Canadian Culture?

 This week started off normally with school, course work, and slow evenings.  Luckily that ended on thursday with a cultural gala!  It is held every year here for the students and any cultural group can take part, which meant that most of Uganda's and some from the rest of East Africa took part.  As it was a competition each group had to sing the university anthem, sing a folksong from their area, recite a poem, sing a song, and preform their cultural dance.  In all it lasted two full days and even a heavy rain storm could not stop it.  I only lasted half a day of watching it.   

 The picture right is of the Mugandans singing the anthem. They were easily the largest choir, and arguments did break out about choir size.  All choirs wear the red robes you see, those are the official undergrad student robes of Makerere, yes I have one also. Sorry it is sideways, it cant be helped right now though. 

To the right is a student from the Acholi singing a sole.  He does have a little harp like musical instrument which he plucked.  As for his song it was about how the local brew is sweet, I have yet to try any of the local brews. 

 This is the Bunyoro group, I think.  Many of the traditional dress is cuts across cultures, only certain items such as the straw hats in this picture do not.  I do not remember what this song was about, but the man standing is acting drunk.  This was a theme that also cut across many of the cultures with many songs having someone act drunk for differing reasons. 


I was asked why I did not preform and could not think of any uniform cultural dances or folksong which represented Canadian culture.  From my education and experience the fact we do not have one culture but many is not a problem.  However songs and poems such as "Far Too Canadian" by Spirit of the West, "So you want to be Canadian, eh", and "We are more" by Shane Koyczan do show a single spirit.  Maybe I am naive, seeing something which I have only created in my mind, but try to explain why we line up, use the word eh, or  can live in 9.98 million square kms bound up by only a highway and a aging railroad.  Sorry, for this tirade but as Remembrance Day just pasted I hope this is on your mind.  Feel free to speak your mind on this topic.

In a totally unrelated story when buying food it sometimes comes in a plastic bag placed inside a paper bag.  The paper bag is usually just reused paper from somewhere.  The one on the left is in fact a ballot form for "Youth General Elections".  I thought it was random enough to post because in Canada it is illegal to remove the ballot from any election, yet here there are used to wrap food on my street.  Also the little pictures beside the party names are really random.