The HUGE party that wasn't

With a couple of weeks to go to our departure my host dad announced that he would hold a party in our honour, for all the volunteers and their host parents to say goodbye to us all.

As the time drew nearer his plans got ever more elaborate and I greatly doubted them. Apparently there was to be a priest to bless our air travel and a local council member. All of this in our dusty  back yard, I couldn’t imagine it.

On the day itself I turned up at 5pm and was absolutely amazed to find that there were a couple of hundred people in a marquee in my back yard. Where had they all come from?! I only live in a little village! They were all sat patiently on white plastic chairs, presumably awaiting my arrival. I hurried across the ‘stage’ in order to get to my bedroom door and put my bags down. Apparently everyone else had been told that the party would start at 2pm and so by their reckoning I was quite late, but not as late as my fellow volunteers, most of whom hadn’t arrived yet. No sooner had this message been conveyed than it started to rain. Heavily. Before I knew it ‘the party that wasn’t’ became ‘the party that was, in my bedroom’ as 100s of people scrambled to find somewhere to shelter – the marquee wouldn’t take all of them.

It was a bit awkward, hosting so many unknown people our bedroom, slightly wondering if anything would get stolen and cooking alive with the heat of so many bodies in so little space.

After about an hour of this the rain subsided, it was decided that there would be no more party, blessings, speeches, presents or dancing, just food. I helped to distribute this in a generally chaotic way (not chaotic due to my presence you understand, it just was). My host sister’s bedroom had been converted into a kitchen and it was like a Mary Poppins’ larder – I had no idea what we had available, but the food kept coming and I kept putting it on plates (my host dad was absolutely delighted that HIS white person would lower herself to the standard of a woman by helping to serve). When the plates ran out we reused those from people who had finished eating. It was a feast by anyone’s reckoning.

Once fed, the crowd melted away.

It was humbling to think that they would wait 5 hours and brave a rainstorm all for a free dinner.