Gatecrash

Mercifully, this weekend I have been able to avoid work. This has been extremely welcome, as without much downtime of late, I have been experiencing an unhealthy balance.

This afternoon I went with Virgilio, his partner Amata and their son to the outskirts of the city close to the beach. A new friend, Gisela, has built a house on a plot of land, and we wanted to see it. We had the tour and heard about the various disputes with neighbours and tradesmen. These sound par for the course.

Gisela has one of those Alexa contraptions that can play music, control the lights, read the news etc. Virgílio and Amata lived in Mali briefly because of her work and are both very artistic and into African music. Alexa didn’t recognise the name of Malian artists; instead responding to the voice command by playing Celine Dion.

Later they took me to the birthday of another friend, Marinela, who didn’t seem to mind that a random character was gatecrashing the intimate gathering at her home. I felt very fortunate to attend, to meet interesting characters and have fascinating discussions with people from all over: France, Zimbabwe, Kenya, the US, Mozambique. On arrival I detected cigarettes with the scent of cloves and realised an Indonesian woman was part of the group. That smell, which I find very pleasant, is unmistakable, and so ubiquitous in Indonesia that reducing smoking levels there will be extremely difficult. The Indonesian woman and her French husband had spent 6 years in Aberdeen, as well as time in Houston, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria, Kuwait and Delhi. Really funny hearing about their efforts to obtain delicious Indonesian cooking ingredients in various parts of the world. Chinese supermarkets seem to be a reliable source.