Dear Nigerians, Say No To Combo Vendors

Dear Nigerians, please gather around and let’s discuss. Like most of you, I have attended a lot of parties, and some of them have been great, while the others have left me scratching my head. One of the most “memorable” parties I attended was years ago, and it was a child’s party. I actually do not remember who the child was, how old the child was turning, or who the parents even were. All I remember is that I laughed till my stomach hurt.

See, what had happened was, the hosts hired one man to play multiple roles. He was a combo vendor. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, nothing, as long as one role does not interfere with the other. For example, your caterer can sometimes be the same person providing the “sharing food” service at the event. And this would be perfectly fine because the caterer knows his/her food best AND sharing the food at the party does not interfere with cooking the food. I would hope that the food is already done cooking by this time.

Back to the party: the combo vendor played three roles. He was the MC, the clown (to entertain the children), and the DJ. Picture it for two seconds. So what ended up happening was that he was dressed as a clown – and a very badly dressed clown, by the way – and he had to stand in front of the children to entertain them (he wasn’t very good at this either), and he’d have to run from his clown post to his DJ post, which was not close by. And then, he’d have to leave the DJ post to go and do the general MC job.

So, let’s say he’s doing his DJ job first. He would stand there and play some songs, which were not even current.  Then he would stop the music completely to go do his clown job. So there would be at least two minutes of no music while we waited for him to transport himself to his second station. While there, he would entertain them [poorly] and then say he’s going to play some music. At this point, he would have to run back to his DJ station again. And if he needed to MC in the middle of DJing, he would then stop the music and run off to his microphone stand. It was a mess. But it was entertaining to me. I sat there and laughed so hard.

The man was a prime example of what it means to be the Jack of all trades and master of none. Not only was he not a master of any, but he was also really, really bad at them. If I had seen him somewhere dressed the way he was, I would have thought he was rehearsing for the role of a mad man in a Nollywood movie.

I am now humorously reminded of a wedding I attended where the photographer was also the videographer, and he did not have an assistant. The result was badly taken pictures and a very shaky video. Video was shaky because he was dancing to the good music while doing the video. And the pictures were bad because he was sometimes forgetting that he was even supposed to take pictures.

I understand that it saves the host some money to hire a combo vendor, but you should not do that at the detriment of your event. And for the vendors out there, please stop charging people money for work you cannot do. If you are great at multi-tasking three roles at an event, then by all means, you should do so. But if not, refer a friend.

Not to worry anyway, I won’t leave you stranded. If you need an MC/host for your event, then I am your girl! I honestly did not write this post to advertise my services, but I will shamelessly plug my business in because why shall I shy? Bills need to paid and destinies need to be stepped into. Seriously though, if you need an MC/host for your event – and I can only play one role at this event – then hire me. Contact is below, and I can travel.

P.S. I really did not write this post to advertise!  But it’d be weird if I did not try to help my economy.

P.P.S. It’s my grandma’s birthday today! Happy birthday, my personal Ijele Nwanyi!