Lilongwe Hat Party!

Well, I had a very eventful night Saturday night! In both a good and a bad way...

I was invited sorta last minute to a house party in Area 43 in Lilongwe. It was in the home of one of the girls I met on the cultural training course in Mua - she said she had been trying to call me and text me to invite me last week, but had never been able to get through to me for some reason. Funnily enough, though, I decided to go into town that morning to do a little shopping, and I met her by perfect chance outside a shop in Lilongwe on the day of the party! She invited me to come, and of course I haven't had much opportunity to socialise since I came so I jumped at the chance! It was going to be a "hat party". I wasn't sure what one was, but the premise is simple enough :-P you have to wear a hat, basically! Bit self-explanatory, eh?

I arrived early for the party, which was meant to start at about 5pm with a barbeque! I'd brought pork ribs to put on the BBQ, so of course the minute I came in the gate the 3 guard dogs came shooting out at me wuth the smell from the meat :-) the guard had to more or less beat them off me all the way to the door! It was quite funny, although I kept thinking I was going to trip over one. I help chop the meat and salads and so on with my friend, with the dogs running all over the place. At one point we went out of the room for a second, only to discover that a big hunk of cheese had gone missing off the counter, and my friend suspected that the dogs had nabbed it - I loved this, it reminded me so much of Anchorman -

"Baxter, you ate a full wheel of cheese? I'm not even mad, I'm impressed"

*LOL*

The other guests arrived bit by bit throughout the evening, some were late for the BBQ and just came for the music and drinks, etc afterwards. The food was absolutely divine! Pork ribs and chops and sausages... *drools* and of course, plenty of Carlsberg! I was in my element, naturally! I probably overdid the ribs and I certainly overdid the beer (my head told me so this morning...), but I was enjoying myself! There was a fantastic mix of people there working for various NGOs and organisations, and different nationalities both foreign and Malawian, so it was a good mix! I got on really well with a lot of people there, and I even got a few phone numbers too, so hopefully I can extend my social network a bit here :-)

Of course, everybody else was enjoying themselves as much as I was, and as the night progressed and so did everyone's state of inebriation, I had to fend off more than one rather overenthusiastic would-be "dancing" partners. By "dancing", read "thinly veiled excuse to grope woman". No, I do not want to go back to yours, "to see your house", thank you. You want me to admire the architecture of it, no doubt... Get stuffed. I wasn't quite sufficiently drunk for that sort of thing, and TBH I just found them extremely annoying. Some guys just don't understand anything more subtle than "get lost, ye gobdaw". I tended to gravitate towards other women for most of the night, for the aforementioned reasons!

The entertainment, though, it must be said, was superb! They had a DJ to begin with, which I was impressed enough by, with a big sound system and great music. We all danced in the garden, it was the cat's pyjamas as my folks would say! Just when I thought I couldn't be any mroe impressed, I realised they had actually booked a band for later in the evening! Not an orchestra, you understand, more of a girl group. They were wearing next to nothing, but sure they sounded good anyway and I suppose the fellas were distracted then so I was happy out :-P LOL!

So, I had a superb evening all in all... until I went to get my bag, and realised someone had been into it while I wasn't looking :-( They'd stolen about the equivalent of 50 euro - which is a hefty enough chunk of my monthly allowance, let me tell you. I was gutted, though mainly angry with myself, I think, for not being more clued-in. My hosts were terribly embarassed about it, cue much ringing of the police and trying to decide what to do. Apparently someone had stolen a CD/DVD player fromt eh house aswell, and while I thought surely it would be obvious if someone had electrical equipment on them, we eventually decided that the cash would be untraceable and there was little point pursuing it. This was quite late on in the night and the culprit had probably left anyway :-/ Cue much crying and sniffling and wanting to go home, of course.

For some strange reason, though, they didn't quite take all of the money in my purse, they left about 1000 Kwacha, about 5 euro. For the taxi home, I don't know, LOL! They were obviously a more thoughtful calibre of thief... and sure, perspective is all I suppose. I'm able to be a bit more philosophical about it now. All my cards etc were intact, and my phone, and I had had my digital camera in my pocket - which is worth a lot more than 50 euro! - and if that had been taken it would have been a huge loss, so all's well that ends well I guess... Plus I got the number of one of the girls from the band, and another girl who works for the EU, they were really really lovely to me in the aftermath, so I'll text them soon to say thanks and who knows I might have new friends! That's worth more than 50 yo yos any day.

:-)