Last night we had a leaving party for my room mate Ray... Raymond is another Chinese finance student working in the banking sector, astonishingly Ray who is a very busy man always manages to have an impeccable fashion taste and the cleanest of clothes, this is quite an achievement in our household where washing is ten times more time consuming then it would be in New Zealand. Recently though I have discovered the source of his uncanny ability, not one or two, but three different suitcases full of high fashion designer clothes! unbelievable, you'd think the man was packing for a month long G8 summit in Dubai... Still Ray is a good guy, unfortunately we haven't been acquainted for that long, but I have a vivid memory of our first quite comical encounter, I arrived home after a late night on the first evening accidentally waking Ray during my post bedtime process, his first words to me in that dimly lit, muggy, mosquito filled room will stick with me for a while, he just blankly said,"welcome to the jungle" turned over and fell asleep again. Ray is the one guy most responsible for putting the fear of god in me when it comes to mosquito's he's more paranoid than I am and it really rubs off...
So anyway Rays leaving party was meant to be a low key blow out session filled with close friends. Someone forgot to tell the army of Tanzanians and Kenyans who piled into our flat and partied till the break of dawn. These people weren't dodgy in the least, but I can honestly say that I have never seen people party more ruthlessly than this bunch, their shirtless, sweaty games of dare or command were border line equalled only by their dancing technique and love of the local spirit 'konyagi'. I was hit by a mix of culture shock and jet lag that evening, all my full on brave attempts to keep up with my fast paced introduction to this city were finally catching up. Try as I might I could not con myself into the party mood, it is a weird feeling being completely uprooted from your daily life that you are so used to, to be planted in a place where every thing is different.. EVERYTHING is different! The whole way of life here has to be learnt from scratch, it makes for a great time, but can occasionally run you down. I spent most of the evening yarning away with Raymond, Nina and Jim about their differing encounters with the initial shock of the place and began to feel like a shower and a good sleep would be my best medicine. It seems that whenever you are in need of a bit of advice there are twenty people willing to give you differing, sometimes conflicting versions, some you have to take with a grain of salt given that this was a party and the wine was flowing...
I woke in the middle of the night last night in a terribly tired state to find to my dismay that my mosquito net had come untucked and had ridden up over my head. I don't think I could possibly express my head space in that moment, somewhere between a nightmare and frantic panic or scramble to cover myself in repellent, put on a longer shirt, readjust my netting and spend the rest of the night worrying about what might have been.
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