Day at the Goat Races

Saturday morning, I went to Slipway to get a haircut. I had been informed that I could get a white man haircut there. After the haircut I went to get breakfast in a pub named "The Pub". It was fantastic, fried eggs, toast, sausages, rashers, french toast and coffee.

I got a taxi to the goat races and was meant to be meeting Elaine there. She didn't turn up for hours but thankfully, after 2 lonely beers, some of Elaine's friends spotted me. The purpose of the goat races is to raise money for charity. Sadly, it's a once a year thing and not (as I had assumed) a typical African past-time.
There are shops, stalls and a hell of alot of drink. The day isn't actually about the goat races, that's just the excuse.

Out of the 6 races, I saw 4 and bet on 2 (didn't win anything). Elaine won one 5000tsh bet and got back 15,000tsh (€9). All goats have the same odds as it is all very random. The owners of the winning goats got about 1,000,000tsh (€600,000) but of course they all donated it back to charity. Couldn't see myself doing that.
Apparently last year, someone didn't and it was........ a topic of conversation.

The race track is about 50 metres and the goats do 2 laps while the owners and their family/friends stand in the middle. The "jockeys" run behind the goats and 2 guys run with a big bar to make sure the goats go. They usually stayed all together but on the long stretches, sometimes one would sprint away. The jockeys didn't actually do anything. If I was out there, I would have smacked/kicked my goat up the arse to get it moving, on the last stretch anyway. The last race was at 4.50pm and most people seemed quite tanked at that stage. The heat of the sun helped people too.

After the races finished, we went to a house to watch the Liverpool v Villa game and planned to order food in but sadly it wasn't on an available channel so we went to the Garden Bistro for dinner. The day ended at about 11pm and a really crappy night sleep followed.

I woke up at about 3am because next door were having a party and were blasting traditional Eastern African music. I fell back asleep at 5am but apparently the music was still on when Elaine was getting up. My hand sticking out of the mosquito net, allowing a feast for the mozzies, unfortunately didn't aid my getting back to sleep.

Bite me once, shame on you, bite me a few hundred times, shame on me. I'm still Lord of the Flies.