Super Awesome Bear

In 2005, I went to the New Orleans Mardi Gras, mere months before Katrina fucked it up for everyone. I was there for a week, and trust me when I say that I have enough stories from that week to entertain you for an entire evening, but there is one story in particular that I am going to share with you today; The story of Seth and Jinny on Fat Tuesday. I don’t particularly *WANT* to tell this story because my dad and my uncle both read my blog, and they will most likely lift a brow in concern. Then again, I only have one person to answer to, and I already told Jesus I’m sorry back in 2005.

Let’s kick off by learning something, shall we? If memory serves, Mardi Gras is the French for “Fat Tuesday” and it signifies the end of the carnival season. Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, Ash Wednesday (for all you heathens)is the first day of Lent, and Lent, of course, is the 40-day period you have to give up a vice or indulgence, like cigarettes, red meat or porn.

The Mardi Gras is effectively a suip* session of note, folks overindulging like mofos because come Ash Wednesday, yo’ ass has to keep itself pious for 40 days (46 including Sundays). We were there for seven days, arrived on a Friday, left on a Friday. A one week period is 168 hours long. Of the 168 hours spent in ‘Merica, we were sober for about 90 minutes. I can assure you that that is by no means a boast, but you try staying sober with over a million drunk, randy idiots around you, it’s annoying, and we could only take about 90 minutes of it.

Incidentally, I discovered the best remedy for Gout – keep on drinking. Seriously. I went into a drug store and asked the bird behind the counter for Gout medicine. The attendant, who (in retrospect) probably had no pharmacology training of any sort, was perplexed by my condition, “Gout?” she queried. Absolutely smashed out of my fucking mind at 5am on the morning of day 2, I eloquently responded, “Yes, Gout. When the acidity level in your bloodstream is so high that it results in severe joint pain, typically brought on by high acid intake – in my case too much wine and beer”. “Aisle 7” she said. Aisle 7 it is. There was no Gout remedy in Aisle 7. Apparently, she only took one thing from what I said, probably ‘high acid intake’ and sent me to the heart-burn products. And that’s exactly what I bought, acid indigestion medicine, stuff that would do absolutely NOTHING for my Gout, but if you’re going to eat and drink kak for a week, Pepto Bismol and Zantac 75 could come in quite handy at some stage.

Sorry, I’m getting side-tracked. Still don’t know what the Americanese is for “Gout”. Where was I? Oh ja, Fat Tuesday. In New Orleans, Fat Tuesday is a city wide costume party. I bought a pimp outfit, had the hat, coat and cane and I looked hawt! Think about it this way, beauty is in the eye of the beerholder – 90 minutes sober? That’s more than anybody else in New Orleans in the same time period. It’s a place where even a Rosie O’Donnell would have some sort of appeal. Lol, Rosie O’Donnell… Appeal… (Pienaar is probably the only chap that’ll get that)

Shit, I completely forgot to introduce my friends from Austin Texas! Ok, put Fat Tuesday on the backburner for now.

As guests of Southern Comfort (A big shout out to Joffy Senekal and Ken Rose – two of the awesomest gentlemen in the history of the universe. Hey Joffy, DJVIJPI) we had access to the SoCo balcony. Now balconies are the place to be. They’re open for 24 hours, the food and booze is free, its two meters above the screaming, horny, drunken crowd, and this is where you chuck beads to the judgement-impaired beauties in the street. Balcony tickets can’t be bought, you have to be invited. Having access to the balcony, as well as the power to invite anyone up at any time, automatically makes your Johnson three-inches longer.

It was on the SoCo balcony that I met Seth and Jinny over the course of the first weekend, a beautiful young married couple from Austin Texas. They were great people with wonderful accents, I mean, you’ve heard it in movies, but a real life southern accent (especially when inebriated) rocks the Kasbah. Being the heterosexual stud that I am (ladies) I spent more time with Jinny than with Seth – he was stuck to the railing, tossing beads to the flashers down below, and I got kinda bored with that. Yes, men, you can get bored with boobs, I never thought it possible, but anyone who spends an evening on a balcony in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras can probably back me up on this point. So ja, Jinny (who was probably also gatvol of the ocean of breasts just outside the door) and I had a lekker kuier inside – I can assure you that my motivations and intentions were pure, but I can’t say the same for Jinny…

Cue Fat Tuesday. What an absolute fucking debauchery. You know those images you see on the internet that make your jaw drop? Yeah? Well, let me tell you one thing my brother, them pictures are tame in comparison to the shit that was happening right next to us all day. This is by no means a complaint, I loved it, what a surreal experience! My jaw dropped in awe on quite a few occasions as we were walking through the dorp**. Picture the uncensored version of the parties Maryann hosted in the second season of True Blood. Rof en onbeskof. Lekker!

The crazy afternoon was followed up with a crazy evening, the millions below trying to go as mad as possible before going to mass the next morning. The town was alive. Mad. Depraved. Awesome.

Seth and Jinny were on the balcony again. My Margarita-swilling ass just had to say hello to my new friends – they were drunk and pleasant as usual. Jinny and I started comparing costumes, she was dressed like a slutty-something, I was dressed as A-Pimp-Named-Slickback (you have to say the whole thing), with my purple suit with zebra print fur finishing. Fancy. For some obscure reason, Jinny and I decided to trade hats. Now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what I said, but when Jinny put my hat on, I paid her a not-so-innocuous compliment, which is roughly about the time she lunged at me, sucking my face off, just as Seth turned the corner. I was drunk, but not drunk enough to forget that she was married to the chap looking at us. I pushed her away in a bit of a panic, gasped for air, turned to Seth and exasperatedly, yet politely, asked him not to beat the shit out of me for kissing his bride, raising my hands ever so slightly to fend off any potential attacks, actively searching the room with my peripherals to find any one of my three South African comrades to come and save me from a fatal beating. Without missing a beat, Seth just said, “Don’t worry about it” stepped closer and kissed me.

I pushed him off, stood there frozen for a second, just glaring at the two of them. Without a word, I bolted. I went to my room, my bathroom and splashed cold water in my face. “Did that just happen?” I asked the Alex in the mirror. I had no idea what to do, but I was definitely not drunk enough to participate in whatever those two had in mind. But it’s Fat Tuesday, the maddest day of the entire year, even crazier than New Years. There’s no reason for me to hide in my room, I’m a grown-ass man with back-up, I’ll go back down to the balcony and suss out the situation, no reason I shouldn’t enjoy the festivities at the very least. When I got to back to the balcony the bartender called me over and said “If you want your hat back, they’re in room XXX” and gave me the Royal Sonesta keycard for room XXX.

There I was, on the balcony, my friends with their own agendas, either tossing beads to the eager flasher-gatherers below, or chatting up anyone who’d care to listen (and on Fat Tuesday, everyone will listen). I didn’t know what to do, so I did the only rational thing any man would, I ordered another drink.

I look back on my short life, and I can’t fault any of the learned men who stated, in no uncertain terms, that you regret the things you don’t do more than the things you do. I can happily say that I have very few regrets, but every Halloween, when I decide what costume to wear for the party, I regret that I don’t have a hat to go with my awesome pimp suit.

* Suip – To imbibe copious amounts of alcohol.

** Dorp – Small town, in this case, the French quarter of New Orleans.

In my previous post, Blinky die Blokman, I briefly mentioned that I had a couple of weird jobs in my day. At one stage I was considering taking a job as the bouncer on all the Kulula.com domestic flights – if someone got unruly in-flight, I’d tune them, “There’s the door!”

I jest, but looking at my resume, I think “Bouncer for Kulula” would’ve looked like one of the pretty standard entries.

This brings me to the landmines. At that stage in my life, I was between jobs and between women. Had just finished studying Journalism at the Rand Afrikaans University, and like most young men with a fire in my gut, I decided to hit the road, travel, see the world and write about it. Unfortunately, my total lack of cash (or anything to sell sans my body) was a bit of a hindrance. I would have to work to afford a fancy trip overseas (After all, I am more overseas than Baber) and then it dawned on me – Why don’t I just work abroad, I’ve seen other people do it. Thus the job hunt began.

For anyone who wants to work in another country, as long as the requirement is “Being-in-another-country” as opposed to “Having-a-cool-job” then the world is your big filthy oyster, waiting to be cleaned. I considered a lot of opportunities; au pairing in San Diego, operating ski lifts in Salzburg, Camp Counseloring in Minnesota, Housekeeping service in Brighton. I even considered becoming some sort of manwhore, but being raised in SA, that thought scared me. So many terrific options. I thought about jumping from job to job, season to season, hemisphere to  hemisphere and do this for the rest of my life.

That’s when I read about the jobs that the UN had on offer. Damn, they had a lot. And all over the world, from basic clerical duties to physical field work. Of course, being a huge movie fan, I romanticised third world countries. Time magazine, National Geographic, CNN, MTV – here I come!

I chose explosion recovery in demilitarised zones, and the closest one was Angola.

In January of 1996, a division of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were dispatched to Angola on a UN peacekeeping mission. It was basically a company of engineers, consisting of the 901 detached pontoon-bridge company, Staff officers, military observers, and of course the folks we learned to hate as well, the military police (but I’ll elaborate on them some other day, just thinking about them makes me mad). I think it was slightly over 200 servicemen and women, and the main task of the unit was the reconstructing of the country’s infrastructure, including roads, bridges and temporary pontoon-bridges over the rivers. The Ukrainians weren’t the only foreign nationals in the country at the time, but I ended  working with one of the Ukrainian squads and a Belgian peace-aficionado named Ludolf. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Getting the gig was simpler than I imagined. There were about three security and background checks, two psychological tests, an IQ test and two interviews. I lied in my interview, I thought it best not to tell them that I was only doing it because it was a weird way of getting my jollies, instead I told them that I felt it necessary to make my contribution to help rebuild a country ravaged by war, and as a South African, I felt it my duty. They bought it. I shipped off. At that stage, I was kinda bummed that the detail could only last 3 months, anything more than that and we ran the risk of going a bit bonkers (Seriously, PTSD was a major concern – especially for a civilian with no basic training). It was roughly one month later that I was incredibly thankful it was only a short-term gig.

For the first two weeks we were housed in the UN barracks in Luanda. That’s where staff sergeant Dos Santos and Sergeant Camarinha trained us in the art of not-blowing-yourself-up, probing for mines, marking their location, and if necessary, digging the fuckin’ things up. We were 17 civilians from all over the world and we would be divided up into different groups and dispatched to different regions of the country. Ludolf and I got lumped together and we were assigned to the Ukranians. We packed our kit and headed to our camp.

Well, camp is a strong word, in fact, I wish it was a little more “Camp” – at least it would’ve been more comfortable. My imagination was obviously WAAAAY too polluted by films in my expectations of a mobile base camp. There was a Mess facility, a few vehicles (including some APCs – awesome!) a few big tents, makeshift showers, toilets and a fence surrounding the perimeter and two fancy guard towers.

We were in it now, so we got on with it.

Now I’m not going to lie, the conditions weren’t the best; It was hot (especially when wearing your full blast suit), but more importantly, it was extremely dangerous. I recall the one evening when the sirens went off, one of the various political factions razed a local village. Incredibly terrifying. Extremely sad.

That first month was absolute hell. But after about 10 days you just give in. You give in. You give in to the heat, the bad food the constant danger that you’re in, but moreover, you give in to the fact that the slightest misstep will end your life, and so the uncomfortableness subsided. The fear subsided. Mostly.

It was after that first month that I converted about $500 into Kwanza and bought some cattle. Now some of you may already have an idea why, and the rest of you are asking, “Why? For what possible reason did Alexander de Coning buy $500 worth of cattle if he’s just going to leave in two months?” Hopefully, in asking that, you kinda already figured it out for yourself – it’s no picnic to repeat it.

I used those cows as my personal mine detectors. That’s right, I sent them into the mine fields, as I was just too damn tired of being afraid all the time. And though I know I should stop right there, I’ve got to ask you a question – have you ever seen a cow explode? It’s quite magnificent in its horror. Happy to report that at least the food got better from there on out – it was much fresher. Of course, the Ukrainians, and the village that sold me there cattle were plenty mad. Whoops.

The sad thing was, in 1999, the UN Security Council unanimously voted for removing 1000 servicemen (The “blue helmets”) from Angola. Unfortunately, nothing could stop or change the 40 year period of civil war or the clashing native leaders. As far as I can remember, the Indian peacemakers were the last to leave Angola, and they lowered the UN flag in Luanda.

I would like to leave you with one thought, and that is not to do what I did. You see, I used to use this as a pick-up line, and it worked extremely well! Until one evening where I decided to add the part about blowing up cows. And though a beautiful, intelligent woman may be reduced to mush, ESPECIALLY considering the way I tell this story (the horror, the danger, the humanitarianism), she will slip out of the awe-induced stupor when I start talking about blowing up cows. This used to be my favourite pick-up line, I perfected it after many tellings, but now that I’m a little older and a little wiser and I frankly cannot tell this story to every smart, pretty girl I meet, I stick to the tried and trusted, “I’m fucking rich” – that seems to work every time.