The closing ceremony was a lot of fun and a great way to close off the week. There was a live band and dance group, a dance competition and some awards for the English Open Week Debate Competition were handed out as well. The whole week was very successful and the thousands of people that showed up during the week learned a lot and had a lot of fun doing it. However, the band was late arriving to the event and so Tesfahun had to entertain the audience until they did arrive.
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| Photo: Tesfahun assessing the situation. |
He decided to call on the audience to come up and sing some songs. A kind of Karaoke situation emerged.
And then the guy in the photo below got up and sang an acapella version of a song titled "We are the Children of the World." He was about 12 years old singing in front of a group of adults and he was fantastic.
Eventually the band arrived and the show began. Tesfahun gave the closing speech, the awards for the Debate Competition were handed out, and Habtamu gave a quick speech as well. I just took pictures.
Then the entertainment part of the show began. The great part about the band and the dancers was that all of them were once orphans and street children. They were trained how to play music and dance and now they hire themselves out to play and dance at events like the English Open Week and that is how they make their living. Having observed how difficult life is here in Ethiopia for a homeless, orphaned child, this group of singers and dances were not only inspirational, they are a true success story.
The last part of the evening was a dance competition for anyone that wanted to take part and there were some great dance off's for sure.
In the end, we were all happy and proud of the way that everything turned out. not everything went perfectly as planned, but everything worked.
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