It’s rainy season. Or Power Outage Season, depending on your level of dependence on electronics.
Friday night was the gala dinner. I jumped at the chance to help out LM and MM in decorating for the first part, which had some VIPs coming (the university’s president, a representative from the US, etc). The second part was entirely the students. Let’s just say… the planning skills around here, particularly anticipating what can go wrong, could use some practice.
Part I: Setting up
We met at 7 AM at the university (and left at about 9, because it took forever to work out who would take us– surprise!).
On the way there, they discussed the backdrop. They hadn’t seen places to hang anything when they scoped out the area before. MM called the carpenter, and told him to come to the hotel right away and set up a backdrop.
She hung up, and there was a pause.
“He didn’t have anything to do today,” she said firmly.
She hadn’t even asked him. Laughter ensued.
We got to the Gulf Hotel, and the plan was to meet the guy who was there already, who should have been directing the setting up of tables so we could begin decorating. Guess what nobody did? Yup. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said in English. “It’s a matter of minutes for these guys.”
So instead, we had breakfast in the little overpriced cafe in what will always to me be the Skull Lobby. The ceiling looks amusingly like Aztec skulls. This hotel was where the president hid during the conflict, and apparently it set them back so much that they never had the money to update any of the decor.
As is the rule with overpriced food, they went out of their way to make it terrible. Not recommended.
An hour later, the ‘matter of minutes’ was still not up.
Eventually we were able to start setting up. A gaggle of students wandered about, trying to work out their fashion show. One of my best bio II students was one of the students in charge of that. She’s responsible, a somewhat rare trait at the school. They spent several hours milling around, strutting around the stage, and playing music with English lyrics. Very filthy English lyrics. Including F bombs prominently featured.
LM had done all the decorations planning, and they turned out beautifully. MM had tried to have her say, I’m told, but I’m also told it was mostly HGTV ideas on a, well, student budget and timetable…. She did do the backdrop, which turned out quite nicely.
For my part, I did my best to be helpful and learn quickly and be a cheerful face in the midst of chaos and not screw anything up.
This meant, at various points: rinsing novelty wine glasses flecked with imperfections and a few bubbles (“High quality glass!”) in the tiny hotel bathroom; fruitlessly waving said wine glasses under the pathetic hand drier; decorating said wine glasses with ribbon and fake flowers; putting napkins artfully folded in drink glasses, turning every single one around after a correction from CG; agonizing over the lining of table runners that seem to turn on you the second you walk to the other side; shoving trash into a bag; and holding up ribbon so they could hot-glue it onto the wall.
At 3 PM, LM and I both needed food and water. MM obsessively stayed to do the two columns in ribbon and flowers.
Again, lousy overpriced food from the cafe. Is fresh bread really that hard to get? Come on now.
After, off to SOCOCE for hair. LM wanted hers up and smooth, and it’s exactly the wrong length and consistency for the owner to do herself. She showed a picture to the Ivorian ladies, and they proceeded to put their own spin on it. Ivorian style.
Well, it was back, and it was smooth.
They were quite proud of themselves. We were horrified.
She was like an anime character: pulled back and smooth, except for two ropy strands doing whatever the heck loopy thing they felt like.
Needless to say, when we got back to the hotel we fixed it. We also donned our best dresses, since it’s a ball. It was nice to have another person to zip them up, instead of breaking our shoulders in the attempt as usual (I’ve gotten good at stringing a thread through the zipper and pulling it up that way). It probably should have been makeup as well, but I’ve lost patience with makeup. Africans use makeup like art, and I am definitely not up to the standards.
Part 2: The Gala
The gala was as to be expected: full of beautiful people, very late, and loaded with what were apparently pointless speeches. It began at 8:30 at least with lengthy introductions of the guests (this seems to be a theme). Now, my sister holds that we should conform to CI standards and just expect to be late. Then don’t make us all be there on time. The shuttle from IUGB brought those poor souls by 7, when they always intended to start at 7:30, and they didn’t actually start until at least 8:30. I also disagree that we should support destructive behaviors, but that’s a battle I only fight in the classroom.
Even when we did start, the room was only 1/3 full.
The poor servers stood behind that food for 2 hours, patiently waiting to serve us.
The students did their dance routine that they did when Andrew Young visited, only with about 1/3 the enthusiasm, and the choir sang “Oh Happy Day.” There were speeches in between. “What are they saying?” I asked my neighbor. “I don’t know,” she said, scrolling down Facebook. “I haven’t been listening.” About 1/3-1/2 of the faculty there were on their phones. After a long inward struggle, I joined. There’s only so long you can amuse yourself staring at dresses and hair and makeup at 9 PM on an empty stomach. I usually try to set a good example for the students. Oh well.
Most importantly, at the very end, they announced the students who were studying in the US or England (mostly US), and who had achieved honors.
One of my students was there, and she well deserves all the applause and honors. A scientific mind, which was lured away from political science and towards forensic biology. Muahaha. I hope she continues, because she will be brilliant at it. I live for those students.
We ate at 9:30 pm. Nine. Thirty. Pee. Em. Not a big deal in many countries, I know, but a big deal to someone who grew up eating dinner at 5:30-6PM and who goes to bed at 9.
By this time, the room was full.
One of the female Ivorian professors entered at just this time. Everyone joked about how good her timing was. She had been texting someone inside the room, waiting.
Mercifully, the food was…. good. There was an appetizer course (I’m probably getting course names wrong here, but these things take long enough to write as it is without looking them up, so deal) with basically fancy Spam and a variety of smoked cold meats and salad. I’d have been happy with just that, frankly. But then they had MORE fish and chicken and beef and crappy potatoes but whatever and what looked like a roast pig sans head sitting there. And couscous. Couscous is quite popular here, what with close ties to Morocco and all, and it’s consistently delicious. I don’t mean the balls of grain, which is meh, but whatever they do to those vegetables is one of the best things ever. Dessert was fruit (typical) and fancy little pastries. A noticeable lack of chocolate.
It ended very quickly after eating.
At this point, we were supposed to take away ALL blue for the student part.
LM came up to me, a look of amusement on her face. “The students have a problem. There is no clean silverware or plates left for their part.” Somehow, that meant we couldn’t move anything.
I went up to bed (finding an email from our Dean sent at 11:30AM telling us there was a gala, we’re invited, could we tell him if we plan on taking the bus?).
LM got back around midnight– her plan had been to supervise the student part until she couldn’t take it anymore. She spent about 5 minutes pulling about 500 bobby pins out of her hair.
MM was still down there, and apparently ‘seemed to be enjoying it.’ She couldn’t very well come back to her room, because she let the students dress there. We knew. We could hear the students. Soundproofing is not A Thing in the Gulf Hotel. Also noisy air conditioners. Although I didn’t sleep well, I woke up at 4:30 AM to find LM gone.
She hadn’t been able to sleep, so she went back downstairs to clean up after the students. There was a lot of that to do. They had left trash everywhere, left the costumes and the drums, left everything for us to clean up. I found out later they had trashed MM’s room.
At 6:15, LM and I sat in the Skull Lobby and wished the cafe was open.
They had quite an adventure getting home, but I left at 6:30 on a different sort of adventure.
I think at this point I’d better publish this, since it’s already taken forever. To be continued….
For World Science 
Thanks Marie for this story. Very interesting!
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