Living for Disco

It’s Thursday morning at 9am when we drive into Aminuis. We drive into it, and then right out the other side, without even realising that we’ve done it. It’s only the receding sign in the rear view mirror that alerts us to the location of the town we are scheduled to visit this morning.

The view, except for a distant salt pan shining white in the glare of the winter sun, is of scrub and thorn trees. Seen through the filter of ever present grey dust the thorns look as if they are covered in pale blossom. Close up, it’s as if you’re standing on the surface of a deserted but hostile planet.

In the centre of this emptiness stands a building. We pull up outside, and realise that it is a shebeen and liquor store. As I get out of the car, I hear loud voices inside. English voices. Curious, I wander inside, to find a gaggle of San people of assorted ages, ragged and drunk, glued simultaneously to economy size beer bottles, and to the BBC Food Channel. They are learning how to make hazelnut waffles.

As we set up the ‘stage’ for the show, people wander over from the shabby collection of huts and corrugated tin shacks that shamble together in the distance. Two mangy dogs lie in the pathetic heat of the sun. I watch as a woman stumbles while pouring neat vodka from a height into the waiting mouth of the man standing next to her. I learn later that he is the representative for this San community. He is staggering drunk at 9.30am. This is the man to whom I should give condoms, and the UNICEF education materials on alcohol and AIDS that I have brought. While thanking me, he drops the papers repeatedly, and they start to blow across the landscape, catching in the thorn trees like so much useless litter.

As the group perform their show, two drunk women wander onto the stage. One of them has left her baby in a pram next to a pile of broken beer bottles the size of a small house. It starts to cry, but I have to give all my attention to a man who repeatedly tells me that his name is John, while tugging at my elbow. I introduce myself several times, each time wishing more fervently that I could leave this place.

I’m not the only one. After the show, a girl in broken shoes approaches me and begs me to find her a better life in Windhoek. She is 16. Her parents are dead, and her uncle will not look after her. She gives me her number and asks me to call someone in the city who can help her. Her name is Lydia, and I don’t know what on earth I can do to help. I wonder if she is now going to be waiting for a miracle that will not happen. As we leave, a fight breaks out. Over the shouting, I hear the rounded vowels of the BBC presenter promising a review round up of London’s best restaurants.

I’m sure that Aminuis is not the most desolate, or depressing place in the world, but it’s the most desolate and depressing place I have ever seen. There is nothing here but poverty and alcoholism. There is no way out. I arrived in my Berghaus fleece and Merrells, looking in from an outsider’s point of view, and even though it breaks my heart, I do know that there’s no way I can hope to understand the crushing hopelessness of life in this place.

It makes me want to cry every time I think about it.

I am very, very hungover.

I walk into the deli. When the lady behind the counter turns to me, I smile, and say ‘May I have a bottle of water please?’.

Simple, no?

No.

She looks confused. ‘Pizza?’

I struggle with nausea at the thought of pizza, and thankfully I am triumphant.

‘Water. Please’.

‘Water?’ She looks at me, clearly baffled. I start to wonder if I am asking for something strange.

‘Yes, please’, I say.

‘You want a glass of water?’

‘No, I’d like a bottle of water. From your fridge.’

She smiles at me as if I am an escapee from an institution for the mentally unstable, and disappears into the kitchen. While she is gone, the other lady approaches.

‘What is it you want?’

‘Water please, a bottle of water.’

She immediately goes to the fridge and fetches me a bottle of water, for which she charges me N$5. This makes me very happy, not least because I can rest in the knowledge that it is not me that is deranged.

I open the water with shaking hands, and sip the cold, life-giving liquid. I feel it dribble deliciously directly into my brain.

When I open my eyes the other lady has emerged from the kitchen with a polystyrene cup of tap water, and is standing before me, seemingly at a loss. I raise my cold, cold bottle of water to her, and stagger out into the daylight.

There was a bottle of Lebanese rose on the wine menu of the pub on Old Street. I hopped back to the table, waving the bottle at my friend and gabbling in excitement. Once I’d managed to distract her attention from the barman’s bum, I explained to her why I was so elated.

I used to work in the Lebanon. If you’ve never been there, please go. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and people are unfailingly hospitable. As you wonder along Beirut’s crowded corniche of a soft and springlike Sunday morning, you can watch the old men fishing peacefully from the rocks below, or playing chess in the shade of a beach umbrella. Under the palms, the pretzel sellers push their carts, and couples walk arm in arm, a slow romantic promenade. Far off in the distance, above the rising blocks of flats, the mountains range, stately and snow capped. You can be up there in just a few hours, snowball fighting amongst the ancient cedars.

It’s a country of hidden idylls. Bcharre, the birthplace of Khalil Gibran, is a treasure trove of mind-boggling views, situated on the edge of a huge chasm, the terraced edges of which are a miracle of agricultural perseverance. Countless small streams and waterfalls reveal themselves within the wild vegetation. Small, whirling flocks of blue butterflies cluster around tiny flowers. Flock of goats graze under olive trees. There are even a couple of hermits hidden in the hills. The air is so fresh it hurts.

One of my favourite things was sitting on the castle walls in Tripoli, watching the boys train pigeons over the tiled roofs of the ottoman old town, and listening to the bustle of the market below. The pigeons wheel and turn on the tiniest flick of the red flags, eventually being brought into land.

Anyway, I used to take my groups wine-tasting on the edge of the Bekaa Valley. We’d troop down out of the mountains, and wander up to the vineyard. They never minded uncorking a few bottles, so we would sit getting gently drunk. Then we’d all go and spend a fortune in the shop. Especially if you were me, and had to look forward to a week of traipsing through the oenophile’s nightmare that is Syria.

It’s difficult enough to find Lebanese wine at the best of times, and to find one from my very own pet vineyard made me deeply happy with nostalgia.

So we drank it*, against the backdrop of a very fine looking barman. And it was good.

*Yes, yes I know. No more booze. Frankly, I failed.

I was in heaven. The music was mid-90s indie pop. The Stone Roses, Pulp and Sleeper pulled me irresistibly towards the heaving dance floor: a sea of waving arms, jumping bodies, beer arcing gracefully over the waving, seaweed hair. I was sucked into a whirlpool of frenzied, drunken, snogging, groping humanity, and I let go.

Twenty minutes later, flushed, sweating and covered in beer and bruises, and was washed up onto the bar, where I flopped happily. I recognised a bloke standing next to me – I saw him at a party a couple of weeks ago, where thanks to some mild mind-altering substances, I was convinced that his dredlocks were the hybrid offspring of a pineapple and a coconut, and was transfixed for hours. I felt the need to explain.

“Hello”, I said. “I saw you at a party the other week. I was a bit stoned, and I thought you had great hair”.

His face froze in shock. “I’m sorry?”

“I thought you had great hair! I was a bit stoned!” I was starting to feel embarrassed, and not a little stupid.

His expression didn’t change.

“You were at a party, and you gave me great head? I’m sure I would have remembered that – are you sure it was me?”

With a fresh insight into the inner workings of the rumour factory, I went back to the dance floor, and surrendered myself to the Cure.

Today I am wearing a kurta. It’s quite pretty – pink and stripy – and in my still-drunk state this morning, wearing it over jeans seemed like a good idea. It is Friday after all. But I’d forgotten about my colleague (the one with the matching shoes and handbags and underwear – and now, would you believe – colour co-ordinated spectacles). She looks every inch the business-woman. At least she hasn’t tried to make me admire her shoes yet today. I assume that this is because for the first time in a week she’s not wearing one of the eight pairs she bought recently on a work trip to New York.

“Ooh,” she cooed, as I walked into the meeting room. “That shirt would make a nice pair of pajamas”. My lovely boss took one look at me and said “Is that a comment on Rachie’s unprofessionalism?” Oh, happy day. Can I go home yet?

Now I feel rumpled and messy, and this is not helped by the presence of what looks like a large grease stain somewhere near the hem. It must have come from my lardy scrambled-egg-and-spinach-muffin breakfast.

So here I am, a professional, 30-something woman, trying to look the part, but failing. Today I have hair that, frankly, wouldn’t look amiss on a crazed, scimitar-wielding homicidal maniac, a long pink crumpled shirt with a stain on it, a big red spot on my cheek, and last night’s red wine still clinging grimly to my lips. The only way I have discovered to get it off is my scrubbing them with a toothbrush, but I was in a desperate state this morning, and couldn’t quite make the effort.

Still, it’s Friday, I’m about to have sushi for lunch and there is a plentiful supply of chocolate biscuits in the office biscuit tin. Things are never as bad as they seem.