The theme for Book Week this year was African Storytelling.  Throughout the week this theme was reinforced by the reading of African stories to Infant and Junior students during their Library periods and also through the encouragement of students to read African themed books or stories during DEAR- the fifteen minute mandatory daily reading time that the whole school community participates in during Book Week.

       

The climax to what was a really successful Book Week theme was undoubtedly the appearance on the last day of the renowned drummer, Mr Dafalla Hag Ali who specialises in drumming styles from all the different areas of Sudan and the wider region.

At 9 a.m on Thursday 11th March, the sound of drums from the Infant section heralded the appearance of a parade of around 100 infant students, all dressed up in African themed clothes following the drummer and his assistants down the main road of the school and across into the garden opposite school.   Here they sat in two groups under the huts and listened, enraptured, to storytelling by Mrs Fawatih from Professor Abdallah Etayib’s book, ‘Sudanese Tales’  and Ms Ann James about Ananse the spider.  Once the stories were over they paraded back through the school behind the very exotically dressed and energetic drummers.

                  

Later in the day, at 12 noon, Mr Dafalla and his troupe were once again in action, this time around the fountain area.  This was part of a trail that the Junior students took on a circuit of four storytellers.  The storytellers in this case were once again Mrs Fawatih and Ms Ann, telling stories from Nubia and West Africa.  They were joined this time by Mr Mark Webber telling a story from Southern Sudan and Mrs Ikhlas recounting some of Jiha’s short funny stories, African riddles, facts about Africa and giving students a holiday quiz.
 
The bright colours of all the African costumes and the energy and enthusiasm of the drummers kept everyone’s spirits sky-high that day and it was a great and fitting finale to what has been a very busy quarter for the KICS library staff.