June 4th - Club Afrique and Florida

After my birthday, the begining of the week was laid back and Becca and I went to Sarakasi and then would go straight home. That Thursday (June 4th) we decided to go see Eric Wainaina perform at his usual Thursday night gig at Club Afrique. Last time I was here he performed on Sunday’s but now it’s moved to Thursday. I can’t even begin to say how excited I was to go and see him perform again. I got to know Eric’s company Rainmaker and its staff really well and it was like a homecoming seeing them again.
Eric’s shows are really up beat and I love all of his music and know it really well now. Becca and I went and met up with Eskil (previously mentioned as a Sarakasi co-worker, he’s here training the acrobats, he’s from Norway and is a professional balancer and performer. If you google Eskil Ronningsbakken you’ll see the crazy stunts that he’s done) and we were sitting and dancing and just having a good time. There’s one part where Eric calls people up on stage to share a dance move and since he spotted Becca and I and recognized us he pulled us up. As other Kenya people will know there is one move from Sarakasi that I always do when called up. It’s an African move and always cracks everyone up because here is this mzungu girl doing a clearly African move. It was so much fun.
After the show ended we decided that we wanted to go out somewhere and being that it was Thursday we decided to go to a club called Florida 2000 (or Madhouse) downtown. First off, I know its funny that the club is called Florida. Secondly, Florida is notorious in Nairobi especially in regards to the number of hookers there. Lastly, Florida is located in a Seattle Space Needle shaped building with a disco ball exterior located above a gas station. At least now you’re interested. Florida is mostly frequented by people that 1) know that whatever night or time it is someone will be there, or 2) are tourists (whether they admit it or not) looking for a hooker. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, because we were going there ourselves but the best way to describe Florida is notorious. I had only been once before, last time for Kim’s birthday (It was a Monday night, where else could we go?).
So the three of us get to Florida and the first thing we see is a white man and a Kenyan girl arguing outside the club. Our cab driver says politely “that man and his girlfriend are having a disagreement” and we’re like ‘yes, his “girlfriend”’. We go inside and the first thing Becca says is that she doesn’t know why people think that Florida is so bad – this is even funnier in retrospect. We go, and wouldn’t you know Thursday is disco night, so we were just dancing ridiculously and having fun. Then around 1:00 everyone gets cleared off the dance floor because they have a nightly show. The show is a group of dancers from Mombasa. They started dancing some African, and salsa, and everything seemed fine – it was just a poor quality dance show. By the finale Becca understood why Florida had its reputation. The last dance number had the 6 girl dancers in short skirts which they were shaking in a way that you could clearly see that they were only wearing thongs. The hilarious part being the fact that in earlier dance numbers they had spankies on. They must have gotten lost somewhere during the show. So here come the girl’s butts out and you’re like okay it’ll end here – but oh my friend, it did not. What then proceeded to happen was that with the help of the three male dancers and a willing (or unwilling?) audience participant each girl more or less simulated having sex. Classy right? I won’t go into so many details but let’s just say that there was a lot of gyrating and a lot of things I think I could have died before really needing to see.
After their performance I was joking with Becca that I no longer felt comfortable being on the dance floor because I really don’t need anything they might have. We left shortly after because really there are only so many moves one can break out to bad disco music and it was late. I don’t really see myself going back to Florida anytime soon but who knows. It really is an experience though and despite the fact that I think it is impossible to feel clean while in that building, it is funny.