Festival of Nations

[William769]

I am on vacation right now and I chose my vacation destination to be The Great Smokey Mountains. We spent the day today at Dolly Wood (Yahoo!) The reason for this post is of all places to find a Festival of Nations, we found it at Dolly Wood in the heart of the Smokies (to tell the truth, I was a little shocked).

The culture represented at Dolly Wood IMHO was unprecedented, Countries from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South America were represented.

What caught my attention the most was a group of a capella singers from Zambia. They told the story of all the orphaned children in Zambia, the malaria & the A.I.D.S crisis. It brought tears to my eyes especially when they said the life expectancy was only 35 there. They are traveling the world over to raise money for a school there that they support for children. All in the group were orphaned.

The money I saw being collected for this group put some of my faith back in why I'm proud to be an American. Listening to most of these people talk I could tell they were from the South and also the older generation. The concert I attended was standing room only. This group was really talented & you could tell they were singing from the heart. The songs they performed were traditional Zambian pieces and Southern Gospel (boy did they pull that off!)

I may sound like I'm rambling and the main reason for this post is the South really hasn't had much good to be said about it here on DU (politically speaking), and I just thought I would share this story on how I viewed Southerns not thinking locally, but Globally.

Peace to you all.