Finished Up Week Three and Went to a Christmas Party…..

…..this week went really well and, for one thing, I got caught back up on my rest. Now I go into a six-day week but it involves three 2-day classes so it should go smoothly and quickly. I head back for home one week from tonight (Saturday).

COTCO held their annual Christmas party last night and I was invited and enjoyed myself thoroughly. After three weeks in the country, it was the first evening I had spent outside the hotel room and it was good to get out.

The theme of the party was Christmas but the setting was traditional African. There were about two hundred people in attendance and I would guess just about every one of them at one time or another introduced themselves to me and welcomed me. It really was a mixture of African music, food and traditional African clothing.

The music being played is often referred to as “palm-wine music” and is something I’ve been familiar with for a long time—in fact I bought my first palm-wine CD several years before I started this job. It features xylophone and keyboards with multiple drums. It’s thought to be an old music genre and probably the basis for the Caribbean reggae music that came out of West Africa. It’s almost all instrumental and, unlike a lot of reggae music, doesn’t have all that political stuff involved. Basically its just happy music.

It really was “African”—three or four Western COTCO employees from Europe were there and there were about a half-dozen white contractors in attendance (I am considered a contractor which basically means consultant.) I found it kind of interesting that they arrived and mixed in but then all sat at one table together. They had two food buffets—one traditional African and the other was a mixture of European and Chinese. The only time I talked to any of them was when I was standing in the buffet line for the African food when one of them came over and asked me if I realized which line I was in. I told him yes and thought to myself, “I’ve been eating this for the past three weeks.” I did eat some things I didn’t recognize but, what the heck, it’s Christmas. As always when I’m traveling, however, I do keep my pocket container of Lomotil and Levaquin within reach at all times.

The only real problem I had last night was communicating. While English is the official “working language” of COTCO, it is French that is spoken almost exclusively even within the workplace. Still, it was a good time and a first-time experience for me and I had a good time…..