The 216th good thing about Lagos: Small World was a big success!

It's taken me a week and a half of recovery before I could face revisiting Small World with a blog post. This year was my 3rd experience with Small World and each year my participation has increased. This will likely be my last one, but I was glad to act as the chair for the USA's participation in the event this year, even despite the stress involved. It's a worthy effort and I really enjoyed doing my part to make it happen. But a big fundraiser doesn't happen without a lot of work on the part of many and I enjoyed getting to know so many dedicated women. Each of 27 women's organizations from various country groups decorated a booth and prepared food for 1500 people and many also prepared an entertainment segment for the program. Each women's organization nominates a charity, which is awarded a share of the proceeds of the event to spend on an approved capital expenditure. This year they raised at least 32 million naira -- over $220,000.

My pictures don't do justice to the event -- I was too busy to do much picture taking. It was an exhausting day (and week). There was 60 kilos of boneless chicken cooking -- on event day we warmed up the shredded chicken and mixed with barbeque sauce

Some women sliced rolls for our barbeque sandwiches. Others prepared cole slaw, baked cookies and prepared drinks.
This photo of our booth was during final set-up when the wind was blowing things around.

Our country theme highlighted the immigrant nature of our country (in Obama's inauguration speech he called it our "patchwork heritage) and how we are strengthened by people coming from all over the world to our shores.
Our Obama figure welcoming visitors to our booth was a big hit, and he got his picture taken a lot during the evening.

During Small World, our booth was very busy, outside....

and inside, and our booth workers were kept hopping.

Our chicken barbeque sandwiches topped with cole slaw were a big hit.

After Small World visitors (about 3500 of them) ate and drank themselves silly, everyone was invited to the seats in front of the stage for the entertainment part of the evening. Our USA dance group (pictured here at the dress rehearsal) did a rousing tap number to "I Believe."

But I dressed as a hippie and sang with the UK performance group -- I sing with many of them regularly for fun.

We did some Beatles numbers and looked thoroughly retro.

It was a long day, but lots of fun and I made some good memories and contributed to fundraising for a lot of worthy causes. That's a good thing.