Beauty Pageant

The high school held a beauty pageant the other week and somehow we ended up judging!  (Haha.)  Here are some photos of the contestants and the action.

Summer wear:

 Own style:

 Evening wear:

The final girls:

The girl in the pink dress won (a younger "freshman"), who in the next photo appears to be about to receive her award in the form of a plastic yellow chair... but fear not, even amidst the chaos, no one got hurt.  The kids just got so excited and couldn't help but onto the stage at the end to congratulate "Miss Unique 2012!"  To be expected of course...  Beauty pageants are kind of a big deal here.

Important to so many youthful Namibian events are a few musical interludes to break things up.  Hopefully this video works so you can finally see the loved and adored (.. understatement) Qwaito-style dancing.  There's a part of me that beams with pride a little bit to see "my" younger Grade 5-7 boys tearing it up in the front row of these mixed-age dance groups. 

And here you can see how close the dancers got to the audience... as well as vice versa!

Here are some more of my Grade 5 to 7 boys in the audience (which you can see is like an ocean), and there are a couple of them I'm coming to really want to bring home to the States (what would be a dream-come-true for almost all of these kids).  They're pretty adorable and a lot of fun:

 

*PS- Mom, the learner you talked to briefly on the phone the other day was Manfred, the darker boy on the right.  Just to put a face to the voice!  :-)

For more on Namibian school Beauty Pageants, you can check out my friend and fellow PCV, Sarah's, recent and very interesting/entertaining blog post on the subject!