Last week Kees and I accidentally threw a party! Neither of us have ever, ever organized a party, especially not at our house. It was a really exciting experience. I learned so much and can now appreciate (even more!) how much effort goes into planning just a simple get together party.

What started off as a 9-person band practice, turned into a full blown BBQ party. An innocent, last minute “oh, well maybe so-and-so would like to come listen to us practice” turned into a 71 person party, 73 if you include the two cops who paid us a lovely visit at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Long story short, Kees used to play in an African drumming band. The whole thing started over a decade ago with one talented drummer from Guinea named Momo. It has been seven years since the original band has played together so it was a really special night to have them all drumming again.

Our good friend Mario opted to be the chef and arrange all of the meat and he blew us away with his skills! He is truly the kind of guy that can do ANYTHING and does it fast and well. I tried asking if he would write my third book for me but apparently that’s the only thing he can’t do. Dang! Mario helped us set up all the tents and tarps before hand, brought chairs, a couch and spent the entire night cooking up delicious steaks, sausages and hamburgers for our guests. And I am going through withdrawals from the best spare ribs I have ever tasted in my life.

I managed to surprise myself when I realized that the people I personally invited were all from different countries. Including myself, I had somehow invited eleven nationalities from five continents (Holland, Canada, Hungary, South Africa, Poland, USA, Romania, Korea, Suriname, Jordan and Australia). I guess that’s what happens when you’re a world traveller/expat. We had such a varied, great bunch of people who made it an absolute blast.

Mom’s baby owl, Echo, was a hit as was the Vodka my friend Amy from South Africa gave us with a dead scorpion at the bottom. Kees put out the bottle for everyone to drink and promised that as soon as it was finished he would eat the scorpion. He is a man of his word! Once he’d chewed up the scorpion which he described as crunchy in some places, and soft in others, he went to rinse it down with beer, only to realize that the bottle he grabbed had been used as an ash tray!! I’m pretty sure the mouthful of wet ash and cigarette butts was worse than the giant bug.

Kees’ nephew managed to give our guests the best surprise of the night with his outrageously gorgeous firework display. I felt like the Count of Monte Cristo when they were exploding over our backyard.

I must give full credit to Arjen, from Dienske Fotografie, for the amazing photography (DF logo) of this memorable night. I felt extremely spoilt having our very own chef, photographer and drummers. Next time someone will have to volunteer to be the bar tender.

I truly feel blessed to have such wonderful people around us and in our lives. It took us days of preparations and days of clean up, but we all strongly agreed it was worth every ounce of effort. We were surrounded by wonderful friends and family.

And the best part? It was for absolutely no reason, and we didn’t let the torrential rains spoil our fun together.

Savannah

P.S. I would LOVE to throw a party like this one day for my Sihpromatum fans, fellow travellers and bloggers.

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