DAY 15

DAY 15

Knock! Knock! Knock!!!
‘We’ll leave for breakfast in one hour so I’ll be back to wake you up in half an hour, okay?’
(Nyasha and I) ‘hwaahaa, tm, tm… Yes!’
(But if he’ll wake us up in half an hour why did he wake us up right now?!!?!!!!?!!!!)
So we tried to sleep again but 10 minutes later a girl knocked:
‘Guys get ready!’
I gotta admit I was close to transfom into the fearsome half-asleep-bastard and kill the next person to knock and I planned mean responses in my enraged head but the next person (10minutes later) was Thibose so I restrained myself and now it was to late to sleep again anyway.
A little good-morning-footbagging and some nice ‘oh my god elephant’ and I was cool again.
By the way I wanted to advertise this blog about cool alternative music for quite a while anyway so check it out and delete the music after a day ^^
Usually an AIESEC conference starts at 9am but at that time we arrived at the university canteen and started to wait for our breakfast.
10 o’clock, we left for the conference room but still had to get speakers.
10:30, now we had speakers but neither an audio nor a laptop-to-projector cable nor AIESECers from Botswana.
I started to think ‘Hmm, this is not as well prepared as I would expect it from a LEADERSHIP conference prepared by the LEADERs of Botswana and South Africa.’
11 o’clock, eventually the first session starts aaaaannnnddd it was NOT about leadership but AIESEC basics which was a little disappointing for me but very good for the rest because most of them were Newies.
Session 2, again AIESEC bacics and still just frontal training which means no splitting up in groups, no discussions, no real interaction but reading aloud like in 4th grade.
I was angry! This was not what I came here for: lame sessions and barely getting to know any new AIESECers because they were just not here, I mean what is a conference with 10 people?
And then the nuke dropped during session 2: ‘…and as this conference was cancelled turned in a seminar…’
(AIESEC UJ) ’WHAT?! Why did no one tell us?! We drove the whole way to Botswana for a SEMINAR?!!!...’
That was one of the biggest lacks of communication I’ve ever experienced but now we were here and the only thing we could do was to enjoy it to the max and that’s what we did. Sure we first were quite pissed but after addressing our anger and hearing the explanations from the MCs, we cooled down and decided to do it the AIESEC WAY: stay positive and rock.
Rati the MCP (MC president) said something very true: ‘In real life you’ll experience way harder disappointments and fuck ups and it is up to you whether you learn from it and give your best to turn into something good or whether you just give up and complain like a kiddo.’
We finished the still poor session and headed for lunch (even so we were 3 steps behind the agenda) and then a wonderful thing happened…
180 DEGREE TURN!!!!!!!!
Once back in the conference room the technical stuff was set up, one bazillion AIESECers from all over Botswana were all over the place and the quality of the sessions improved dramatically.
It started with a very professional session from the former MCP and now representative of JCI about team management, continued with various role calls to get us energized again, this was followed by a session about competency based management, got deeper with a session about different management styles and values and ended with an inspiring video talk of Steve Jobs.
I was more than just happy, I was really amazed how the whole atmosphere just changed and felt a little bad for being so angry at the beginning but this change was just unbelievable.
After the agenda was finished, we had dinner and drove to David’s place to party hard.
I drank some very nice tea at the party and experienced a typical African dance circle because in Africa dancing turns pretty often in a competitive performance where you try to show your amazing skills.
Unfortunately I don’t have any of these but the crowd started to yell:
‘Go Christian! Go Christian!’
So I did the only reasonable thing and made a quick and funny fool out of myself jumping in the middle and showing my whitey-shakin’^^
They laughed their asses off and I did, too, it was really cool to be with so many nice people.
Later I saw another typical hip hop dance called grinding which looks like sex with cloth on and I discussed with Faith whether this is still dancing or already offence to the boy- or girlfriend already.
The conclusion was that I can’t decide it on the spot, I wish I could say it’s just dancing but maybe I’d be pissed, too if Johanna would be grinding another guy like this girl did.
Back in the motel I just wanted to sleep and so did I.