While the Diaspora meeting was taking place in Paris, I found myself heading east. No no – not Umutara. No way! Instead I was heading to Dar es Salaam for an outing with a couple of buddies.

Our main purpose of the Dar visit was to check out their new night spots and try to shake our bodies left right and centre. So, we headed straight to a drinking hole called California Dreamer.

This is an open air pub which hosts hundreds of revellers. The ambience was fantastic!

It didn’t take us long to start crushing bottle after bottle. We seemed to zero down on the beer called Kilimanjaro – what an uphill task that was awaiting us!

As we continued to swallow, we appeared to be attracting a sizeable crowd of ladies who were so kind enough to reduce our cash to miserable levels.

We danced and guzzled and danced again. Our heads began to spin and the glasses of beers seemed to be re-filling themselves at an automatic pace. The music became louder and louder. We could no longer hear our own voices as the merry making took hold.

What also took hold was my urge to visit the washing room. I felt that I badly needed to consult the Gents room to wash my face and become sober again.

My eyes had lost focus. As people continued to rejoice at the top of their voices, I hobbled around in search of the Gents.

But since my eyes had refused to work properly, I ended up in the ladies room instead of the Gents. As I started to ease myself, I heard voices of females chatting away. This got me concerned. What were ladies doing in the Gents?

I then called out blasting the ladies "Hey you! What are you doing in our toilets?” Almost immediately, all the ladies in the toilets screamed in a lot of fear! They ran outside shouting out loud!

"There is a mad man in our toilets! Please help us!” Naturally this attracted a small crowd of people which included some night watchmen armed with sticks and batons.

They barged into the toilets and hurled me outside with some nice and sweet kicks in my backside. That surely got me sobered up.

I started pleading for mercy "Please forgive me! I thought I was in the Gents room. You see, I left my eye glasses at the hotel” However, the night watchmen were keen on dragging me outside. They believed that I was becoming a nuisance and creating unnecessary insecurity.

That is why the insisted on evicting me. Unfortunately for me, my buddies were not nearby and I couldn’t get a message across to them. But from a distance, I could see them dancing to heavy funky music with their glasses full to the brim.

I raised my voice towards their direction but they couldn’t hear me. The security guys lifted me and threw me outside where I sat and waited for my colleagues. Besides, they are the ones who had the key to our hotel room.

It was approaching 3a.m. I remained outside hoping against hope that my friends would walk out and get me out of my misery. But the lads stayed inside dancing like there was no tomorrow. It was at 7a.m that they finally emerged – in sheer stupor.

They could hardly lift a foot. Whereas I had sobered up, my friends were completely floored. They had lost all their money. They had also lost the hotel keys. They just kept laughing at the top of their voices – non-stop!

I had to find a solution. The only remedy for us was to walk all the way back to the hotel, leave our personal possessions as security for non-payment. We then had to stroll away in hopes of finding a free ride to the border.

Our minds convinced us that we had to convince truck drivers who transport merchandise from Dar es Salaam to Rwanda, to give us a free but long ride. The drivers were all cooperative but the only problem is that we had no space to sit in – the only available place was to be heaped behind with the sacks of imports stashed in the trucks. We had little choice!

God was on our side – we finally made it to Kigali in one piece. We promised ourselves that we would pay another visit to Dar!

diaspoman@yahoo.com