Arusha Nights

So I have been avoiding my blog a bit, but I feel like I'm back on track. I need to consolidate a bit or else I'll never actually catch up. And since I can tie in the old stuff with the present this way, it seems like it's the best place to start.

Masai Camp is listed in a lot of the guidebooks as a nice campsite. I'm sure that 5-10 years ago it was. Now it's one of the most popular clubs in Arusha and trying to get a good night's sleep there is nearly impossible (on Saturday night/Sunday morning, the music usually cuts out a little after 6 and you can hear it at our house, which is over 1 kilometer away). In 2010 I went there a grand total of 3 times, which was a reflection of how anti-social I was for the bulk of 2010. Anyway, within the first 10 days of 2011, I had already matched that record.

For New Years, my friend Nick was just finishing up his Peace Corps service (he was my closest volunteer in Kenya) and so we went out to Masai Camp. We got there right before midnight (it's nearly empty until 11 PM) and were just in time to countdown to the new year. It was a fun crowd that night, but since they were charging 10,000 shillings (about $6.70) cover charge (usually it's 5,000) so the floor had more expatriates than normal (and I was getting a surprising amount of attention from strange Indian men). Nick and I were out there until 2 before coming home. We went back the next night since it was Saturday and it was a much more Tanzanian crowd. I was glad to see a bunch of people who I knew and was really bummed that I couldn't enjoy the night more since I had a headache.

The next weekend, we had a group of MIT students staying with us (I'll have a few more posts on this, don't worry), so we took them to Masai Camp. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed being such a large group on the dance floor. My favorite part was being with people who weren't used to all of the typical East African club music (plenty of it comes from America, but there's a good bit of Nigerian Pop and Bongo Flava). Anyway, there were some pretty intense Masai guys there that night, which made it even more fun. Since we were a big enough group, some of us walked home afterward and could hear the music the whole way.

After keeping up that pace, I needed some time to rest and to let my wallet recover. But this weekend my friend Pat (a fantastic Frisbee player from Australia) was having his good-bye party, so I grabbed some Japanese food with a bunch of the Frisbee crew and then they said that they were going to Empire Sports Bar and after some cajoling, they convinced me to come along. It was really exciting. We arrived at 8:30 and there was a live band playing and pretty much no one watching the soccer match on the TV (seemed weird that no one at this sports bar was interested in sports). We split into two tables (one inside where it was pretty much impossible to talk over the music and one outside where people were sharing their travel stories). I moved a bit back and forth between the two. Mostly I was reverting back to my anti-social tendencies (as people were talking about life in Korea and Japan, I was reading The Economist on my phone) and I was ready to head out of there around 11:15 since some of my friends were driving back down to my side of Arusha and I was kinda tired.

One friend brought me out onto the dance floor as I was saying my good-byes and I wound up staying another two hours. The band was a group called Warriors of the East and most of their set seemed to be Bob Marley's greatest hits. The energy was really great and most of the Tanzanians came over to dance with us. There was one huge guy wearing a Boy Scouts shirt he had bought in the market. He kept lifting up Claire and Rose (a couple of our Frisbee players who work at the same organization as Pat) sometimes at the same time, which was kinda cool at first, but probably got a little old after the third time. The only Tanzanian in our group (Jerry works with Pat as well and is crazy good at Frisbee) was an absolute riot out there and kept it crazy. It's been a long time since I've had that much fun on the dance floor.

There is another major club in Arusha called Via-Via, which is typically packed on Thursday nights. Now that IDDS meetings have been moved to 3 AM, I may go every once in a while. I haven't been there yet this year, but I'm trying to be more social.