As almost everywhere on savanna, in my village Mbam, in Senegal, when a drought lasts too long, people pray for rain to God. Hardly any village doesn't have its guardian spirits who come out of their crannies (a part of a river, a hill, a forest ...).

Singing, drums, dances are to be mediators in contacting the supernatural world of ghosts ... Organizing African Unity Day, I watched the forecast all the week on various TV channels. All of them claimed 25th was going to be a sunny day with no rain, just a perfect weather for an African day. I trusted them. And what I got ...

It was Friday, 25th May. Not so long ago. It was about 6 p.m. when I already knew there would be a great audience. The garden belonging to Harena club slowly was being filled with guests. We were waiting for presenting the mode of the both Sahara banks. Right next to the entrance to the club our friend Kuba Pogorzelski was leading drum workshops. As always, there were more people willing to participate in than drums we had.

The stall with African art was highly popular. Hairdressers plaited hair right next to the stall and a little crowd of Polish girls was biding in the queue. Smell of African dishes like rice, spicy sauce with nut cream, scorched bananas and specific sahelu tea was coming out from the further part of the garden. All of this reminded streets of Lagos, Dakar, Dar Es Salam, Luanda, Kinshasa ... Harenda was all African. It became prettier. Under the sunshades the life has a different rhythm than usually. The sun, drums, lots of languages: Malinke, Hausa, Lingala, Swahili, Wolof, Arabic ...

A melting pot and the beauty of mixed audience. And it was when I discovered what we were striving for organizing the event. It was that unique atmosphere, sharing of something uncatchable. The Africans and the Pole were creating for a few hours a thick atmosphere in a very small space where suddenly the picture of distant Africa run into Warsaw atmosphere. Tastes, smells, sounds, colors ...

We had forgotten! Drums sometimes cause rain. So it happened. Our playing drums turned out to be efficient. I felt like ghosts of my village, somehow (illegally on the plain), arrived to Warsaw and made our unconscious wish come true! The storm raged around! Fortunately, for short but intensively ... The sky soon became clear and smiled at us. All the people soon could admire beautiful mode show prepared by Katryn. Models were accompanied by drummers for about half an hour. Oh, you drums!

Round 10 p.m. we came into to club basement where out choreographer Benoit made all the group participating in his workshops dance. Soon after the temperature was even higher when African bands appeared on the club scene: Yugus, Gold Finger, Djolof Band and Bongo Bongo made the atmosphere really hot. The day of the Continent is worth the suitable atmosphere. And there was more than hot. DJ Sam started a party and a journey through most of the music cultures. There were served the best mixes of 'coupe decale', 'Mbalax', 'ndombolo', 'mandingo' ...


Thanks for everybody for what already was and I ask for more the next year!

Mamadou Diouf