The Beginning of the End

The Savage has flown, the first of the volunteers are officially heading away back to distant civilization, marking the beginning of our final stage in Ghana. We celebrated with a ridiculous party in the beach house at Kokrobite. Yes, the beginning of the end would start with a BANG if we had anything to do with it!

...In fact there are only fragments of the actual night itself I remember.

I remember drinking packets of neat gin with that dude off The Hangover, the one who can't do anything except play cards. Yes, it was actually him, and he was hanging around with his friend from Holland.

I remember the rest of my alcohol then being gently, but firmly confiscated by The Savage, and rushing around in a panic yelling at all the others (and a couple of complete strangers) that she was going to take my hip flask back to Canada with her, and we musn't, musn't let her because it would be a terrible, terrible thing to happen.

I remember a lot of hysterical drunken yelling, the word "MOOSE!", and about twenty repetitions of the song "DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONEEEE, DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN ONE DOWN IN O-ONEEEE, DOWN IN ONE DOWN IN ONE, DOWN IN OOOONEEE DOOOOWN IN OOOOONEEEE....." etc etc etc.

I remember staggering off down the beach with some of the volunteers and some friendly local Rastas, who then proceeded to rob one of us blind and hurl her bag onto the roof of a shack, where it would later be discovered in the cold, sober light of the next morning completely empty. Perhaps that Ghanaian who had been yelling "DO NOT GO WITH THEM! THEY ARE CRIMINALS! THEY ARE CRIMINALS!" at our drunkenly retreating backs had had a point.

I remember being encouraged to dance around a beach bonfire, singing some African Tribal music. Or perhaps that was just the yells of a bunch of extremely pissed people; hard to distinguish.

I remember one of the boys, who will henceforth be referred to as Spock after the joys of a recent haircut- finding an emaciated puppy on the beach and feeding it a kebab, while slurring at the rest of us that "this is m'new besht friend... and hish name is TJ.... and the rest of you are all rubbish...."

I remember falling over about a million bodies to get back into the house at two a.m and miraculously scoring the only bed in the entire building. Don't anyone ask me how I managed that because I have no idea.

And then I remember more or less everything about the next morning; waking up to find that a bomb composed of gin sachets, empty bottles and playing cards had exploded on the roof, falling back over a million bodies to get out of the house for a shower, and the dull throbbing at the base of my skull which totally overrode any memory of the previous night.

What a bloody great party.