March 6, 2007

Gecko Girls, Good Times……..

What can I say? well I’ll quote some random girl at 2am - “I’ve lived here for 4 and a half years and this is the best fucking party I’ve ever seen at the lake - you people are fucking amazing” - that says it all I think.

My previous intention to drive up to the lake “bright and sparky” early on Friday was foiled by the fact Lauren and I had spent the previous night drinking and dancing in Blantyre until 4am - I’d crashed (to bed) at 430am and was up again at 7am to get organised and go fetch her from having breakfast with her father - something that had seemed pretty important the previous evening as she hadn’t seen him for a while - upon arrival no one at her place thought she was even at the house - still half wasted from the previous night I stumbled through events in reverse and muttered “well..... I thought I brought her home....” as I stared off into the distance hoping a spark would ignite my memory and I’d remember exactly where I’d left her - I mean, someone says you are at their place and they get out and walk to the gate, you wave goodbye and hit reverse for home - you don’t hang around to make sure that they haven’t got out at the wrong house - they are the one that told you to stop there.

Obviously her parents didn’t seem too impressed with the whole “I thought I brought her home” statement.

Luckily the cook appeared, assuring everyone that she did in fact come home and that he’d been woken at 4am by her drunken bumbling attempts to get past a locked gate and find another way in - he’d helped her out and she was now in the spare room - I made an attempt to try and convince everyone that perhaps it had been more like 2 or 3am - but the cook assured all present it was definitely 4am - I thought to myself “cheers for digging my hole a little deeper my friend”.

Lauren appeared - has to be said - looking all for the world like someone who had been dancing on tables and drinking until 4am - and to be honest I guess I wasn’t looking much better - not a great set-up for a meet and greet the folks before a 3 or 4 hour drive to the lake and the beginning of the long wknd to end them all.

Never the less we collected ourselves and got on the road to go collect the Gecko Girls from Zomba - Abbi, Ziggy, Kate and Rose - Paul and John ahead in another car meant we had the room for all. After a few beer stops we arrived at the lake around 11 or 12ish and plans were made for the Saturday night that was brewing.

You see we’d heard of a bar up the beach that was planning a big party that night - it didn’t take us long to make a plan and that plan was basically: flier advertising around the bars of Blantyre, giving the heads up to all we know, getting the night mentioned on the local radio, Gecko girls serving a happy hour of half price drinks, as many shots of potency as possible, bar dancing, I-tunes playlists set up on the computer linked to the speakers and making sure we were stacked up full of every alcoholic drink we could think of.

We knew it would blow the other party out the water, but we didn’t expect the amount of people that actually turned up - apparently it was bigger than new year - there was around 150 people I think, maybe more - you can’t see from the pictures as we could only take a few from early on around the bar - there’s better ones to come from a guy called Dave’s camera that really show how big a night it was - as Paul said, it’s a team effort to keep things running smooth when it’s like that - in a bar of the size of Gecko, which usually accommodates 30 or 40 or so on the average busy Saturday, you need everyone on top of their game - Levi and John gathering empties and sorting lamps and ashtrays, the professor and the guards keeping regular checks on the toilets, Paul orchestrating everything from making sure people had Mozzie spray sitting out on the beach to the bar having small change notes, the girls working the bar and getting people dancing, Anton overseeing everything with Ronald working his socks off to back the girls on the money and drinks side with clean glasses and stocked fridges - not a usual thing to find a bar in Malawi that actually has it’s shit together for such an event.

Special mention has to go to the Gecko Girls - an hours worth of training in the afternoon to get to grips with prices and where things are - they ruled the roost and got things moving when things began to pick up from 7pm onwards - through happyhour at 8 to 9 and then continued to keep the vibe of the evening going from there on in. Kate was Queen and continued on after the happy hour was through - but all four played a great game - even once the Po10C took over - Abbi suffering big time the next day, praying to that white porcelain god and Ziggy forcibly removed from drink serving duties by Kate when it was evident her special blend of chaos and destruction would be of more benefit to the other side of the bar where people where dancing, rather than where money was changing hands and glass was flying around. Rose found her natural home atop the bar dancing all night easily last standing - and repeated the feat the next day staying up till 6am - girl got power.

Could of been the Po10C though.

Which, if you haven’t experienced such ojeni, is the Malawian Samsong - purple shots of power that light up the darkest of eyes and refuel the tiredest dancers - not totally sure what’s in it - all such things say caffeine - but when a drink such as this never makes it out of Southern Africa you do wonder whether the harsher inspections of the EU ingredient brigade have barred it from UK shores and the like - all I know is that if you drink Po10C all night, it’s not far off the same kind of wasted you get with that amphetamine fueled Thai Red-Bull and Samsong mix we indulged in heavily over in Ko-Phang-Nghan.

I couldn’t really appreciate how hectic it was due to being in my corner sorting the music - we’d paced the night with selections that blended well together and every tune was hitting it’s mark for about four or five hours - there was still some intervention required - such as when the Hen party needed some stripper music and it took me less than a second to throw in Stevie Wonders “Superstitious” - generally we just plucked the best from 25GB of music and changed it about to suit what was working - songs of the night being Jamie T’s Calm Down Dearest and Gnarls Barclay’s Smiley faces” & Magic Numbers “Take a chance” along with notable crowd pleaser’s the Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, Faithless, The Strokes, Razorlight, Foo Fighters, The Kooks, The Dears, Raconteurs, Libertines, Finlay Quaye, OK-GO, Bloc Party, Snoop Dogg, OutKast, Beyonce, Kanye West mixed with old classics from the Tribe Called Quest, US3, the Stones, Beatles, Jackson Five, Jimi Hnedrix, Paul Simon, James Brown, Isley Borthers, Kool & the Gang and some less well known funky stuff like Mr.Scruff, Thievery Corp, Rae & Christian, Nightmares on Wax and some local Kwasa Kwasa which really makes people shake their ass.

However, around 1 or 2 am it was evident people were still dancing and wanting more, the playlist created earlier was easing towards a slower state of play - this was not really the time to have to engage brain due to the vast quantities of vodka, Po10C, Jack D I’d consumed - also the generally exhausting nature of concentrating on a computer screen while jumping around the bar area for the best part of five hours actually does take it out of you a bit - suddenly being required to zip around with the mouse find and drag and drop that exact track from library to playlist all within the time of the track that was playing was not quite so easy anymore.

Folk were also fairly wasted at this point and suddenly everyone has that track in mind you have to play and knows that their song is the one that all others need to hear - this is the part of the evening when being in control of the music becomes a curse rather than a blessing - this is the part of the evening when you just want to punch people regardless of whether they are towering South African monsters, babes of note or fucking idiots asking you if you have JJ fucking Cale for the millionth fucking time - who ever the fuck JJ fucking Cale is - I actually snapped at that point and had John throw him out - I remember saying it Pulp Fiction style as well:

Say it again - say JJ Cale one more time - go on, I dare you - say it one more god damn fucking time - I double dare you motherfucker - say JJ fucking Cale one more fucking time!
but you must have JJ Cale?
GONE! JOHN! HE’S FUCKING GONE! GONE I TELL YOU!

In the end I bailed at around 2 or 3am and let Anton take over with his special blend of Shaun Paul and that same fucking Mozambican song which he played four fucking times in an hour.

After final few more double-drinks with Paul to summarise and survey, folk drifted away and I passed out in a chair on the veranda - the lapping of the lake sending me to dream land in seconds - job done.

Though most definitely to be done again one day - for sure-sure.

Spo | March 6, 2007

Spo
Location:Gecko Lounge, Cape Maclear, Malawi.

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