FUNDRAISING

28/2/2010
Rest assured. This time it isn’t for me, so you can put your credit cards away! I went to one in Ntcheu. It was in aid of an artist who was releasing a CD and now wanted to fund the production of a DVD. But hold on, which charity, which school or hospital was this going to benefit? Well, there need not be any. Fundraising events do not have that string attached here. So there I was in a massive hall in a private school, with some 300 people each having paid 250Kwacha (£1) on the door, watching artists perform for a couple of hours to playback. That’s cool, there would have been no means of getting live in Ntcheu and, in fact, the dance was the best bit. However this dance had a twist. Each performance was preceded by a little fundraise talk by a compere and the audience would be called forward to literally throw their notes at the artist or the whole stage (Bombay dance-club style, for those who’ve read Maximum City). Every now again, he’d innovate and set one artist up against another and make the audience vote...with their money of course. Highest cumulative bid wins!
My role in that was intriguing at first, as my flatmate, Henry, who took me along, told me that I’d be invited to dance with the crowd. Henry is a church deacon connected with the church whose bishop’s wife happened to be the performing artist. I took his statement literally and thought it meant the dancing I was already doing in front of the stage.... until I saw him approach the compere in the distance and point towards me. A little later, in a blur of Chichewa, I heard the name “Ashton” spoken clearly 2 or 3 times, with beckoning fingers. I was to join Zikoma, an albino artist who is also a legend in the area, for some on-stage dancing. From whatever compulsion that overcame me, I ended up on stage attempting to copy his moves, invariably producing some variant of sega instead for the next 10min. I also had to donate some 1000Kw, but the craziest bit was that I was having money thrown at me from the crowd this time. The cheering and applause I was getting as “muzungu” provided all the energy I needed to keep going.
Back in the audience, the money raising proceedings continued. The bishop came forward and the crowd went up in larger numbers to squander more of their notes. The bishop appeal is a certain winner in this part of the world. The people of Ntcheu have religion hard-wired in them and even though this had no direct charitable aspect involved, other than to promote an artist and contribute towards her earnings, there was a distinct feeling that this was going to a good cause, a church-sanctioned cause. I addressed this with Henry afterwards and he told me that an event of this magnitude was really rare in Ntcheu. The people were being done a real treat by having this on their doorstep. The artist had done most of the organising by herself (albeit with her husband’s huge clout), at some cost and this event would be the main remuneration for her hard work as an artist in producing this album.
And this brings me to a rough estimate of her overall takings for that day. After what must have been more than 100,000Kw as money spilled onto the stage, the final round involved live bidding for the first CD. The first two bidders were picked and people would add to either of their sums to produce two competing stashes. It didn’t matter which one was higher as they would BOTH get the FIRST CD and the money from both would be kept. Handy when that is the sum of 40,000Kw and 45,000Kw respectively! That actually brought the grand total to a neat 260,000Kw- no meagre pickings in Malawian terms, but still only the equivalent of £1000. That, less all the organising costs, is really only a fair wage for an artist’s countless hours working on and promoting her album.
So...question? Where were all these extremely poor people of Ntcheu getting all this money from? Two possible conjectures- 1) Poorer people are usually the more generous ones, as they only have little and are happy to share that little; 2) Poor areas always have some very rich people in there to dominate the key businesses, and events like today help them display that wealth and status publicly. I personally think it was a combination of both.
The bottom line is that I had a whale of a time and felt like a king for 10 minutes at least today (Sunday). Sure enough, the next day I was to enjoy a sudden rise to celebrity, as everyone from the hospital to the local shop to the bank would recognise me and make a comment on my ‘dancing’...
This is showbiz Ntcheu style! For those interested in groovy chuch music, the artist was Mary Kapenga (albums goign for 1000Kw!).