How to party like a Kenyan!

After the monumental low that preceded the pitching document deadline came the post-deadline party, which I attended in a state of wild sleep deprivation and spent a good deal of the night wondering if I was drunk or just manically tired. Katie and I were warmly welcomed back to the group of volunteers, who of course hadn't seen us in a long while (4 days is ages in that kind of close community!) It was held in a 3-sided marquee in a field, with a food buffet at one end and a DJ at the other. Tequila kicked the night off.

At about 7pm I found Melissa on the floor, amongst the bags, behind the plastic chairs, saying that she was drunk. I hadn't started drinking at this stage, so I wasn't in danger of spilling anything at all by lying down next to her, having a hug, and generally ensuring that she wasn't the only one sprawled on the floor. Tim was very quickly out of his mind, asked Amy if she wanted a hug and then bit her, which she thought was hilarious and dined out on the story for the rest of the evening, made better by the fact that her audience kept forgetting and needed to be told again. The tent was soon full of dancers. Hamish was struggling to stay upright, but still managed to dance by holding on to a tent pole.  I resolved to write a formal letter of appreciation to the DJ. Catherine, always dignified, was currently experiencing drunkenness for the first time; maintaining a meek countenance like no one else alive, she danced by herself in a corner, thereby saying nothing silly to anyone. Meanwhile, it had started to rain outside, heavily, in the way that I'd only ever seen in Kenya. The locals stayed sensibly under the tent shelter, but the volunteers (including several Kenyan ones) came out to dance in the rain. It's a wonderful sensation. It also makes you feel about 1.5x more drunk than you really are. A little like reality has been partly suspended and you're in a music video. I was soon soaked through and I didn't care.

I found Kenyan dancing a bit tough, but it was OK because so did my friend Jane and she is the benchmark for dance floor morality as far I am concerned. The reason that such a benchmark was needed, was that in UK terms, Kenyan dancing is incredibly sexual. If a Kenyan friend came to visit me at home, I couldn't take them to a night club because their moves would almost certainly be mistaken for premature foreplay. One of my Kenyan friends helpfully explained the etiquette: "you just have to give them a hard-on Clare, and then leave them". This very helpful piece of advice certainly explained why so many of the men were running round with erections, but it didn't make dancing with them much easier. I resolved that as long as I was well out of my comfort zone I was probably doing it right, but problematically this benchmark didn't stay steady and the more vodka I drank, the more challenging dance moves I was required to undertake to ensure that I was always being stretched in a risque direction. While Kenyans don't attribute any significance to dance floor antics and don't see it as particularly sexual, I eventually had to extricate myself from what I felt was becoming a threesome, rather than a dance, and went off in pursuit of more vodka.

Eventually it was time to leave. At least one of the party had to be carried out of the gate, because he was sound asleep, despite the very loud music. As I stepped out into the road, I was startled to find my friend Helen, squatting down and relieving herself in a pothole. At exactly the same time our taxi arrived. Helen hared past me with the speed of a Kenyan sprinter (perhaps not coincidentally) and left a group of us to laugh uncontrollably in her wake. When we got into the taxi, it was Catherine's turn, "I need a wee". This state of affairs got more urgent until we arrived at my house and I invited her into our garden to use our hole-in-the-ground, she stepped out of the taxi behind me but the next thing I heard was "MATT DON'T LOOK!" Never before or since have I heard her sound so fierce. Clearly Helen wasn't the only one to water the road that evening.

According to her roommate, Catherine was out like a lamp that evening but was so excited by her drunken dreams that her roommate was woken hourly to be told about them.

I wish there was a moral to this story, or something intelligent to conclude with, but really this is just an important progression in the story: We'd had a tough time and we needed a break.