Karibu Nshuti: Paddy's Day Ball

Me & D

So was it a night to remember?

Indeed it was! What a night.

It didn't exactly start as I'd envisaged: me in a cute dress, softly lit by the candles in my living room; D in a dark suit jacket wearing my white tie...

No, not quite like that.

Not sure quite how men do it, to be honest. I gave him the tie a couple of nights before so that he could find a shirt to match. He brings the tie back in a brown paper bag. He has ripped it, stained it, and now it is crinkled beyond any form of recognition. My one and only, beautiful eBay tie. I tried to steam it over the kettle, but no joy.

He's also wearing his old shirt that hasn't been washed in a week and smells terrible. I force him to go take a shower and panic-called Brad to ask him to bring a couple of spares to the do. Only, Brad is about seven foot and rather well built - D is distinctly shorter and extremely slim.

The next issue was entirely my fault. I should have thought to book a taxi during the day. I forgot I'm living in the black hole of nowhere, not Kisimenti anymore. Still, I assumed that if we waited at the end of the road a taxi would eventually go by.

How wrong I was. In very 'girlie' (as someone later referred to them) high heeled shoes, we start negotiating our way down the pitch-black, first mud, then cobbled road. Remember my lacerated foot? Well, by some miracle of science, walking was rendered possible in high heels by the fact you only ever put your weight on the front or back of the foot, leaving the bridge unimposed upon. Whereas, in flat shoes or flip-flops, I hobble like a lame horse, in high heels I can walk - and even dance - like a perfectly normal individual, provided I'm not stumbling over cobbles.

As with everything, there is a price to be paid: blisters. I'd spent the week steaming my shoes over a pot of boiling water in the kitchen and it made a phenomenal difference. But they're still heels. By the time we'd made it 15 minutes down the road (getting on and then off a static bus that went nowhere) to the taxi rank, I'd used up my 'new shoe time allowance' and had rather nasty blisters forming. Luckily, I had Compede second-skin thingies with me. I slapped them on but the damage had already been done.

Eventually, we got on the move and I phoned Brad to say we were on our way. "Oh, why didn't you say, we could have given you a lift!" - AAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!

Aaaanyway. Pulled up: people in tuxedos and women in very beautiful dresses already parading around. Made our way inside and up the stairs to the heaving mass of bodies that were the 'Guinness & Champage Reception'. There was only Guinness left by the time we got there, so D had one of those and I went for a Fanta Citron as I was dehydrated from all the leg-work.

Penny from Jeff's party arrived soon after, and tons of faces including my Country Director and Programme Manager. It was quite packed, so a few of us headed out to the balcony to sup our drinks and babble for a bit.

Me & Penny

Then it was time for food. Absolutely mouth-watering. Mélange, obviously, but of a standard rarely seen: chicken, lamb, and fish casseroles and curries, rice, fried chapatti, caramelised plantain (one of the best foods in the world!), beans, chickpea curry, salad and... champ. The first Serena Hotel in the world to serve traditional Irish champ, as taught by Cathryn.

Stuffed ourselves silly and went back for desert: chocolate mouse, fruit tart, black forest gateaux, blemonge, fruit cake...

D went to the loo and I saved him half my desert plate until Hirut called me outside. The guy at the door (unobservant 'security') had stopped D coming back in. You had to go downstairs to get to the toilets and although Serena Hotel had trained their security to notice people coming in (well, not everyone, obviously), they had forgotten to train them to watch which guests went out. I know they didn't stop muzungus as quite a few friends turned up later for dancing without having tickets.

So, that was a bit unpleasant. You could say 'he was only doing his job,' but if he was doing his job well he should have seen the guy go out. To add insult to injury, when we got back to the table, some quick-start waiter sod had nicked the bloody desert plate!

Anyway.

During the meal there was a slightly bluegrass band playing. I half expected them to wheel out a banjo. It was bit strange, but then it moved on to the raffle. FRW 3.5mil raised for child headed households, which was brilliant. Lots of prizes donated by places like Serena, MTN and Akagera Aviation. There was much laughter at our table when MTN's prizes were announced: Nokia phones, brand new Blackberries - "Yeah," the guy next to us said, "that'd be great - a brand new phone you can't call anyone on!" Which was a quip at how appalling MTN's service has been of late.

The only thing was that the guy who went up to collect his prize didn't half go on a bit. He said 'I would like to thank you all' more than five times throughout his speech and, after every potential speech-ending pause, he suddenly went off on another 'and I must thank...' We were all just clinging to the arms of our seats the longer it went on because he was the very last obstacle between us and the real Irish band they'd flown out from Galway: Riff Raff, headed by a guy with the coolest name in the world: John James Joyce.

When, eventually, the guy finally ran out of wind, on came the band! 400 people made an instant mass-migration to the dance floor and didn't stop for three hours solid, no break!

I don't think I've danced as hard and fast in all my life. As Ruairí said: 'They couldn't have gone wrong really, they're playing to a whole group of people who haven't heard decent live music in a very long time.' All the old classics: Sweet Home Alabama, Whiskey in the Jar, a jazzed-up version of Fields of Athenry, all the really good stuff that had us moving before they raised the parking rate.

It was AWESOME. For the band alone it was more than worth going (although the food and the company were also high on the list).

When I finally stumbled out for air and the toilet, I made the mistake of attempting the Serena Hotel bar... biiig mistake.

"Bottle of water please."

"What?"

"Water. Amazi. How much?"

"Amazi? One thousand five."

Handed over 5,000 (those pretty pink notes).

Got a glass of Mutzig.

"Uh, excuse me... no. Water."

It took five waiters, including the bar manager, fifteen minutes of shouting at each other and me, to figure out what I was asking for and how to deal with the change.

One girl took the order, gave it to one guy writing receipts, who gave it to a guy who passed it to the guy at the till who told another guy what to open and then passed the change back via another person whilst someone else supposedly gave you your drink. It was a mess. Happened the whole night long. Serena is supposed to be the swankiest hotel in Kigali! Nice that the service isn't any different to any other bar you'd go to.

Eventually, after threatening to just take back my 5,000, someone finally managed to get the water and the change: 3,000 - water costs more than beer here!!

Armed with that, I went back for more dancing until I was so pooped I had to flop down and chat to people. After the Irish band had finished, a DJ played more cheezy classics to which myself, Amanda (Programme Manager), Nidhi, Mike (Country Director, whose partner has just given birth to twins, so a lot of 'final freedom' to dance out of his system) and another vol, Tina, were making up the core final footloose-and-fancy-freers.

D and I finally stumbled our way home around half-two in the morning. It had been a most wonderful night. The music was outstanding. We tried to beg the Irish Committee to keep Riff Raff and lock them in a little cupboard somewhere, so that we could wheel them out now and then.

I felt extremely satisfied by the whole event and had a small pack of complimentary Rwandan coffee to take home for the morning. It was a great welcome for the new Irish Ambassador, Kevin Kelly.

D stayed over and we had an extremely laaazy morning - and that coffee - and totally slobbed out.

Final Word on the Matter

*** Just a little addendum: thanks to Ruairí for the photographs and (I assume) permission to publish them ;) And thanks also to MTN for their snail-on-valium service, which rendered the compilation of this post somewhere in the region of four hours long... cheers, without you I may just have had to find myself a life...***