Nice People RULE!

There is a steep price to pay for being a fabulous hostess, and I think I got double-billed this morning. It's not like there was a chance in HELL I was gonna make it downtown for a 7 AM staff meeting this morning ANYWAY, but the fact that I consumed about a bottle and a half of white wine, a "tetch" of Johnny Walker Green Label, and several healthy snorts of champagne last night at one of my legendary "Candlelight Suppers," definitely destroyed any possibility that I would be upright before 8 AM.

I guess I was just happy to be back in the hostessing swing of things, and glad to welcome the woman in the middle of this shot to Nairobi. Anne is an editor extraordinaire for NPR, and it has been too damned long since we've had time to get caught up. Over the past few years, whenever I've been back in DC, her work schedule and my frantic attempts to get a million things done in my slim window of time on American soil have sorely eclipsed our girlfriend gab time.

Also featured in this picture is our friend Gwen, who's the East Africa correspondent for NPR. She travels so much that for the first year I was here, I may have seen her 3 times. But because Gwen may be headed back to the US soon for a fellowship, I'm seeing her more often and loving it (although she is headed to hot, dusty, politically wacky Juba, Sudan tomorrow for 10 days...Ahhh, the life of a foreign correspondent...).

The person taking the picture is Susan, another friend who's lived in Nairobi 15 years, and is a former AP foreign correspondent. Susan is one of the smartest people I've ever met, and I swear you can mention any subject in the world and she either has personal knowledge or has read up on it. Sadly, Susan does have one minor flaw---she refuses to forget the first time I invited her to dinner after I had just moved into the Lizard Apartments, and I served her some locally produced ostrich egg pasta that dissolved into a mushy pulp the minute it hit the boiling water. To her credit, Susan choked that hideous mess down like a trooper, while I spent the entire evening apologizing. But ever since, she has taken malicious pleasure in threatening to publicly expose that Byzantine culinary blunder at every possible social opportunity. So I've decided to strip her of that power by outing myself. Take that, you evil brainiac!!!

If I'm honest with myself, moments like these make expat life quite lovely. If you light enough candles, and keep enough adult beverages flowing, and share enough funny stories about life on the road, and welcome enough good friends from home to experience the really wonderful parts of the country you're living in, and you relax and tell yourself that, for the most part, life is pretty damned good, all of a sudden, you start actually believing it.

Still, a sista's gotta get a handle on the hooch at some point. I've felt like 4 miles of bad road all day today. Fortunately, a remedy is in store....