The time we missed Independence Day

When I lived in namibia, I was 18. We have all been 18. Therefore, I hope you not judge me too harshly after I tell you the story about Independence Day, the biggest day of the year in Namibia.

They had worked hard for their independence and it was in everyone’s recent memory. I was 18. I didn’t appreciate the importance of this day. The night before Independence Day was the Crayfish Derby in Luderitz. This was more for the Afrikaners than anyone else.

We got there mid-afternoon and watched all the men go off in their fishing boats and we then had about four hours until the men would come back with a crayfish and have them weighed to see who had the biggest and who would win. In this four hours, we were given free drinks and food because people recognised us as the poor volunteers in town. We had a town meeting to go to so we stayed for about an hour then walk back into town to go to this meeting.

It was when we were walking back that we realised we were a little drunk. Our dog, Diaz, was with us. She was always with us. And so she came to the town hall with us. We hoped that we didn’t appear too drunk and decided to stay silent and smile a lot. When the meeting started, we had chosen two seats on the end of a row and sat silently scribbling notes for the local town newspaper, which we ran.

They decided to do that thing where everyone introduces himself and they started at the end of the row that we were at. So much for keeping out of the way. Lucy stood up, giggled a little and introduce herself. When I stood up, the giggles had grown and I was almost laughing out loud. It suddenly all seemed so hilarious. I said my name, pointed at lucy and said, “yeh, the Buchter News as well,” and sat down. It had not started well.

After everyone else introduced themselves and we took a few obligatory photographs, the dog made an appearance. We had left her outside but someone must have opened the door and she had snuck in. She came over and sat down near us. We knew what she was like but we hoped she would behave today. She did not behave. She wound her way in and out of everyone else’s chairs and then some empty chairs which caused them to move a little and scrape on the floor. It sounded like a fart.

We giggled. We were not professional.

The meeting lasted 2 hours and we didn’t really listen to anything. We left and headed straight back to the Crayfish Derby. The men would be back in a few hours and until then, there was eating and drinking time. We whipped out the camera a few times to take photos and then people remembered that we were the poor newspaper volunteers and fed us again for free.

When the men had come back, they all weighed their crayfish and we spent the evening celebrating and dancing.

The next morning there was a big celebration in the nearby stadium. It was Independence Day for the whole country. We had not been clever to stay late at the Crayfish Derby but we got up and we made a way to the stadium with good intention. We got there at 9 o’clock, found a seat and sat down to wait. It was supposed to be starting at about 9.30. We waited. 10 o’clock came. We waited. 10.30 came.

I don’t know what we expected. we had been living in Africa for long enough to know that 9.30 does not mean 9.30. We were suffering. We had not had enough sleep. We were totally exposed, sitting in the hot sun and dehydrated from our night out. We realised it would probably be midday before anything significant happened.

We decided to go home for sleep. Just a little one. Just a nap. Just for an hour or so. We’d be back at mid day. As we were leaving the stadium, our close friend, George, arrived and why we were leaving. We told him that we just needed to pop home for something quickly. We didn’t want to tell him we had to sleep because we were dehydrated and knackered from our night out. We said we would be back before anything got going.

We went home, headed for the front room, sat on the sofa and fell asleep. When we woke up, it was quite late in the afternoon. We ran out of the house into the street. We lived on a hill so we could see down into the stadium. There were not many people in the stadium. They were leaving.

The celebrations were over and we had missed the entire day.

The entire Independence Day. The most important day of the year in Namibia and we had slept on the sofa instead.

But we were the local newspaper volunteers. We ran the only town newspaper. If we didn’t report Independence Day, it would look strange. So we got the two or three photographs we had taken of the decorations at the stadium and some of the photos of the town major and a few of the other people we knew had made speeches and we wrote the article for the newspaper as though we had been there.

It went something like this – “The Independence Day celebrations were enjoyed by all. This day marks a special day in Namibia’s history. Since 1980, Namibia has been free of outside control and its’ people are free to pursue their own goals. The town mayor encompassed these feelings exactly in a speech in which she praised Namibians for their resilience and talked of the wonderful things that have been achieved under a free Namibian government.”

I mean that’s probably what she said, isn’t it? We said there had been performances by children from the local schools, which we knew because we also worked as teachers in a few schools and had seen groups of children preparing their performances for the Independence Day celebrations.

And with nothing else to do but go with it, we let the newspaper go out that month with the main story a kind of hashed together patchwork blanket of guesses and photographs we had taken of other things.

No one said anything. No one commented on the lack of detail about the celebrations or about the mayor’s speech. No one noticed that the photographs didn’t look like they were taken in an outdoor stadium.

And it was fine.

I must reiterate, readers, I was 18. This seemed like acceptable behaviour. Please do not judge me.

A few follow ups and a ladle of soup

A little while ago, I wrote a post called Sometimes I Think Too Much about a girl who was new in the area and had asked me to go for a drink, in a best-friend-date type of way. Some of you asked about how it had gone.

So here’s the story. The next time she came in, she mentioned needing a job, I said we had one. Two and two were put together and they equalled my new potential best friend and I working together. It was all ok for a few weeks. Then she got another job and left. And that was that really. Done.

Clearly I gave it way more thought than it warranted when she asked me out for a drink.

The second thing is that the local drunk who featured in “Are these donuts?” recently took a picture to a gallery nearby to have it reframed. It has been reframed now and, as the owner of the gallery is a friend and has a bad shoulder at the moment, he has asked me to help him go to Mr Red Wine’s flat and help him reframe it.

That’s right. I get to go INSIDE Mr Red Wine’s flat! I am beyond excited. I imagine it’ll be like one of those programmes called Grime Fighters or something, where cleaning companies go into old flats which are full of crap and pizza boxes with mould growing on them and rats running around.

My gallery owner friend has pre warned me that we will have to stand on Mr Red Wine’s bed to hang the picture and that it is alive with bed bugs. He also said I shouldn’t worry about just standing on stuff as I walk in the flat as there is no free floor space anyway.

It is going to be mental, I can tell.

Also, a few days ago, whilst at work, I was leaning over a bowl of soup to get something and there was a ladle in it with a hook on the end, for hanging it up with. Somehow the ladle hook caught on my apron and as I stood back up, I pulled the ladle with me, which was full of soup, and scooped it onto myself. It went all down my front and onto my Crocs and in the little holes and into my feet. Niiiiice.

I just thought you might like that little story.

My staple diet

We’re going back to my university days again for this one. My flatmates and I were having a bit of a party. I think it was someone’s birthday. It was one of those nights were huge sections of it don’t make sense.

For example, at one point, we were all in the kitchen, listening to music while standing on the chairs and waving teatowels around furiously. Yes. Teatowels. Given that our kitchen window was easily within sight of the campus bar, it’s quite likely that the people in the bar were wondering, in amazement, why the girls in B block were being so crazy.

At one point, one of my flatmates drunkenly said to the other (who was sober), “You’re so drunk!” … She was not drunk.

There had been balloons at this party so after a vigorous session of teatowel waving, it was time to pop the balloons with a knife. Obviously. A shaky video taken on a phone still exists somewhere of me tearing around the kitchen, knocking stuff over, climbing on chairs and tables, chasing these balloons around. Everyone had cleared out of the kitchen, as I was armed and dangerous. One of them hates balloons being popped because it releases the “old stale breath” inside. On the video, there is a little voice in the background going “All the breath! All the breath.”

The finale of the video is me chasing down the last balloon and throwing it gently in the air, with my knife poised underneath it and at the moment the balloon touches the knife and bursts, I let out a short but loud, “WAH!” then smile smugly, although I have defeated a baddie and saved mankind.

So you get the picture, it’s all a bit excitable and silly. Into this mix, we put some hunger. We are hungry and we need to eat NOW, at 1am. What to have? Obviously cheese toasties. There was a toastie machine so we got everything set up, closed the lid and waited impatiently for the green light to click on.

When it eventually did, we were ravenous. So Sophie unclips the clip thing, opens the machine and toasted onto the top of one of the toasties…. was a staple! I still to this day have no idea how that could have happened. As silly drunks, we laughed uncontrollably for maybe twenty minutes. That kind of laughter were you can’t even see straight and your tummy muscles ache and you get breathless. And then Sophie, in her infinite wit, said, “It’s our staple diet!”

Well, we were off again. Up until that point in my life, I think that might have been the funniest thing I had ever heard. Actually, maybe it still is…. Staple diet…. Hilarious.

“Are these donuts?!”

The local drunk. There’s always one, isn’t there? Every place I’ve lived, there’s a local well-known face, who spends all their time drunk, on drugs or generally being out of control.

The local drunk near me is a shuffler. You know what I mean, he’s so drunk all the time, that he can’t lift his legs up to walk properly. His hair is straggly and grey and he tells the most amazing stories. Were we to believe him, he’s been a doctor (a psychiatrist to be precise), a law student, a life-saving neighbour and an artist. In fact, any time he hears someone talking about something, he says he’s done it.

He heard me talking about studying for my exams, asked me which exams, then said, “O, I used to be a lawyer… Studied law… Yeh, I studied law… Really interesting…. ‘Sgreat, all that… Yeh, I studied law too… ‘sgood, isn’t it, law…” Mumble mumble, he went, about the law, about how interesting it is.

Seriously, this man can barely walk, I’m not sure how he studied law. Well, clearly there was a time before he spent all day and night drinking, so maybe he did.

A lady was once saying her next door neighbours had a new baby and it was up all night crying.

Along he comes, we’ll call him Mr Red Wine, as that is his beverage of choice. So Mr Red Wine lumbers over and says, “Yeh, my neighbours have got a baby… They’ve got a baby too!… And it was up all night crying… I thought it didn’t sound well so I went over and told them to take th’baby to hospital… All night I sat up with it… All night!.. wi’th’baby … In th’ospital…. Baby cryin… All night…. ‘sbetter now though…” Mumble mumble mumble, nonsense nonsense.

So this one day, Mr Red Wine was shopping for red wine. In he goes, to the shop. This day, he was looking especially manic. His hair shot up and out at funny angles. His t-shirt had a rip in it. He smelled more pungent than usual. His shoes had holes in.

Four hours after entering the shop, he has climbed the two steps that greet him at the entrance. He has shuffled to the wine shelf and, in doing so, has passed the fruit shelf. On it, he sees some Spanish donut peaches. Peaches. Donut peaches. They’re small, they’re a bit flat, they’re yellowy orange and furry. Definitely a peach.

His eyes widen in shock. He leans toward them to get a better look. His mind is boggled. He can’t understand quite what he is seeing. Picking up a box of the peaches, he approaches the till. He has forgotten his red wine mission.

He puts them down and looks at the girl behind the till, eyes squinting in disbelief, and asks, in shock, “ARE THESE DONUTS!?”….

When the girl says they are not donuts, his eyes widen. He can’t cope with this information. He shuffles back out of the shop and off home to think about what has happened that day.

The girl at the till has not seen Mr Red Wine for a while. She thinks the donut peaches were too much for his brain to handle.

P.S. The girl is me.

Dancing in public

Just a brief note about this important subject.

Dancing in public eg, going to a club.

Now if you’ve had a drink or two, this is no real problem. You’re loosened up, you’ve got your groove on, you seem to be able to know what the music is going to do next and follow it. All is well. People who are watching admire your sense of fun and adventure, you’re unafraid and actually quite a good dancer. You’re loving the music, the people are watching you, you’re loving being watched, your favourite song just came on … There is lots of mutual dancing appreciation going on.

The difficulties come when you’re not a drinker.

I’m not a drinker.

There is less temptation to act with such reckless abandon. You keep yawning a little, you fall back on the trusty two-step, you don’t quite know what to do with your arms. It makes for a lot of gentle knee-bobbing and unrhythmic arm-swinging.

Dancing is also different when you know the song that’s being played. You liven up a little with excitement and the dancing becomes more energetic. The arms get involved. Then the song finishes while you’re still on your high but is followed by one that everyone else but you knows. They’re singing along, throwing their hands in the air in unison, yelling “Get ready for the next bit!” and you’ve no idea what to do.

Your moment has passed, you fade to the edge of the crowd and start knee-bobbing and arm swinging again.

I used to tear up the dancefloor when I was younger and as I knee-bob, I wonder if I’ve really become so boring in my ‘old age’? And then I remember the point I made at the beginning, alcohol was always involved. I was 17, loud and highly intoxicated. I stop doubting myself whilst I two-step and just enjoy my solitary tame little dance over here in the corner.