the 80s come to kigali

as is by now probably quite clear to most of you the main pasttime for the muzungu community in kigali is hanging out at each other's houses for want of any viable alternatives (with 3 clubs and a handful of restaurants as your only options for entertainment you find yourselves going round in circles pretty quickly). these house parties usually all develop in the same way too - you get there, you have a few beers, chat to people; then you eventually get dancing (if there's music) and then you leave; either you go home or you carry on to one of the clubs - depending on who you're with and how you're feeling. the bottom line is - it's always the same - same pattern, same people, different house.

because I like to be different I decided that we should import the concept of fancy dress parties to rwanda. in the uk it got to a point where if I had to go to yet another fancy dress party I would have... but after quite some time without one you kind of start missing them a bit ;-)) so - we settled for the 80s - hideous outfits and great music to sing and dance along to. the idea appealed to most people I told about it and a week before the actual party we all went to the second hand clothes market together to buy outfits - it was hillarious! imagine 10 muzungus hitting the second hand clothes market (i.e. the place where you find the stuff that in europe gets dumped in the clothes bank - and I can tell you; there's some pretty outrageous stuff to be found there!!) trying to find outrageous 80s clothing. it didn't take long for the people selling stuff to twig what we were looking for and as a result we had people coming up to us with suggestions... some spot on, others not so much. but in the end we all found something brightly coloured involving spandex and shinyness and left the market full of anticipation for the following saturday.

come saturday evening we were getting ready and I had just put on my madonna like a virgin dress on (with an outrageous cleavage and a diamond-zip down the front) and no five minutes after I'd put it on the zip broke... sh**t! so I started sowing it back together, hoping it would last for the night. then the girls turned up and we started working on the make-up and the hair. I had forgotten how awful hair spray is... we had a lot of fun doing each other's hair up turning round going - is this 80s? mmmh - not sure - but it sure looks hideous! I ended up looking like a cross between madonna and a punk.

the party was great - everyone knew the music; at least most of it (with these spanish people you can never avoid having a few spanish classics on the jukebox - and of course only a spanish person can know these...) and we danced the night away. there were not as many people as at the last party but that was nice - it was a lot less crowded and also a lot less messy the next day!

que viva espana y jambo kenya

Well – time flies and I somehow never get round to writing up my life as I go along… almost a month ago now the Spanish made it into the final of the euro 08; and I hang out with a load of Spanish people… so just imagine the rest.

The final happened to be the night before we were setting off to mombasa for one week on the white beaches of the Indian ocean. We all pitched up at the Italian restaurant – a group of about 20 people and a Spanish flag. Everyone had Spanish flags painted on their faces or hands and as is the case in big groups there was a lot of excitement. The owner of the restaurant gave us a big drum and throughout the game someone was in charge of banging the drum in intervals. the rest is history; spain won against germany and that was a cause for celebration. The restaurant offered spumante to all of us and so we all toasted to spain’s first victory in a European cup in 44 years. Of course people weren’t going to go home now – bonus for us as we had to kill time until 3am before going to the airport and catching our flight ;-)) so we all went to the kbc where we danced with the Spanish flag and caused a whirl amongst the other guests. Around 2.30 we left – some of the Spanish people were still going despite having to get into work for 7 the next day – to go home, have a quick shower and get our bags to shoot off to the airport. We took the Spanish flag with us with the idea of doing an Amelie-like thing whereby we would take pictures of the flag in front of landmarks; well, we did one in front of the good bye poster at the airport.

We arrived at the airport at around 3.30 – still drunk but sobering up slowly with a tiredness that creeps into your bones from deep down – the come down from weeks of intense socialising and never catching up with proper sleep – the tiredness that comes at the prospect of a week without commitments, time or connection to the rest of the world.

We boarded the tiny plane that was taking us to Nairobi from where we would catch the flight to mombasa. And by the time the plane had taken off I was feeling pretty rough. Luckily the served us breakfast – and it was perfect: some bread, fruit salad and a yoghurt. We devoured it and then leant back to relax and catch a power nap as the flight attendant announces over the loudspeaker to not eat the yoghurt, that it had gone off last year in December. Montse and I looked at each other cracking up – we’d already eaten the yoghurt and it had tasted fine. Oh well – why not arrive with a rotten stomach in Kenya? But usually if yoghurt has gone off you will know anyways so we weren’t too worried. About three minutes later the same attendant announced that it was safe to eat the yoghurt; that she’d misread the best before end date – it read 12 07 – which of course refers to the day and month, rather than month and year… the yoghurt that lasts over a year must first be invented – but neither of us had even realised this either – dooh!

by the time we touched down in kenya we were even more tired but also excited about the prospect of lying on a beach in a few hours time - little did we know!
we made our way to the immigration where we had to fill in the visa application form and the landing card and then we waited in line - and we waited - and waited - and waited... finally it was our turn - we got the visa and went down to the luggage belts. the clock read 8.15 (our flight was supposed to leave nairobi at 8.30) - so montse ran over to the kenya desk whilst I waited (again) for the bags this time - the screen told me that our bags were due to come out on belt 3; nothing. so I started walking around checking out the other belts and the endless piles of luggage - eventually I found them going round in circles on belt 1 ;-)) it is coming - you just don't know where!

of course we had missed our flight but the lady at the ticketing office had told montse that we were booked for the 11 o'clock flight - oh well - that's soon enough and will still get us to the beach for the afternoon. so we went to check in only to be told that we were on stand-by for that flight with very small chances of actually getting on it as it was overbooked and a small plane... mmmh - ok - so we went and sat in a corner and, guess what? yes - we waited. it's all about the patience (seems to be the one lesson life is teaching me here - big time!)
people watching was amusing - you had the indian families, the horrendously rich families that looked middle eastern, you have the kenyans, then the south african sports team, backpacker tourists from europe, elderly british people where I wondered whether they used to live in kenya and were now back to see the country or whether they still lived here - in short - all sorts and us falling asleep on our bags.

well - to cut a long story short, all flights that day were overbooked and our chances to get on one of them not very good; but thanks to our tired faces and a lot of pleading and begging we finally got tickets for the 5.30 flight to mombasa. so we checked our bags in and went straight to the business class departure lounge (a room crammed with these big wannabe-pompous sofas and armchairs that they love so much here, tables with hideous chairs, a fridge, a water dispenser and - oh yes - a telly) - I stretched out on the sofa and dozed off watching some random programme on the tv - it was great!

eventually it was finally time to get on the plane and we flew down to mombasa. on arrival we got a taxi who was supposed to take us to the centre and to a hotel (by that time it was too late to go straight to the beach - and we were too tired). half way into the city the taxi stutters to a halt - the clutch had died... so - we were - oh yes - stranded and waiting again! the next car arrived and I said to him 'does your clutch work?' - he said 'I don't have one - it's an automatic' - ace! so, after a night of celebration and a day of waiting in airports we finally arrived in mombasa.

accordingly we did nothing all week other than hang out on some stunning beaches, sleeping as much as our bodies wanted to, reading books and eating seafood - we actually manged to eat seafood for every meal (except breakfast) for one entire week - yummy!

Adios amigos!

well – part of living my life is having to say good bye to people on a regular basis and after 4 months time had come for the first one of these good byes. we have had 4 months of fun and games, of getting to know and love each other and i really feel like i have found a family away from home in my friends. but i also know that with true friends good byes are never forever (and in this particular case they are all coming back, some sooner, some a bit later – but they’re coming back and i’ll still be here)

anyway – on saturday (now about 3 weeks ago - ghosh how time flies!) it was carlos’ birthday and he invited a load of people to his birthday/leaving party. turns out they could not hold it at their flat due to the landlady making a fuss and the last party having kept everyone up for hours; i offered our house. and as we’re planning a 1980s fancy dress party soon it was quite a good opportunity to do a trial run. so on saturday night from about 10 onwards people started turning up – more and more people came and at one point i looked out on the terrace and it was packed; people were sat on the stairs going down into the garden; people were clustered around the drinks table, in the kitchen, out the front of the house – loads of people everywhere. everyone seemed to be having fun; i certainly did!

one of the highlights of the evening was when we gave carlos his birthday presents: christine and i had got him an ‘antique’ (we couldn’t find the made in china sign, but it must be somewhere ;-)) knife that came in a leather sheaf decorated with shells and stuff. he also got a warrior statue (which i really liked) and the ultimate present was the spear and the shield – and he was certainly very pleased with it. a fully equipped warrior we continued the party until we got to another highlight: the original spanish male wifebeater raffle…

carlitos and his presents

i might need to give you a little background on this one – carlos loves wearing wifebeater shirts (these white under-shirts usually worn by fat sweaty alcoholics in action films) and he has become somewhat famous for it. so when it came to his leaving do he decided to give it to the community but as you can’t split a shirt a hundred ways and he couldn’t decide who to give it to he decided to do a raffle. so throughout the night people picked raffle tickets and eventually carlos picked the winning ticket – number 44 – no response (to be fair there were so many people it was not easy to get to the front quickly). so he proceeded to pick another ticket just as the guy with the winning number appeared – but then he really wanted to leave his wifebeater to a woman and decided the guy had foregone his chance. kerry ended up winning the shirt which carlos tore off his body and then handed over to her – what a sight!

the other highlight of the evening was the handing out of diplomas to a bunch of us by tifas and carlos. they had been working as teachers for radars and computer systems and so we all received diplomas for the successful completion of the training in radars and computers for integrated defense systems; the diploma is now hanging on my wall ;-))

the diplomands

well - and as usual the party continued into the small hours of the morning, involving a lot of dancing and having fun. it was great to have a party at home - at the end you get to just push open the door to your room and collapse in bed whilst everyone else has to find their way home... the downside is that the place was a MESS the next day and my phyiscal and mental states were not exactly favourable to cleaning up... but here we go - play hard, work hard!