Not just a Christmas Choir
on December 19, 2008
It is an Africa tradition that a visitor to your house should be escorted part of the way home. At the Royal Livingstone we are always sad to see our guests leave and we would like to escort them part of the way home. Unfortunately we can’t do that; we can only put them on the bus to the airport. In order to give our guests a send off, we decided to have a traditional Zambian choir at the hotel entrance to bid our guests a Zambian farewell.
We just had to find a choir. It would have been impossible to look in the telephone directory for a ‘choir for hire’ so we decided that we would have to form our own. In Africa, of course, singing is second nature and many people sing in their church choirs. It was from the churches that we found our members of the Royal Livingstone Choir. They were all unemployed, so were grateful for the chance to sing for their supper, singing being one of their loves.
They spent a few weeks training – they needed some suitable songs and they needed to learn to work as a team. It did not take them long. We also needed to dress them in a traditional way. So, we used old sheets, had them tie-dyed, and made them some clothes. When I say old sheets, our sheets at the Royal Livingstone are replaced often, so they still had plenty of life left in them. So, to recycle them in this way, was not only economic it was a way of reducing our carbon footprint.
I am sure that the members of the choir were very nervous when they first took up their places at the hotel entrance. Now, though, they are like old hands. We find that many of our guests sit and listen to them perform for a long time. They can hear them during check-out and while waiting to board the bus.
So, although we can’t escort our guests part way home, we know that they spend at least part of their journey with the music of our choir in their ears.
