Living for Disco

Day 1
We arrive in Du Plessis in the dark.  Du Plessis is marked on the map as a significant town.  We almost drive through it without realizing it. I fret for 2 hours about the fact that a bus full of young Namibians is trundling through the dark and may overshoot us completely. 

My overactive imagination creates a scenario where we will fruitlessly follow each other around Omaheke for a week, crossing each other at intersections as if in a 60s sit-com farce.  Fortunately they arrive.  Instantly they consume all of the food, and start complaining that it’s not enough.  I put my head in my hands.

Day 2
We get up at 6am.  I am cold, dirty and tired, and I yearn for a hot shower.  There is no hot water.  It’s so cold that my face goes numb when I step outside. After breakfast, the sound system speakers do not work.  This is a disaster.  We use the stereo in the van for the first performance, which is to a gathering of about 30 old men, 2 cows, a herd of goats and some geese.  It goes well, and they ask lots of questions about AIDS (the old men, not the goats).  This is good.

For the school performance we borrow some speakers from a man at the hostel we are staying in.  He is worried that our system will blow them, and I promise that we will be extra-double careful with them.  Half an hour in, the speakers blow, and all that remains of the booming music is a sad death rattle.  I start calculating how much this is going to cost us; this activity makes me put my head in my hands once more.

The evening meal is spent trying to persuade everyone not to eat so much that they puke.  My pleas fall on deaf ears, and two of the boys have to stand up and jog around the hall so that they can carry on eating. 

Day 3
We get up at 6am.  There is still no hot water.  The stereo system is still broken.  We go to Gobabis to see if we can fix them.  The can do it overnight, they say, so in the meantime we borrow speaker system from the school we are performing at in Drimiopsis.  Whenever I hear this place name, I imagine someone afflicted by a horrible flaky skin condition, the doctor shaking his head as he delivers the prognosos: ‘I’m afraid the news is bad.  You have a terminal case of Drimiopsis’.  I’m sure this is unfair on Drimiopsis.  It seems a nice enough place.

The show goes well, but the group is sulking.  We don’t know why.  I thank god that tonight we are staying in a fancy lodge, and I will be able to have a shower.  I’m sure everyone else is thankful too.

Day 4
We have rented some speakers, and Marius has driven back to Windhoek for parts for ours.  He leaves me with specific instructions:  Do Not Blow the Speakers. I promise that we will not, under any circumstances, blow the speakers. 
7 people show up for the school show.  We expected 400. We try to round up more, but without success.  This is a good thing, because as I return to the school hall, I receive a phone call.  “They blew the speakers”.  Again, my head descends hand-ward.
 
On the way to the next accommodation, I suddenly realize that I have no idea how far down the road the place is.  By the time we find somewhere to stop for directions, we have driven 65km too far down a horrific dirt road.  It will take us over an hour to get back.  The group starts banging their fists on the chairs and shouting “We want food”.  One of them starts experimenting with the ring tone on her phone.  I put my head in my hands and leave it there.  There seems to be little point in moving.

Day 5
Aminuis.  See previous post.  Head.  Hands. 

Day 6
Everything goes well.  I am amazed.  We head joyfully to the lodge for a braai – we thought that this would be a good way to celebrate, and that our group of ‘yoof’ (one of whom is older than me) would be happy and grateful. On the bus on the way back to Gobabis, a giant rock hurtles through the back window of the bus.  Miraculously no-one is hurt.

When we arrive, the fire gets going.  Unfortunately, the group, as usual, are not in the mood to enjoy themselves, and sit in the biting cold, cocooned in duvets and sleeping bags, being completely unhelpful and sullen, as we desperately try to make the fire, and not burn the chicken.  I don’t know why we bother. It is raw anyway, and they continue to be uncooperative and sulky.  On tucking into the pasta salad, they accuse us of ‘trying to kill us with the cold’. 

I imagine that the group will be afflicted with salmonella on the 13 hour bus journey home, and can’t bring myself to find this image at all distressing. 

Day 7.
We get up at 4.30am.  By the time we have rallied everyone, it is almost 6.  They were supposed to leave at 5, but the bastards won’t move.  I swear they move more slowly than migrating land masses.  

Eventually, when they all leave, and I go back to bed for an hour, and sit watching the God channel, and sipping the leftover wine we treated ourselves with last night.  I figure it’s not yet sunrise, and so I’m not drinking before breakfast, but after dinner.

At 10.30 am I receive a call.  The group is lost in Windhoek, and have been for over an hour despite being told that they are not to wander off.  My colleague is apoplectic with fury, and wants to leave without them.  I imagine a collection of youth, 800km from home, desperately phoning my organisation on Monday, having been stranded in town for the weekend, with no money.

I put my head in my hands.  When I eventually look up, I am holding a handful of grey hair.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.