The Friday of all Fridays

Last night, two dangerous events fell on the same night. Not only was it the last Friday of the month (and therefore the day that students get their allowance), it was also the Friday night that began the Mid-semester Break.

I'm not sure when the house music started bumping outside last night, but it was there in full swing when I got out of choir at around 8 o'clock in the evening. It was the first time I have ever felt uncomfortable walking by myself back to Vegas. People and cars were everywhere, and most were already fairly tipsy. I went to bed around 10pm, and managed to fall asleep in spite of the house music blaring from the carport outside my window and the loud voices that went with it.

When I woke up this morning around 7:30 there was still music playing. I'm pretty sure it played all night. Not only was there still music, but when I walked to breakfast I realized that there were also still a few people standing in the carport drinking and hollering. And even if there weren't people, the evidence of last night is horrendous. I've never seen so many glass bottles, smashed, broken, or whole, over such a great expanse, in my entire life. Whole parking lots were rendered unsafe to tires by a littering of broken glass. But the worst part was the people. Still out there. Still drunk. They hollered at me, "Lekgoa, lekgoa!" I ignored them as best I could. In the line for breakfast they pressed around me, the alcohol still thick on their breath, and tried to get me to talk to them. They were arguing with the lunch lady (who wasn't taking any crap this morning, and I don't blame her), they were fighting outside the windows, they were telling me to marry them. It was disgusting.

This morning the campus is alive with the sounds of garbage collectors jingle-jangling glass bottles and glass fragments, trying to clean up the campus because tomorrow starts the Intervarsity Games. Because tomorrow we're hosting people from a college in Lesotho and another in Swaziland to compete at just about everything you could possibly compete at, athletic and otherwise. And people will already be arriving today, and maybe even some arrived yesterday.

Chimo tells me it gets worse. She said it was good I wasn't staying, that people lose all sense of propriety and dignity at these games. That you'll get propositioned right and left by drunken males. So I guess I'm glad that I'm leaving on Monday. The experience of competing with the choir on Sunday will be my only taste of the Intervarsity Games, and I think I'm okay with that. Much as I would like to see the soccer and the rugby and the ballroom dancing and the aerobics and the swimming and all the other competitions that will go on all day from Monday through Friday, I can't say that I'll have the tolerance to put up with the drunk people and the loud music every night for a whole week. When I come back next Sunday, this will all be over and done with, and everyone will be sobering up for Monday classes. I'm thinking that'll be a good time to show my face again.