05-02-2010 om 14:16 by Sueli Brodin

Ikabo-é Ikabo-é
Ikabo
Samalamala
Ikabo-é
Soli soli yéyé
Soli yéyé
Ikabo
Samalamala
Ikabo-é

I learned this African song at the Lycée Français in Tokyo, Japan, when I was seven years old. The children in my class came from many different countries. Our common language was French but since most of us spoke at least another or more languages at home, our teacher once asked if we could share some foreign songs with the rest of the group.





That’s how I learned my first words of Russian with the folk song “Katyusha” that my French-Russian friend Marie-Pierre Jdanov volunteered to teach us. I also remember making all the children laugh with a funny rendition of the Brazilian nursery rhyme “Atirei o pau no gato” in Portuguese. But the most striking moment was when my friend Sidonie from Gabon started singing “Ikaboé”: we were all conquered by the sounds of the mysterious lyrics and the beautiful melody. And although I have never heard it again, I have not forgotten it and still sing it sometimes, to my children.

Lycée Français in Tokyo, Japan (1975)

I was reminded of my school years in Tokyo last week when my expat friends in Maastricht started sharing messages on Facebook about the International Week at United World College Maastricht. I read that during this special week, children of all ages were given a unique opportunity to learn first hand about the many different cultures represented in the school. Numerous parents volunteered to help out with all sorts of activities and workshops and wrote that they too had greatly enjoyed the experience. Japanese mothers showed the children how to write their names in Japanese and were impressed at how fast their young ears had picked up the lyrics of “Koinobori no Uta”.



The International Week ended last Saturday with a big International Fair, where all the foreign families with children at the Primary and Secondary school were invited to prepare a stall representing their countries of origin and to share aspects of their culture through food, music, traditional costumes, brochures and typical handcraft.

It was a feast of colours, smells, flavours and sounds that awaited my daughters and me that afternoon. My friend Alexandra, who was manning the Dutch stall, greeted us with a welcoming smile and explained that everything we saw – the food, the displays - had been prepared by the participating families: “All the dishes are homemade Sueli, some parents have been cooking for several days!”





My daughters and I felt as if we had embarked on a breathtaking journey across the world. We travelled from Egypt to Thailand, from Greece and to Hungary and continued on to Pakistan, Japan, Israel, Iceland, the US, Croatia, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, India, France, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia…



In each stall, we were welcomed with warm smiles and friendly words: “Would you like to taste a piece of baklava?”, “Come and have some falafel!”, “French cheese?”, “Wait just a second, you first have to add a bit of Tehina sauce here.. like this.. and now taste it.. do you like it?”

Our global adventure took on yet another dimension when we suddenly heard music coming down from the first floor. Following other visitors upstairs, we arrived in a large room where children dressed in traditional costumes were performing songs and dances from their home countries for a proud and enthusiastic audience of parents, friends and guests.



“Onbekend maakt onbemind” say the Dutch so concisely: “Unknown, unloved.”

“And ‘bekend maakt bemind’,” I kept thinking to myself throughout the afternoon. By enabling a first hand and personal contact with so many cultures, through so many senses, the fair made everyone present feel a warm sense of bonding.



To me, this most clearly manifested itself when a young couple of dancers from Hungary dressed in beautiful outfits appeared in the main hall and spontaneously joining hands with random visitors around them, start dancing together in a circle.

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