the real world: naibor

I dont usually like to write this sort of blog, but on this occasion i could not resist. This past night at naibor had all the makings of an episode of the real world: sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Ok, well there wasn’t much rock n roll, but we can pretend. If I had to pick a soundtrack for the night, it would have to be the Buckcherry song with the chorus line ‘I love the cocaine, I love the cocaine. As for the sex and drugs, no pretending necessary.

Now I wont say who the clients were that caused all this drama, because, well that would just not be very professional. All I can say is that it was an inidan guy named anuch, who was friends with one of the directors, and two girls that he met in a bar in Nairobi, who he subsequently invited down for a night to impress them. Well I guess that about says it. Oops.

All we knew before their arrival was that two people were arriving that are friends with someone on high and we were to treat them accordingly. There was a rumor that it was even one of the sons of one of our illustrious directors. This suspicion was immediately invalidated as two young American girls climbed out of the land cruiser and presented themselves as our newest guests.

We, the management, exchanged some confused looks, speculated as to their connection with the directors, and went about our business. I was given the task of briefing and welcoming them. This involves your standard ‘watch out for the animals and don’t get eaten’ speech. During this little chat, I tried to glean as much information as possible as to their origins and connections to naibor, but I failed miserably.

An hour or so later, after they had been settled in their tent, we received a call that the third member of their party was arriving in his own car. The plot thickens.

From a two-door blue range rover emerged anuch. He exuded an undeserved sense of entitlement and an air importance usually reserved for heads of state….or extremely arrogant assholes. He explained that he been driving around the mara, scouting out locations for two luxury camps that he was planning on opening in the future, all the while sparing no expense. I though to myself how lucky I might be to get the chance to shine this man’s Gucci boots. Little did we know at the time, this guest had been airmailed to us direct from hell.

But this was not the only story of the night set to unfold; a few hours before the arrival of our three esteemed guests, some clients of ours, both with irish ancestry, set off for a balloon ride. A balloon ride entails a 430am wake up followed by a 5am departure to make it to the launch site in time for a 630am liftoff. The flight lasts an hour to an hour and a half and upon landing, the clients are treated to a champagne breakfast. The champagne does not stop flowing. In short, they began drinking at 745am and did not stop for the entire day. But well come back to them.

Intrigue was abound once our three guests, anuch, reim and Christine settled in. there was clearly something between anuch and Christine, but as the wine began to flow, the interest of anuch shifted towards her friend, reim. Drama was on the horizon.

In the meantime, our Scottish guests departed for their evening game drive around 4pm, having arranged for a sundowner; basically a picnic cocktail party. This arrangement was made after they spent the afternoon by the river drinking wine as if it was their job. These people, by the time of their departure, were not safe within 100ft of an open flame due to the high likelihood of spontaneous alcohol-induced combustion.

The afternoon passed uneventfully as our three guests drank and anuch, our new resident playboy, worked his magic on his two little birds. He kept the wine flowing and asked that the tab for the three person party be placed on his room, and his room alone. The joke here lies in the fact that they were drinking house wine, which, as the name suggests, is on the house. He knew this, I knew this, but his guests did not. So I let him play the part and inflate his small-man ego.

I went for a shower around 645pm and returned to the campfire around 715pm. Reim, anuch and Christine were still sitting by the fire downing wine (free, house wine) as anuch ordered bottle after bottle, requesting that it all be billed to him.

Our Scottish couple rejoined us a little later, we went to dinner, and our guests showed no signs up letting up. About halfway through the appetizer, anuch and reim disappeared for about ten minutes. They came back with fresh faces and a case of the sniffles. Not to mention the personality of someone jacked up on some fine china. Their mouths ran at ninety-to-nothing and small beads of sweat dripped down their foreheads as they sniffled away, suddenly losing interest in their roasted red pepper and tomato soup. All this despite having drunk enough wine to poison a small elephant. Patrick and I exchanged a suspicious look.

This little disappearing act was repeated about 3 or 4 times during dinner, but they never all disappeared together. Most of the time anuch went with one or the other, and one occasion the girls went off together. My favorite was their excuse used for the third departure from the dinner table; ‘im going to get a book, well be right back.’

A book? A little light reading at dinner seems like the perfect thing to complement to some lively conversation and wine drinking.

The night proceeded as our three guests continued to inhale copious amounts of cocaine and our Scottish friends kept right on drinking.

Eventually, after dinner and some time by the fire, the requests for the johnny walker black label came out. This, unlike the house wine, is not complimentary for our normal guests. Anuch sensed this after the third or fourth glass ordered by his female guests, and pulled me aside. He asked how much each tot was and sat back down, knowing full well that he would not be paying a dime.

A short time later, as one more black label was ordered, he said, above normal conversational tone, that it should be placed on his room bill. This was really starting to get to me. Not only did he pretend to pay for everyones free wine, but he loudly proclaimed that he would pick up the tab for the whisky as well. Idiot. As a guest of one of the owners, he wasn’t paying for a damn thing. He was getting everything comp’d. he knew this full well, but like I said, small-man ego.

As the night drew on (much like this story, but sorry, I gotta write to stay sane) anuch’s interest had switched entirely to reim and, sensing this, Christine, the original object of his affection, became disgruntled. So what did she do? What any sane, healthy girl would have done to soothe her emotions; lots of cocaine. Now they weren’t telling us that they were doing this, but youd have to be an idiot not to figure it out.

Meanwhile, our Scottish guest, mark, and his new wife jillian, were getting piss drunk. The request came out for campfire songs and I sat back to watch the magic unfold. Christine launched into some smoky-sounding jazz numbers, her voice with some nice whisky gravel in it. Mark thought he could top her and began to serenade us with some nice, family style tunes; these happened to be folk songs of the IRA. I shit you not. They were about setting up bombs and blowing away british soldiers, with a nice chorus of ‘o mama, help me’. Touching, really.

His wife did not like this. At this point she began to try and drag him away, forcefully at times. She pleaded with him to shut up, as some of our guests happened to be from England, which have traditionally not been the strongest supporters of their friends across the straits, in this case the IRA.

He then went on to rant that these men who had planted bombs and shot up soldiers were not terrorists by any stretch of the imagination, they fought for religion. Sounds familiar, no? I wonder what his take is on the bombers that drove a flaming truck into Glasgow airports.

The love triangle plot was growing by the minute. Anuch’s attention was now fully on reim and Christine, feeling rejected, turned to talk to me. I guess the cocaine had run out. She made a point of letting anuch know that she was now talking to me, who up until this point, had pretty much remained silent and enjoyed the show. I didn’t really entertain this new conversation; I hated her for using me as a pawn in this whole drug-alcohol fuelled love triangle.

We have now reached the boiling point of this story. It was the end of the night, and time to go to bed. But two questions remained; who would anuch try and go home with, and how the hell was this poor Scottish newlywed going to get her husband to shut up about the IRA and get him back to the tent. Judging by the hushed answers given in response to how he knew these IRA songs, im pretty sure they had some IRA background in the family, at least on the husband’s side. In fact, im pretty sure that we had the son of a former IRA soldier on our hands, judging by his take on the ‘freedom fighters’ and his intimate knowledge of their songs and customs.

Mark was drug home by myself, his wife and one masai askari. I usually don’t stick around with clients this late unless theyre my age, but in this case it would have been a bit of a liability to abandon them this drunk. I, on the other hand, was dead sober; I made one glass of red last me through most of dinner and the proceeding camp fire. Earlier in the night, after the repeated incantations of IRA songs, mark mused that he might not be getting any honeymoon action tonight. Im pretty sure he was right.

Anuch, reim and Christine had now become a full-blown disaster. As they prepared to head to their tents, anuch had his arm around reim and was asking her which tent they should go to. At this point, Christine had had enough and demanded that anuch stay behind and talk to her. This was too good to miss. Myself and another masai walked reim back; she seemed dejected, but nothing that a little nose candy couldn’t fix for her. Im pretty sure that as I walked away from her tent I heard some loud sniffing sounds.

Now I don’t usually like to eavesdrop, but this one was not to be missed. I pretended to help the staff clean up around the fire and messtent as the argument began to rage.

‘I came all this way to see you, and you ditch me for my friend!’ a female voice yelled.
‘well, uhhh.’ Drunk. ‘I didn’t see the problem, you were, uh, talking to that grant kid.’
‘only because you weren’t talking to me.’ Ah, what a self-esteem boost.
‘well im sorry.’ At this point he tries to pull her close, and she recoils.
‘what did you expect from us, a threesome!?!’

this was a loaded question that required a delicate answer, which did not come. After a little too much wine and whisky, our friend anuch was feeling a little too honest at exactly the wrong time.

‘well the thought crossed my mind….’ Idiot.

After this, he had totally lost the argument, which had now been raging for about an hour. The above is simply an abridged version. They set off for their respective tents and upon arrival outside of anuch’s tent, when he asked her to come in (this don juan simply did not get the point) the argument began anew, and this time it could be heard around camp. I had to intervene. I politely asked them to choose a tent, as they were in danger of waking up our sober clients. Not only that, but there were elephants around tent 6, and an elephant is not something you want to piss off in the middle of the night.

She rejected his advances, and he stormed back to the bar to berate our innocent bartender, joseph. He demanded two bottles of wine to be opened. Joseph politely advised him that he would open only one, and then if he still needed another, then a second would be opened. He did not like this at all. He became irate, at which point we had to shut him up again. Finally he got the point, grabbed his bottle and left. Cue the eric Clapton song ‘cocaine’.

Instead of going for the sure thing, our little playboy had pissed off both his guests and managed to wind up drunk and alone. Sweet revenge for us, the management, who will now surely have to field complaints from playboy as to why not enough wine was served, not enough women wanted him, and not enough drugs were on hand.

This was the first time, in my knowledge that drugs had come through naibor, and hopefully the last. Policy dictates that, if we have proof, such guests are asked to leave. But in this case, all we had was speculation, and the guest in question was a friend of the owners, so we could do nothing.