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Friday, December 09, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
we crashed a local event - 08:53 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
we had the most interesting night tonight! we kind of crashed a local event going on just down the road in an open air public sports area.
we were going down the road to a local restaurant (it was an ethiopian place, as it turns out. by their reaction, they seemed to be very suprised to see white people in their restaurant. i think maybe they wondered if we were lost. 
) & walked past some singing & dancing & drumming going on with quite a number of men dressed in their finest thobes (pronounced with a hard 't') sitting under a marquee & people sitting around watching the proceedings.
on the way back from the restaurant (the dinner was delicious, by the way) it was still going on & so we decided that we'd poke our heads in to see what was happening. it seemed to be a public event, so we kind of snuck into the back corner & squatted there. there were plenty of kids around, so we encouraged smiley to go & play with them. after only a minute or two, a man brought us a chair each so we thanked him & sat down.
smiley had a great time, wandering off a couple of times into the corner where all the women were & came back one time armed with a lolly in each hand!
there was a man with a (still image) camera & another one with a video camera who gave the impression of being some sort of news men covering the event. we were the only white people there & must have been quite an oddity, because we were videod (with our permission) & had our pictures taken several times.
a man serving tea offered us some & we accepted. the tea was served in tiny little handle-less, porcelain cups. each cup was, perhaps, just a bit smaller than an egg cup. the first tea we had smelled like flowers & was lovely & sweet. the second tea was very different & when i quickly swallowed the last gulp i had to consciously restrain my facial muscles from grimacing. rotfl!!!
i'm sure it would have been to some people's taste (obviously, or they wouldn't have been serving it) but it definitely wasn't my cup of tea .. literally. heh.
when the singing & drumming had finished, some formal speeches were made & a song sung by a young boy (it was really lovely). names were called out one by one & each man got up to receive a plaque of some description.
another half an hour or so & some food was served. it was catered food & individually wrapped small platters were served to each person. i was pleasantly surprised when we were each offered one of these. a few minutes later, cans of soft drink were also offered.
shroom was invited by the man who had offered us tea into what might have been a kitchen. i actually wasn't there (it was my turn to run after smiley when he was off playing just outside the gates in a soccer net) but it seemed to be a men's only thing anyway. we never found out what it was since it was getting a bit cool, i was busting for the loo & many people were leaving the event, but i reckon it might have been a bunch of men sitting around drinking coffee & smoking the big water pipes which are common around here in coffee shops.
it was such an interesting evening. we seemed to be welcome, so i'm so glad we gate-crashed the party.
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that second cup sounds like the Arab coffee, rather than tea! It could be quite bitter and normally contains car-d-amom. wasswrongwithyourblacklistthingyitsdrivingmecrazy!