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!