Water and Tea III

The crowning jewel to our water logged, tea-less day was our 3am wake-up call. I woke up to a mosquito buzzing in my ear and as I repositioned myself under the netting I realized that there was some kind of drumming/singing going on nearby. In my half-asleep state I didn’t think twice about why, at 3am, there would be what sounded like a native ceremony going on in the hotel. It didn’t take long for me to wake up and realize that not only was Susan also awake, but our neighbors, Joanna and Jane were giggling on the other side of the wall. After sending them a text message, we met them out on our balcony to exchange complaints over the half wall. They told us that the group of men that had been watching the Angola-Malawi soccer game in the hotel bar were still there and had broken into a mix of ABBA and Rwandan drinking songs, accompanied by drumming on a yet unknown object. Our program director had been on the phone with the hotel manager who was planning to avoid asking the men to leave by simply turning off the power to the hotel. Five minutes later, as the four of us munched cookies, laughing and trying to guess who of our group would still be asleep through all of this, the hallway lights turned off.

After 30 minutes of barely fledging din, the power turned back on and our giggles gave way to exhaustion. We headed back to our beds oblivious of the time when the noise actually faded. The next day, our usually reserved program director, Eric, put on his papa bear face and went to have a talk with the police and the hotel manager. The threat of twenty paying customers leaving early, coupled with extra police guardianship the following nights was enough to guarantee us a good night’s sleep for the rest of the week.