Last night was brilliant.
The hotel we’re staying in is called the Southern Sun, and it has the nicest hotel manager I’ve ever met. He might well be the nicest person I’ve ever met. On our first evening here, he came up to our table and introduced himself, asking if everything was okay and if we were enjoying our meal. He did this with everyone in the restaurant, and once we knew to look for him, we noticed he was always there at breakfast and most dinners, eating the same food as everybody else and in some cases sitting down to join people as they ate. We’ve since learned this guy is called Adrian Penny, and last night (as he does every Wednesday), he through a complimentary cocktail party for the guests of the hotel.
Since we’ve not really had an excuse for a party since we’ve been here, Shawna put on her party dress, I changed into what’s now been dubbed my ‘stud shirt’ (the purple hippy one) and Tom didn’t do anything because he just had a series of graphic tees to choose from.
First order of business was name-tagging. Backstory: it’s been a running theme in Zambia that we can never get the food we order. For the four days we were in the lodge, I tried ordering spaghetti every night but never got it; we tried ordering caterpillar every night because we wanted to try it, but never got it; no matter what I ordered, I always got chicken and potatoes. One night I didn’t even get the potatoes. (The rorshach t-bone steak is the one exception to this rule.) I ordered a smoothie at the hotel, and what I got tasted like strawberry yoghurt in a glass. I ordered a smoothie at a restaurant, and got a slushie. Tom ordered a vanilla milkshake and what he got tasted like “lime – although it might just be off”. The general trend is to expect the unexpected when it comes to Zambian dining.
We ordered lunch at Subway yesterday, which worked out okay because we could go through the ordering process step-by-step, but we discovered it’s just as hard to get names down as it is to get orders. Once the guy had finished making my six-inch chicken breast with lettuce and cheese, he asked for my name, so he could write it on the packaging and thus discern my food from the others. “Alex”, I said. “Alex,” he repeated. “I’ll just write ‘R’.” And he proceeded to write a capital R on the packet with marker pen.
Richenda was next. I said jokingly to her, “what letter would you like?” and she said “RG”. I passed it on. The guy wrote “AG”.
So when we arrived at the cocktail party and discovered that the first order of business was to get a name tag, we had low hopes.
The tags were arranged by country with little flags on each one, pertaining to your nation. Richenda was up first and said she needed two Australian tags. “Name?” the woman at the counter asked. “Richenda,” said Richenda.
The woman proceeded to write out two Australian tags that BOTH said Richenda on them. Presumably, I thought, this woman was choosing to assume not that Richenda was getting a tag for her and another for her Australian friend, but rather that she wanted to have her name and nationality displayed on her body in two different places for no reason at all. But then she baffled me by giving the first tag to Richenda, picking up the second and asked “who is the other Australian?”
So all along she knew it was for two people; she’d just assumed that both Richenda and the Australian guy in the graphic tee next to her bore the same name.
Tom came forward and made himself known. I was the only person that had been paying attention to this mistake, so I was the only person who noticed the woman at the counter subtly crumpling up the second tag with her left hand, picking up the pen in her right hand and saying “your name please?” as if nothing had happened. She had to be commended for that.
Tom said, “Tom”, and she wrote his tag, then looked at me. I said “I’m from the UK” so she could get my tag ready. She wrote Tom’s name on an Australian flag tag, then turned to the UK one, and wrote Tom again on the UK tag.
“No, my name’s Alex”, I said. Baffled. It appears that this woman takes the first name she hears and applies it to every other individual she meets until she is corrected. Whoever put her in charge of name tags was either an idiot or a genius.
Anyway, we finally got our tags and it was all well and good (Shawna spelled her name out one letter at a time so there was no way they could screw it up). The party was a mingling thing to try and get the guests to hang out more with each other (hence the tags), but given there were four of us alerady, we figured we’d just use it to hang out together with complimentary drinks. It seemed the people at the party had other ideas.
A fair few people came over to say hi, one of which (a girl called Alexandra) was from West Sussex, so we bonded over that. I marvelled at how an English girl made the effort to talk to someone she didn’t know, which would never have happened if we were in England. There was also a guy called Ignacio who was at least a head and a half taller than me, and was notable for having two stickers on his chest, both with different flags. He said he had dual citizenship, but knowing the sticker-writer, I reckon he was just trying to save face. Ignacio had spent some time in England, so when I said I was born in Essex, he put his huge hand on my shoulder and said “I’m sorry”.
We were interrupted by Adrian Penny, who took the stage to make a speech, by the end of which I’m sure everyone had decided he was the best person in the world and should be president because he’s genuinely lovely.
Then Tom had an idea.
“Dude,” he said.
“Yes?”
“When we finish these drinks,” he said, indicating to his gin and tonic and my vodka and coke, “we should order a scotchka.”
My favourite film of all time is WALL•E, but coming close second is a film made in 2003 called The Room. It’s the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, who is credited as the film’s creator, writer, producer, executive producer, the director, and the star. In one of the scenes of the film, Johnny (our loveable protagonist) is being persuaded by his future wife Lisa to have a drink so he can loosen up, and we see her putting two scotch glasses on the table and then topping up the scotch with vodka, creating a drink that fans of The Room have dubbed “scotchka”.
So Tom and I headed over to the bar, where Tom ordered a red wine for Richenda and a vodka and orange for himself. I was hoping he’d be the one to do it, but he turned and said, “I don’t have the balls to order a scotchka”.
So it fell to me.
“Thanks,” I said as our unassuming bartender handed me the red wine. “Also, do you have any scotch left?”
He lifted a bottle to indicate he had.
“Could you mix some of that with vodka?”
They looked confused.
“I know it sounds weird,” I said, as if to alleviate their concerns. “It’s not for me,” I added, hoping I could encourage this crazy concoction by mocking our imaginary third party.
And then the bartender responded with something that made him an instant legend.
He took the scotch, and the vodka, and simply said, “with ice?”
I drank a full glass of scotchka last night, and it was fucking disgusting, but I did it.
Bonus anecdote: Richenda bet me 50,000 Kwacha (which is Zambian currency, and equates to about ten dollars) that I couldn’t get someone’s tie around my head by the end of the party. Tom then doubled that bet. I already thought the bartender was going to be the hero of the evening, but of course, I underestimated just how beautifully the Southern Sun is managed…
Nobody at the cocktail party was wearing a tie, because they were all in their party outfits, which were the same as their work outfits except missing a tie. So, after the cocktail party, the four of us headed to dinner, where I had chicken, potato and a bit of calamari. (I’d just tried calamari – squid – for the first time earlier that day and it was a treat. Much better than the deer curry I had previously at the Southern Sun, which was incredibly tough to chew.) Like clockwork, Adrian Penny walked by to ask if we had enjoyed the party and whether we were enjoying our food.
“It’s all great, thanks,” I said, “can I wear your tie?”
It was probably the scotchka talking. But without missing a beat, he reached up to his tie.
“Absolutely you can,” he said. He put the tie on me, and started walking off.
“He’s just leaving!” I whispered loudly to my dinner companions, not understanding why he didn’t immediately want his tie back; and Adrian Penny turned and said casually, “I’ll get it back,” before he continued making his way around the tables and greeting his guests, without a tie.
I had a red wine with my meal, paid for out of my 100,000 Kwacha :D
x
