Just Dance

I turn off my headlamp as I pull up on my bike, braking a little too hard to cause my bike to skid across the dirt of the road – needlessly adding to the large amount of dust in the air (but it sounds cool!). After a quick scan I see Dieudonné waiting for me at our usual table. Unusually he isn’t accompanied by Alex and Jean Luc. As I sit down he explains that they are on their way, as if it is perhaps the most pressing news of the evening. And perhaps it is.

It’s Saturday night and I’m in Toma. I’ve been traveling or sick for six of the past eight weekends and it’s really nice to be here and just relax. Saturday nights in Toma are “clubbing” nights for me. There are two dance clubs in town but I only frequent to one, called “La différance.” It has the essentials of a dance club – music and alcohol – without having anything I look for in a dance club in America – music I like, anything besides beer, a gender ratio better than 10:1. Despite this, I usually quite enjoy myself. There is something really fun about a bunch of guys dancing together and enjoying themselves on the dance floor without the American gender roles. On top of that any way I dance here can only be silly to me – to everyone else I’m just being an American.

Alex and Jean Luc arrive shortly after I do, and they decide to move inside, citing the excess amount of dust to be found outside. I’m a little disappointed; inside is fun, but loud, very loud. I’m also skeptical that the amount of dust constantly raining down on us is somehow less in the opened air club, but I don’t say anything and in we go.

And let the dance party begin. There are perhaps twenty young men on the raised, tiled dance floor, surrounded by a ring of beer-drinking spectators sitting at small metal tables. Our table is, as usual, unoccupied. Then comes the next important part of the evening: ordering beer. Service in restaurants, bars and the food industry in general is slow, if it comes at all. Tonight a server walks close to our table and we’re able to get her attention through a series of yelling and hissing (a sound that it seems you never quite get used to). Tonight they only have one kind of cold beer. I’ll take it.

Our server returns carrying two of three beers we ordered, hovering with the bottle opener above mine for me to give permission to open it. I reach out – feeling to make sure the beer is indeed cold – and nod my head approvingly. An average bottle of beer here is about two and half times bigger than a bottle of beer in the states. It took a bit of getting used to, but now when I see an American sized beer (which they call “small” sized here) for sale I wonder how I’ll ever go back to paying so much for so little beer.

The music has been so far par for the course but suddenly something American comes on. I’m stunned for a moment – the only time I’ve heard American here is after begging for it several times – before jumping up to the dance floor. And I’m dancing, trying not to pay too much attention to the ring of gawking spectators around me. I like to think that they are impressed instead of just surprised to see a white person. Hopefully they are a little of both.

And then something happens that I did not expect, someone dances over to me in a slightly spastic but unmistakably Western style. And he’s in my face. Dance off! A few minutes, several-hundred calories and a few cries of surprise later I’m out of breath and pleasantly surprised, that was completely unexpected and a lot of fun!