Mid Week Karaoke Adventure

Let me paint a picture for you...you ride in a low-riding car that was factory made circa 1992, the car is pimped out (not by Xibit on MTV, but rather by a poorly trained mechanic probably in Nairobi) with internal strobe lights of various colors (excuse me, colours), and a muffler that hums ever so loudly, muffling the excess bass and moans of Elephant Man. You come to a screeching halt as you have reached your final destination on a Tuesday night...Karaoke night. The first club you go to, Club Streep was supposed to have karaoke, but they abandoned that venture and chose to have a ‘Single’s’ night, where the deal was 200KES for a milk chocolate bar, a rose, and a glass of champagne (brown in colour, no fizz, and a vinegary after taste…the younger girls in our crew bought them, and I tried it…vom city, ew). We aborted single’s night and headed to karaoke at Club Signature, about a block away. You stand, patiently, in the female line to get wanded by the female security guard. Being a mzungu, the female security guard looks at you, smiles and says "hallo, how are you?" as she prods you with the wand and gropes your underwire of your bra. The wand, which beeps with red flashing lights as it surveys your various body parts, you think to yourself, "what possibly could the red light mean? Red means bad, right?" nnnooppee...you're good...she shoves you forward to proceed down the stairs, where you hear the moaning of a drunk older man wailing a 1980's Lionel Richie song. Your heart races in anticipation for a) what a nightclub in Kenya looks like and b) your first ever karaoke experience. 

You enter the club, where more security guards simply stare at you as you walk in..."the wazungu have arrived" must be in the forefront of their thoughts. Our group of multiple med students and doctors finds a table in the crowded club, which is decorated with florescent blue lights, with music bumping, although one of the speakers seems to be having a bad day at is painfully rumbling through the treble of each song. Plasma screen tvs are situated all throughout the club, to portray the lyrics of the songs for the karaoke crowd, other tvs have Chelsea and Man U games on, where clusters of Kenyans sit attentively gazing at the fuzzy green of the soccer fields, only peeling their eyes away for a split second to see who has entered the club. Our wazungu crew finds a table and sit down. A mixed crew of males and females, we are immediately surrounded by ladies of the night, each one of them smiling at the males at our tables, winking occasionally. The waitress comes by and plops 3 Coca Colas and a bottle of Whiskey down at the table and puts her hand out for the money…”okay I guess we are drinking whiskey tonight!?!” I think to myself. The other members of my crew leave the table in search of the song list booklet to humorously pick songs from lists with titles such as “Street Life” (which Whitney Houston was on that list…I am not going to go into my dislike of this classification of Whitney, aka Nippy, but rather pretend like she was misplaced…still in denial).  Most of the Kenyans who were in the queue for karaoke chose 1980s ballads including “I’m all out of love” and Brian Adams, or the girls mostly sided with early 2000 R&B hits from Beyonce. Our wazungu crew sang some pretty hilarious renditions of Backstreet boys and Amy, my housemate, belted out My Humps (both the male and female rap portions!) and barely looked at the screen for lyrics help. I made a promise to one of the guys that next week I would sing R.Kelly’s Bump n Grind…I am hoping that they have the intro to this song, because that is obviously the best part.  

At the end of karaoke, the dancing started. We all got out there, mostly to cock block all of the men from an 18 year old who is in Eldoret and at AMPATH for a ‘gap’ year. Our protection dance circle was quite impressive, as we dance attacked anyone that broke through, scaring away the intruders with our sweaty faces and rosy cheeks. The ladies of the night sought out this opportunity to acquiesce our male friends, flirting with each one and trying to out-dirty-dance anyone else on the floor with more exaggerated pelvic thrusting. Didn’t work for our guys. They knew the game and scoffed at the flirtacious attempts; however, one girl was relentless and ripped a phone out of my friend Josh’s hands, quickly typing in her digits with the name “Liz” and saving in his contacts. His face was priceless as he ripped back his phone and walked away and ‘Liz’ grabbed his face and kissed his cheek. He was amused, only not to her liking to accept her proposition, but to laugh at the sheer fact that it was even happening to him.

A few men attempted a grind with us females, but I think years of dancing in clubs has prepared us all for nights like this. When one feels like the space behind you is no longer a comfortable ‘holy-spirit’ distance from a man’s genitals, you simply ‘dance-escape’ your way to one of your wingmen or wing-women and focus on conducting a non-sexual grind with a friend. If you dance escape from an individual and sexually grind with your wing man or woman, this will welcome the intruder to simply attack for a grinding dance train and you have thus trapped yourself between the wingman or woman and the attacker. Therefore, you must focus on the non-sexual dance escape! I think we nailed it at the end of the night, as most of the creeps molded back into their original spots in the corners of the dance floor. The lesson learned in this night of karaoke is to come in a pack that you trust, a 'ride or die' type of crew. We had an unspoken agreement of protection and it ended up being quite a fun night. I suppose I need to practice for next week's reveal of my inner R&B goddess and perfect my R. Kelly moves...no peeing though, don't know if I can give it the 100% Kelly in Kenya.