THERES A MZUNGU IN DA HOUSE-MY NIGHT OUT WITH THE BOYS

So I have been here nearly 2 months now and haven’t seen any Nairobi nightlife yet.  Laura and I have plans to go and have a few drinks, but time is just the problem there and I seem to be saying it a lot, but once I get back from Ethiopia; that will be high on our list.  There is a time and a place and GG rang me on Friday and said that he would come to my place tomorrow, pick me up and then we were going to head out with a few of his friends and witness first hand some Nairobi nightlife.  I really liked the thought of it as I could get out and get to see some of this talked about recreation. 

GG arrived at 6pm and after 2 beers and a few hours of chatter, we headed into the city to pick up one of his friends Norbert.  On the way I told GG I better eat otherwise it could get real nasty real quick.  So we stopped at a petrol station and while GG filled up, I went into the chicken burger place and ordered a burger and chips to take away and munch on the road.  They say eating is cheating, but was back when I was 22-times have changed and you have to do as much as you can to minimise the impact and size of the hangover the next day.  I think they call it OLD AGE.  

So with Norbert in the car we drove for about 10 minutes through the city and we got right to the entrance to Wilson Airport, which is the hub for all the domestic flights in Kenya, to turn just before the airport security gates to find around 4 buildings all lined up together and through the windows had TV screens showing all the soccer matches in play.  We had to have our car security checked, as anywhere that you want to park in Nairobi, with a security guard with a mirror checking under the car and another one checking the boot and opening the back door to look in the car as well.  The carpark was full with a capital F.  We did a lap, found ourselves back outside the security gate again, we were waved through this time for our second lap and scored a park right out the front door as a car pulled out-perfect!  It really was a sign that we were going to have a great night.

There was a small BBQ at the front door that was cooking sausages, it smelt divine and I just hoped that they would still be there when we left.  The boys were frisked by a male security guard and I had my bag inspected by female security and then we were in the bar.  I would call it more a bar than a nightclub and besides the sea of black faces you could have been in a pub back in Australia.  There was ‘western’ tunes playing, TV’s through the whole joint with sport, and the place was PACKED.  Really it was so busy.  We were lucky there was a table (wine barrel) of 4 near the bar that had 3 spare seats after GG had inquired, and within minutes of arriving we had somewhere to sit, which was great as the place was that busy that you did get bumped a lot with passing people.  The great thing with most Kenyan bar/restaurants is that they offer table service, which is magic.  None of this having to wait at the bar to get drinks and the antagonism of someone getting served before you, out of turn and then the experience of getting the drinks back to your seats in one piece.  Yes this table service was great, but it was to bite us on the bottom by the end of the night and we did learn a valuable lesson-which I will explain in detail later.

GG was excited to see the band that was going to play tonight.  I didn’t get their name, but just before they took the stage-the singer took a walk around the joint to get a feel of the audience and stopped to say hello and give us all a ‘brother’ hand shake.  The brother hand shake reminds me a lot of the Ethiopian handshake-in that it is quite distinctive and just like you see on the TV shows.  None of this boring handshake like a mzungu, they do the hand clap, fist click, finger grip kind of thing and I just hope that I don’t embarrass myself every time that I do it as it seems I always seem to go in for an extra finger grip than expected.  It’s like the Europeans when you meet them and they do the cheek kisses, you never know if they are a single cheek kiss each side or if they go for the third kiss as you pull away-it can be awkward and I just need to work on my ‘brother’ hand shake.     

So we were at a club called Reminisce.  It is renowned as probably the best joint to dance to Mugiithi, a popular Kikuyu dance whose dancing style requires people to rally behind the vocalist in a queue each holding the waist of the person ahead and occasionally making the locomotives sound and thus its name Mugiithi meaning train.  I didn’t see any of that as the night wore on but GG did tell me about it and it would be cool to see.  So with our seats secured and a beer in hand the band started just after 10pm.  When I say band I mean a 2 piece that included a drummer that also sang vocals and the singer played a guitar and they were amazing.  85% of their songs were in a few different languages thrown in with a few English songs.  The guys were good enough to explain what some of the songs meant and at the start of the night; I had been warned that the lyrics of some of the songs could be quite graphic and ‘naughty’.  It wouldn’t have worried me anyway, but when it was not sung in English I wasn’t to know from the words, but I could always tell when he did let off the expletives due to the crowds response with whistles and laughing.  I did learn 3 different words for penis and a few others which was hilarious that my Swahili was coming along with ‘naughty’ words that I would never use again!    

The band played for 3 hours-before they stopped for their break!  THREE HOURS!  I cannot see a western band playing for that long, but in saying that the crowd didn’t stop dancing the whole time either.  The dance floor was always packed and as this was my first ‘nightlife’ experience I am not sure if it is always like this, but the pulse of the people on the floor was magic.  They don’t flail their arms and kick out there feet like us crazy mzungu’s do.  There was a steady movement of rolling shoulders, hands out front moving to the beat with smiles on their faces and it in turn made me smile.  So far I have to say that Nairobi's nightlife is by any standard absolutely fabulous.  I can see that the Nairobians love to party! I was the only white person in the whole place, which was actually cool-I felt like I knew a secret that no other mzungu knew about.  I got a few stares from passer-by’s but for the whole night I felt comfortable and everyone around me accepted me without making me fell like what I actually was which was a fish out of water.  Don’t get me wrong apparently mzungu’s do come here, but just tonight there weren’t any, oh except at around 1am we did see another mzungu in da house, but we only saw him once and that was it.  I hadn’t drunk enough, but if I did wonder what sort of reaction I would get if I had just got up and rocked it on the dance floor?  How funny would that be for me to bust some mzungu moves.  Yeah, it would be funny, but I don’t think I would ever have the guts to do it and after seeing the Nairobians rock their moves all night, not known for my great dancing, I actually think there would be bucklies of getting me out there-EVER.

Two more of GG friends arrived during the night.  Tony arrived an hour or so after us and then Dan came straight from work and got there about 11pm.  It was all perfect timing as the 4 people who we were sharing our table with left, and we were able to move into better seats to view the band and the dance floor and now had seats for Dan and Tony.  Throughout the night we were kept hydrated with beers from the same waiter and I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my watch and it was 2.30am.  We had a lady join us later in the night; she pulled up a chair, shook our hands and then sat with us till around 2am.  She didn’t talk to us, didn’t have any inclination to talk to us and then it dawned on us (and Norbert had been warned) that she was a ‘lady of the night’ looking for business and at 3.30am she found a ‘job’ and they headed out a side door.  I asked how much do they make here and I was told that some-one of her calibre in a place like this would probably get 2000KSH which is equivalent of 23AUD.  The reality of life is always present.  There were girls dressed in chef clothes that would walk around the crowd all night with a plate that had the cooked sausages on it, that I could see, that you could buy from them.  The food was covered in cling wrap and with serviettes in hand what a great idea.  You could literally not have to leave your seat all night with drinks and food bought to you if you wanted, but as we were there for 6 hours-nature would make you move eventually.          

I can’t describe enough just how the place rocked.  When a popular song came on (like The Gambler to Aussies) people would just sing, like 90% of the bar would all be singing, still rolling and throbbing with the music and it was funny that the English songs that got played included Old McDonald had a Farm, When the Saints go Marching In and they sung the Swahili version of Amazing Grace, Kenyan kids songs and also a lot of Kenyan gospel songs that also got a lot of participation.  They just didn’t stop grooving ALL night and I LOVED it.  GG and Dan would bust a move when a song came on that they liked and as Dan is a professional dancer, he was just amazing to watch and GG and Norbert would just shake their heads as Dan ‘shook what his mamma gave him’ (one of our favourite sayings!)  We, well I, wet to take some photos later in the evening and I had shot off 2 when security came over and said that people were complaining that they didn’t want to be in the background of my photos.  Norbert went onto explain that a lot of married Kenyans also have girlfriends and people wouldn’t want to get caught out cavorting in the back of a mzungu’s photo.        

I had to go to the toilets while I was there and I think I am starting to get a ‘toilet phobia’.  So what does that mean?  Well without giving too much detail, I am quite regular with my toiletry habits which is great when you are travelling-I am lucky in regards to that.  So I find if I have to I can go the whole day without having to visit a toilet if I don’t deem that any are not good enough.  When I did my African overland tour in 2011, we stopped every 2-3 hours for toilet breaks African style.  Which entailed stopping where there were enough bushes and the ladies peeled to the left of the truck and the men to the right and you just dropped your duds and did your business.  I am not that type of person and I would wait till we got to camp in the evening to use a ‘toilet’ to do my business.  The same when we wild camped in Africa and a few stops in South America-I would wait till the following day for me to do my business than do it in the bushes where I could be spotted by a local or heavens forbid another tourist or to get bitten on my bottom by some random insect or worse have a run in with a wild animal.  No thanks, I will wait till I get to facilities and even then that would not guarantee that I would go.  I would ask the girls what the toilets were like and if they scrunched up their noses, I would wait and of the reply was not too bad then I would go.  So now that I find myself in Africa long term, I am going to just have to get used to bad quality toilets, and when I have to go, then I really am going to have to go.  I was pleasantly surprised that the toilets here were okay.  There weren’t any toilet seats, which is no big deal and there was no toilet paper in the cubicles but they had toilet paper available near the basins that you just had to grab before you went in.  I always carry a small supply of napkins/tissues now everywhere I go (can’t take the traveller out of me) but was happy that I didn’t need to use my supply tonight.  There was a ‘toilet’ lady and I think that this is probably why they were actually not too bad.  I would say they were in the same state you would find an Aussie bar on a night out.  Yes, I think I have toilet-phobia, but I am working on it.        

The band came back on at 3am and they swapped around, the drummer was now on guitar and singing and the other singer was now on the drums and backup vocals.  There was still energy in the bar-we were starting to wain a little and at 4am we asked for the final bill that we had been adding beers to all night.  There was a chitty on the table that apparently the waiter had been updating all night, but we only saw it sitting there on the second last round of the night and when you looked at it, it looked like all the beers had been added on at the same time-like it was all done on hock and not after each round as you would expect.  So we were given the bill back and after counting all the beers on there, the waiter reckons that we had consumed 45 beers.  45!!!!  And that was just between 5 people!  To start with there was only GG, Norbert and I for the first 3 beers and then Tony and Dan joined us later and it was funny that Norbert had made a comment that he drinks 3 beers on the trot and then cruises for a while, so we knew we’d had 3 when Tony arrived and then Dan said he had only drunk 4 while he was there.  Our calculation came to 29 beers and then we added on another round for good measure and told the waiter that we would pay for 34 beers.  I think also to seal the deal; we were too sober to have consumed what they say, which was an additional 11 beers.  Dan and Norbert went into battle with the waiter and in the end I asked to see the supervisor and after that there really wasn’t too much of a fight and we paid for the 34 beers and left a tip (which Norbert said I shouldn’t) as we think it was just because I was a mzungu that they tried to overcharge us and make some money.  GG and Norbert go there all the time and never have a problem with the bill, so I am the only different factor from their other visits and another classic example of being a mzungu in this country.  I wasn’t  mad, but Dan and Norbert were really upset that they tried to rip us off because of me-but it all worked out and our lesson learned was that we keep track of our drinks next time rather than relying on the word of a dishonest waiter.   

We walked to the car and I saw that Dan was at the BBQ buying something and I forgot about the sausages that we had smelt on our way in over 6 hours before.  I wanted one-it was the closest thing I was going to get to a ‘Harry’s’ or a kebab that you normally get on your way home from a night out.  They call them ‘smokies’ and it was more like a cabana type sausage and it was flippin delicious that we all had to have another one.  They give it to you directly off the BBQ plate wrapped in a serviette and for the cost of 70KSH (.82c) if it wasn’t for us getting straight into the car and driving off I would have got a 3^rd one. Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom……..  We briefly stopped in at one more club for one more drink, as it wasn’t far from where we were and also on the way home and after dropping Norbert into the city to catch his matatu home WE arrived home at 5.15am.  GG and Dan stayed the night/morning were my very first guests at the Bernie Residences.  On our way home we did get stopped by the police, but they were asking for a lift down the road, which we had space for the 2 of them, so they jumped in the back, riffles and all and when we had dropped them and driven off, GG said that they were drunk and they were on their way to work.  These were Police, in uniform and armed.  I thought we were getting pulled over for a breath test but GG said they don’t have the facilities to do that here in Kenya. 

So after a feed of toasted sandwiches when we got home, we were tucked up in our beds at 6am!  I can’t remember; even back in Australia, the last time I got home at that time after a night out, oh besides New Year’s Eve-we kicked on till 6am then, but before that, I can’t remember.  What a great night, even the dodgy waiter couldn’t spoil what was a great night.  So thanks to my ‘boys’, GG, Norbert, Daniel and a very drunk Tony, for looking out for me, explaining things, translating songs and then sorting out the bill at the end of the night. I am looking forward to the next ‘night’ out with you all-we rocked and it was AWESOME to get out and to make more new friends.  That out of everything just made the night ‘perfect’.