Foam: The Party

(for reasons that will become readily apparent the names or descriptions of the people involved in this story are not mentioned - especially that of a certain paramedic)

They were ready for anything…except foam.

Nightlife in rural South Africa is generally a rather colourful affair. Not necesarrilly because black, white, coloured and everything in between mixes up together – although that can also contribute to the fun – but more due to the fact that the drinks here have all the colours of a rainbow on acid. In the following account, which takes place in a very Afrikaans drinking/dancing hole (yes, I do mean “hole” and not “hall”), these observations have been made:

• Taking a paramedic with you might seem like a good idea at first.
• Drinking vodka/redbull from plastic pint glasses might not seem like a good idea, but can actually be very cost-effective.
• The heating inside a BMW 330 will not dry your clothes in one hour.
• Racist assholes are closer than they appear.
• Playing the same cd all night does not mean it will be a bad party.
• Do not open your eyes while covered in foam. It’s real soap you twat.

Curious yet? I know you are.

The plans to go to Upington on this fateful Saturday evening (3rd March 2007, for those of you keeping track) had been hatched some time before, because on Sunday it would be the birthday of one of our interns. Any call for celebration is quickly grasped out here – since there is little else to do in the evenings – and birthdays don’t require coming up with an imaginative reason for once. Some friends of hers from home were coming over on Friday and staying the weekend as well which meant that, adding the other students, myself and some of our newly acquired Germanic pals to the equation, we would be quite a large group – splendid.

The fully comprehend how awful the evening started out, you really had to be there yourself. But it will attempt to make it clear to you. Driving to Upington went without a hitch, but that was simply due to the fact that we were driving a BMW 330 at highspeed with Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive blasting through the surround soundsystem. I am definitely not a “car-person”, but that is one sweet ride.

We arrived around 7 o’clock at the centre of Upington, its shopping area, and we headed over to Dros (a SA restaurant chain) for dinner and pre-drinks. This is where things went awry…Being deprived of the wide variety of food choices which were available to me in Europe, or any other Western-style urban environment, I immediately lunged (figuratively) for the pizza’s on the menu. I might risk sounding spoiled, but having a braai every other night gets a bit tedious and the opportunity to eat a pizza – regardless of quality – was not going to be missed.

Three hours later. No pizza. Lukewarm beer. Bad atmosphere. Worse service. Shit.

To make a long story short: the pizza had been taken to the birthday girl’s friends who were sitting inside (the rest of us were on the terrace) and they were told by the waitress that they had actually ordered it despite their arguments to the contrary. Once the mistake was discovered it was all too late, the clueless waitress having nearly force-fed my pizza to the people inside, and we had to wait another 1,5 hours for my replacement to arrive – by which time I was so hungry I was actually feeling nauseous. I had two slices of my mediocre-at-best pizza when it finally arrived, asked for a doggy-bag (which took another 15 trillion hours to do), settled the bill and we tore ourselves free of Dros, vowing never to return.

Very much subdued and in a mind to go back home, we made our way to what was supposed to be the main event of the evening, the pièce-de-resistance, the venue…the club. Keeping the spirit of the evening (up to this point) at heart, the “club” was a dissapointment beyond words: it was not a club at all, but rather the club’s older, uglier, adopted brother who had not seen the inside of a shower in several weeks. Ironically we were asked for a 25 Rand entrance fee in order to be allowed into this magical place of fun and fornication. Grudgingly we all paid in turn, still cherishing a distant hope that the night would turn around for the better. I could not help but think back to other nights in years gone by when I had to pay an entrance fee to get into a club: mostly the unforgettable times spent in the bars and clubs of Europe – in Paris, London, Barcelona…too many to mention. And now here I found myself once again being asked to pay a fee but this time the venue was quite different than those I was used to. But I came here with an open mind and obviously I could not expect things to be the same as back home – I was in the most remote province of South Africa, in a no-name town and about to enter a clearly “white’s only” establishment – the Champs-Elysees this was not.

Very cautiously walking into the place, I realized that we were nearly the only people present. Perhaps the 25 Rand fee was keeping the locals away…The atmosphere that greeted us as we entered the bar did nothing to improve our collective state of mind: a group of white males was huddled in one corner, quietly staring at their Castle lagers, the barroom itself was simply a large concrete, square-shaped area with few distinguishing features besides a dirty bar counter and some dirtier bartenders standing behind it. As I was hypnotized by the greasy fingerprints on my plastic cup which were clearly not my own, I once again decided that I truly did not want to be here. Sometimes you just have to realize a bad investment when you see it and cut your losses…and I was about to do just that when someone mentioned that this was not where the party was taking place.

With very mixed feelings I followed the group to where the actual party was taking place, apparently in a hall at the back, and when I saw this latest architectural miracle (“where germs are born” – although I had not seen the bathrooms at this point) I nearly fainted. But that could also have been due to the lack of food in my stomach. Basically it was the same kind of interior as the bar we had just left, only bigger and, if possible, even uglier. A large concrete hangar, the paint on the walls had mostly disappeared (probably out of sheer misery) and once again the only distinguishing feature was a barcounter in one corner. One thing which did improve – relatively speaking – was the music. While in the “upstairs” we were being treated to the best local Afrikaans folk on offer, “dowstairs” they were playing more mainstream dance mixes: the fact that I thought it was an improvement already indicates how low my standards had sunk by this point.

Our group had silently congregated up and around one of the pic-nic style table/benches when I realized two things: one, I was in dire need of either food or a substance which would allow me to live through this night; two, there was foam coming down from the ceiling.

This signified a turning point in the evening. Either I could take to the hills while I was still dry, or I could jump in without a lifepreserver. I took a cue from a friend, who was as unimpressed with our current situation as I was, and we decided to “test the water” so to speak by ordering a vodka/red bull at the bar. Waiting for this hellish concoction to take effect, I noticed that another of our motley crew had already taken to the foam with great gusto, apparently without the aid of any (legal) stimulants. Seeing a grown up man laughing and dancing while covered in foam, barely-legal local girls in provocative outfits surrounding him, can have a very ambigious effect on one’s state of mind. On the one hand I was appauled that anyone from my group would stoop this low, but on the other I realized that I had nowhere else to go and it was either sulk or swim! So I swam.

Epilogue:

In the end the whole thing was a huge success, despite a very uncertain start and dubious location. The combination of energy drink and Russian liquor did wonders for my constitution and my ability to dive into the foam and come round for seconds. The evening failed to become a complete utopia due to the fact that several local girls and boys – who I suspect have been lobotomized from birth – thought it necessary to point out that one of the girls in our group was coloured. Indeed, what is the world coming to when coloured girls are seen dancing and having fun with friends in what can only be described as a white’s only bar (the only thing missing was the sign saying so)? What really knocked me over – metaphorically – was the unnerving feeling that violence could actually ensue because of this lack of basic humanity exhibited by these local yokels. Fortunately our group consisted of 12 individuals of whom several did not look as if they came last in line when brawn was handed out (don’t look at me, I was last) so our racially & IQ challenged friends soon left us alone. In South Africa nobody can expect the past to be so easily forgotten and attitudes to have changed in a matter of years and while time in this case is certainly a healer it also works extremely slowly – especially in the Northern Cape it seems.

Driving back home after an, all-in-all, enjoyable (and rare) night out, I discovered that even a smooth ride like the BMW 330 cannot distract you from the painful truth of being completely and utterly soaking wet. Murphy’s African branch decided this night would also be ideal to drop the temperature to around 12 degrees, something that had not happened since I arrived here and has obviously never happened again. Of course the car has a state-of-the-art climate control system, which would have worked miracles if we had been a tad damp but we weren’t damp. We were soaked. My toes were doing the back-stroke in my shoes because there was a centimeter of water in them – gore-tex my ass; although I will admit that it was very difficult getting the water out of my shoes.

With an acute outbreak of pneumonia looming over each and every one of us, we eventually arrived back at my appartment in the park. Hot showers were taken, a fire was started with the utmost urgency, wet clothes were being liberally tossed on the braai and whiskey and Southern Comfort were conjured up to (ineffectively of course) combat any viruses and germs we had almost certainly caught. The end of the night would not be reached until the early morning hours, with a hardy few still hugging their blankets around the fire. I cannot describe the look on the faces of the campers who were waking up and making their way to ablution blocks for a wash when they saw what was left over from our “foam group” because yours truly had already taken to bed, but I am assured it was hilarious.