda. Its principal mission is to assure the total representation of student survivors of the 1994 genocide and to solve the problems hindering their performance in schools.

Now at my school the students took it one step farther and made their own organization called Turikumwe. Now a few years ago(5 to be exact) some of these girls realized that they wanted a network for themselves when they leave school, hence Turikumwe being born. So this party was not just celebrating the girls leaving school, but also them now becoming apart of the alumnae organization.

The program was extensive. There were speeches, modeling, singing, dancing. All around a good time. Everything was in Kinyarwanda, but I was luckily enough to have a kind student next to me translating so I knew at least what was going on.
In the program they thanked and gifted many people who helped them, including a "mother","father', and "uncle", and "brother". You could tell just from how the girls acted that although there might not have been biological connections, these people really were their family.
As always, I greatly enjoyed the modeling, singing, and dancing. I have to say, these students really did a great job. There were 3 modeling times. They did both Rwandese traditional styles and separate African styles. They also did some traditional dances. I tried to take as many pictures and videos as I could.
As the morning wore on I wanted to leave, but each time it looked like I might leave my students would tell me, no no teacher there is something else coming up that you will want to see, so of course I stayed. Like most things here, time is not always follwed, so although they had originally told me that it would go till noon, I wasn't surprised that it lasted till 1pm. Well, at least come 1 pm was the first oppurtunity I had to leave.
Overall I was so thankful that my students invited me to attend, and that I could to partake in such a fun time.