"You can learn more
about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
Plato
I saw on Facebook a few weeks ago an event that was coming
called The Mingle. In principle the idea
sounded amazing. So I ran it past Katie
and we decided to go along and see what the whole thing was about as both of us
are always willing to meet new people to expand our social network.
So what is The Mingle?
It is a bimonthly event designed to facilitate young professionals and
entrepreneurs to meet, network, connect & share ideas with others of
similar interests in an informal, relaxed and open environment. The ‘supposed’ daytime event incorporates
music and lots of fun activities as a unique way of getting people to open up
and meet new people in diverse professions and businesses. The first event was held in October 2012 had
an attendance of 200 people and the second edition in December 11th was
attended by 280, the third edition had 497, while the fourth had 724 attending
the event. This event is number 11 and
they are expecting over 5,000 people! “The
Mingle” targets young professionals looking to network and have fun at the same
time. The co-ordinator of the event, Ahmed,
calls it “Live Social Media” because you get to meet people who you have only
interacted with either on Twitter or Facebook and bring it to the real business
level. The minimum age at the event is
22 years for ladies and 25 years for men. The average age of attendees is 28 -
45 years of age. 25% of the attendees are mid-level managers and new business
owners, 50% are top-level managers and business men, own their house and drive
a fashionable car, 25% are top executives, businessmen and celebrities.
After 3 months of living in Kenya, there is not a day that
goes by without the utterance of the catch phrase T.I.K. Driver Steven and I thought we were quite
clever coining the phrase the day that we went to the airport to collect my
boxes from the freight/cargo section. I
think I can safely say that we weren’t the original quoter’s of the actual
phrase but it does sum up a lot of things done and witnessed here in Kenya and
its sister phrase T.I.A (this is Africa) which we used a lot on my 8 week overland
trip from Nairobi to Cape Town in 2011.
So now falling into T.I.K mode the official start time of the event was
11am, so Katie and I decided to get there around 12noon, thinking that things
would just start to be cranking when we arrived. This took into account of people being late,
traffic and it also just being Kenya and we were totally right about the late
start, we just never would have guessed that taking in the hour we allowed that
we really should have let 6 hours as no-one really started arriving till 3.30pm
and the bilk of people were starting to arrive when we were leaving at
5pm!!!! Who would have thought that 6
hours lapsed before the throng of people arrived, considering they were
advertising it as a day event rocking into the night-this certainly wasn’t the
case!!!
So I got Driver Steven to pick me up at 10.30am with the
knowledge that the drive to Katie’s would take 45 minutes, we collected Katie,
stopped at the shop for a bottle of wine and we were dropped at Ngong Racetrack
just after 12 noon. The GREAT thing
about the event was you were allowed to bring a bottle of wine or spirits each
into the grounds (this is unheard of in Australia) and with that news we did
pack a bottle each and I supplied the plastic cups and Katie supplied the
bottle opener and we were set for the afternoon. There didn’t seem to be a lot of people
around for the event. There was a lot of
staff and security but really couldn’t see any patrons which was a little
disconcerting, but after asking a few people, we found the right drop point for
the function and asked Steve to come back for us around 5pm. We could see all the tents that had been
erected to combat the Kenyan rainy season and we just strolled straight in
without anyone looking at our tickets, asking to check our bags or anything,
which here in Nairobi is strange in itself when you get scanned driving into car
parks and bags searched going into shopping centres. Anyway, nobody stopped us and we walked
through the massive tents that would have been 300m long, that housed the
promoters loungers, the bar area and also some of the table games and it was
all set up and ready to go-we were just the only people there. The first DJ was playing his tunes, the bar
was open and you could see the food tent and all the games set up outside with
the racetrack in its background. As we
were the ONLY ones there, we decided to sit in the race bleachers and just kick
back and see what became of the afternoon.
We had 2 bottles of wine to drink and a free beer to consume as part of
the ticket price, we had seats, we were under cover should the skies open up
and we had great company-what else could we ask for of a day. So we sat there for 3 hours talking, drinking
and just catching up until the first peeps started to arrive, which I was so
relieved. The venue looked amazing and I
was getting terribly worried that they had gone to so much trouble to only have
2 mzungu’s rock up was really starting to get to me. But we had nothing to fear and by 4.30pm
there seemed to be a steady flow of people arriving, playing the games, riding
the camel, sitting in the bleachers with us and in general the crowd started to
grow.
There were promoter people walking around the place, taking
food and drink orders, coaxing people into the shisha lounges etc….. At one point as our wine was getting warm we
ordered a glass of passionfruit juice each and it was the best move as it was
icy cold and made a refreshing change from the warm wine that wasn’t stopping
is from drinking it, and in the end we added in the wine to the juice-we are
not just pretty faces you know. Looking
around as the numbers grew we were the only mzungu’s there. We did see others, 2 guys, but I didn’t even
think that there would not be western people attending the event. I was actually shocked, not that it mattered,
and by this time it was 4.30pm and we were getting picked up in 30
minutes. Just as everyone was
arriving-too funny!!! We decided we
should go and take a walk around and check everything out before making our way
back to the same placed that Steven had dropped us 5 hours earlier. The zorb balls looked pretty cool that were
launched over a pool of water, camel rides had a line up and there was a fly
ball, a trampoline-that had a line up and the place was finally starting to get
its buzz-as we were leaving. We made it
to the carpark and it was 5.15pm and still no sign of Steven, so we called him
and he was stuck in traffic and would be another 20 minutes or so. So we decided to have a bit of a sticky beak
around the Kenya Jockey Club premises, said hi to a real horse, had a look in
the members clubhouse-used their bathrooms-took a stroll out onto the actual
track, which was super cool, got our photo taken with some guys in camouflage
uniforms sporting rifles off their shoulders which we asked for a photo and
they were more than obliging which was a shock and then the horses starter
gates were just sitting there on the side of the track, so we decided to go
over and climb all over them and get some photos. All
the while I was waiting for a shout out that we weren’t allowed to be doing
what we were and even though there were plenty of security eyes everywhere, and
could see us plain as day but they couldn’t give a toss what we were up
to. It was so cool.
We called Steven again at 5.40pm and he was still in
traffic, so we decided to start walking out to meet him on the main road to
save him sitting in The Mingle as well, with large rain clouds looming behind
us we thought we would be okay and be in the car before it started to
rain. Steven also noticed the clouds and
10 minutes after we had left, he text us asking what we would do if it did
rain, which was a little late as we were already now waiting on the main
road. We spoke to a security guard on
the way out-he walked us a partial of the way, and he is a security guy for a
member of parliament during the week and he works these gigs on weekends to get
some extra money. We did ask which
member, which, he did tell us, but I won’t put it in the blog as I don’t want
to get him into trouble. It was funny to
see everyone arriving for the event and we were on our way out. Back at the entrance to the event there was
now a queue to get in through a security gate that had staff checking bags,
patting people down and collecting tickets.
This is what we missed when we strolled in 6 hours earlier and they were
arriving 6 hours after the official start time.
Cars were getting parked and the new arrivals were all carrying their bottles
of alcohol as you were permitted to carry into the event. I still can’t believe that! It was hard to wrap my head around that and
as we drank our wine I was waiting for a tap on the shoulder to confiscate our
grog.
We got to the main road and called Steven again and he was
crawling in traffic and it was nearly 6pm now and we could see it was moving
slowly. So we decided to keep walking
now on the main road heading towards Steven and it really started to look like
rain as the black dark clouds, that were looking very luminous and we hadn’t gone 5m
and the sky opened up. Crap-we didn’t
have umbrella’s, and with the ‘pot man’ within distance we sought shelter under
some massive trees and as the rain really started to fall the ‘pot man’ come
over with his massive golf umbrella and the 3 of us huddled under that till we
saw Steven inching along in traffic-we called him and he pulled over and with a
small tip to the ‘pot man’ we ran for the car to get out of the pouring rain
and the mud that was splashing around our feet.
We had thought about dinner while we were at the function
and had our hearts set on KFC. So we
stopped at Junction on our way home to buy our dinner to take away and then
proceeded to drop Katie off at home. We
could see now that traffic really was shocking, which Steve felt he had to keep
telling us as I think he felt terrible that he had arrived over an hour late to
collect us. But there is one thing in
Nairobi that cannot be predicted-EVER and that is the traffic. Travelling around the city at different times
of the day, you will generally never get the same traffic flow-EVER. After dropping Katie another 45 minutes later
and I was home safe and sound and what a great day we had. We may have not got exactly what we had hoped
for out of the day, but Katie and I had a great afternoon just chatting and
catching up over a few wines and to us it was still a success and we had done
some things that we hadn’t done before, my highlight was climbing the horses
starters gate and getting some pictures with the National Guard. The other good thing we got from the
afternoon was that we have decided to go back to Ngong Racecourse for an actual
track meet, and as it happens there is one next week-so we will have an Africa
Race Day and invite a few other people to come along and if they come great, if
not, well we are still going anyway! It
is a little strange that their official race day is on Sundays, but again T.I.K
and we also found out that we had just missed Derby Day that was on last
weekend. Drats-but we do have next
weekend and I know that Shelly and SA will be very proud indeed.
As an after note I read a few days later about the event.
“If you sponsored The Mingle this last weekend, you must be
proud of yourself. If you attended The Mingle, you must know what I am talking
about. Nairobi’s biggest event went even to bigger heights hosting almost 8,000
people at the Ngong Racecourse. The fun
filled event kicked off at 11am and went way beyond the expected 1am closing
time with the party moving to the early hours of the next morning”
EIGHT THOUSAND people?
There definitely not that many people by the time that we left but WOW
we were really out with our timing. Its’
good to know and if we do attend another one we have learnt to not turn up till
around 5pm….
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