Gargar on Tour – Day 05: Sun 18 Sept 2011

Bulawayo
St. Patrick’s Hotel, Bulawayo
The following morning, Fabien showed up at the hotel just after breakfast. He asked me to accompany him to Hillside Dams and go over the technical details with the sound crew.

Hillside Dams, Bulawayo
The Hillside Dams was a very scenic set in the more affluent side of Bulawayo. It was a park with a dam in it and the stage was overlooking an amphitheatre curved out in the rocks.

Hillside Dams

The sound crew had followed my technical rider to the letter, including monitors and how they were configured and they also included side fills. Very impressive.

The-stage-@-Hillside-Dams

Fabien was concerned that everything was to our satisfaction before he took me back to the hotel. This was going to be a family show and was set for 4pm that afternoon.

Papa’s Restaurant, Bulawayo
Gilmore came by later at 12.30pm or half twelve as they say in Zimbabwe, and took us to Papa’s for lunch. Papa’s was a nice diner, which reminded me a lot of restaurants in Stone Town Zanzibar: it had an Arab-Swahili look about it.

As we had lunch, which ranged from sadza (Zimbzbwe’s version of East Africa’s ugali), rice, chips and a range of curries, Gilmore and I went over plans for the rest of the day. We were already short on time seeing as we had to have lunch, go back to the hotel for our gear, go to Hillside Dams for sound check, then back to the hotel for dressing up and finally back to the Dams fro the gig, all in a space of 3hours.

We came up with the perfect solution: after lunch, we would all go back to the hotel where the guys will all get ready and pick up their gear and head off to Hillside Dams for set up, sound check, and the show in the afternoon. The ladies would be left behind at the hotel where they would clean up and get dressed for the show. The guys will be dropped off at the Dams and the ladies would be picked up an hour later when everything was ready for the show.

Hillside Dams, Bulawayo – Showtime
Even though we tried our best and had everything ready as fast as we could, we were an hour late to start the show at 5.00pm.

The turnout was around 120 people, which according to Gilmore wasn’t bad for a ‘Makiwa’ (the Ndebele slang for white folks) audience.

As always, Gargar gave a stellar performance and had everyone up on their feet dancing with them at their last number.

The audience joins Gargar for a dance

After the show, people flocked at the backstage area clamoring for pictures with the ladies who were by now getting used to all the attention they were drawing and were happy to oblige.

Gargar backstage with Fans @ The Hillside Dams

Frustration creeped in amongst the ranks later when we had to wait for an hour for our transportation back to the hotel. Gilmore was at pains to explain the delay was because they had approximated the show would end much later than it did, thus they had asked the driver to come by an hour later. We tried our best to while away the time swapping stories and jokes with the ladies who had by now fully opened up to us.

Papa’s Restaurant, Bulawayo
We went straight from Hillside Dams to Papa’s for diner. We didn’t have long to wait for our food as we had placed our orders for diner over lunch.

St. Patrick’s Hotel, Bulawayo
Back at the hotel after diner, everyone else apart from Gilmore, Shady, Erico and I opted to retire for the night. It was pretty obvious now that Erico, Shady and I were the outgoing ones in the bunch. Gilmore told us there might be a nightspot or two worth visiting for a drink that night, and we were only too glad to go for the excursion.

St. Patrick’s Hotel, Bulawayo
Back at the hotel after diner, everyone else apart from Gilmore, Shady, Erico and I opted to retire for the night. It was pretty obvious now that Erico, Shady and I were the outgoing ones in the bunch. Gilmore told us there might be a nightspot or two worth visiting for a drink that night, and we were only too glad to go for the excursion.

Ayoba, Bulawayo by Night
We took a short walk into Bulawayo CBD to a place called Ayoba where we met one of the memorable characters of this tour. Babongile was Gilmore’s friend and the owner of Ayoba, one hell of a crazy dude. He immediately made it his duty to entertain us, his Kenyan ‘brothers’ as he introduced as to all his friends.

We knew we were in for a long night when Babongile said, “… you guys are drinking too slowly, you better catch up coz I buy fast!”

A few drinks down the line and Babongile suggested we go to another club that he runs in the other side of town. A few drinks later at the spot and we were all finally giving in to sleep. We finally gave in to the weariness and called it a night.