Move over Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul take a back seat , It's Kgosi and Kopo time

We were invited to be the guest judges at the Miss Junior Shelter beauty pageant last Saturday. At first, I was a little wary as to what message it was giving the girls, but it really was fine. You could see their confidence grow by leaps and bounds as things proceeded and they all had a great time. About 100 parents and friends attended in the audience.

The program was to start at 10 AM. We were told to arrive at 8 AM, but knowing Botswana, we thought that 9 AM was more reasonable. We finally got started at 10 minutes to noon.
Aaah the joys of Botswana time. The third judge was a Motswana sound engineer by the name of Chandi, who played bass guitar in a band ---nice guy and great dreads. We drew up categories on which to judge--smile, posture, walk, outfit, hair, poise, and shoes-- and rated each contestant in each category on a 1-10 scale.

THE GIRLS PARADED

They made up their own stage names such as Natasha, Latoy, Curve, Girly, Belly and Leon. (I never quite understood the last two) and strutted their stuff. (Go to the website to view the movies)




THE BOYS ENTERTAINED



THE JUDGES DELIBERATED

We compared our results and very scientifically tallied up the points..




The competition was very close and after the final evening gown competition,
three finalists were chosen--Leon, Kelly and Curve.

Each girl got a prize--for Outstanding hair, outfit, walk etc. The prizes were a single wrapped dinner plate! (Don't ask me--I just showed up to judge. I think the prize budget was lean)

In the end, cute-as-a-button Leon was thrilled to come in third, Kelly was disappointed not to win and Curve was chosen as Miss Junior Shelter. She promptly was overcome with emotion to the point that she had to go off stage to compose herself before coming back to receive her sash and prizes including an electric cooking pot.







It was a totally memorable and probably never-to-be-repeated experience for us.

Kgosi and Kopo