We found a family's rooftop to sleep on and for our first evening managed to enter for free by foraging around a bit and finding a wall to climb over and slip a minimum amount of money to the guards behind. I can't say whether it was a good concert, cause I was actually drunk enough not to be able to tell the difference between even the middle ad the end of asong, but the crowd was wild and I sang along till my voice left me, hugged the girls around me and got entangled in several lose turbans snogging the guys. For the encore guys in the first row jump into the waist-deep water in front of the stage till the security fishes them backout.
We go to bed at about 6 hoping to sleep into the day, but in the morning already, the radio is bleating in the courtyard. And while I still for a while try to reach out for the silence beyond the noise to dive into some more of that sweet unconsciousness, sleep proves elusive and reluctant and wakefulness seeps into my being like electrostatic charge. Then Kati opens the door and with the daylight lets the commencing heat of the day, heavy and stifling, flood in and sweep out the last dregs of my dream of rest. I know my tiredness and my hangover will stick in my bones like thick clumps for the rest of the day, but I suppose I have no choice and had better get up and out already.
I wander the festival for a few short minutes only, follow the sound check on the main stage then I decide I have to collapse in the shade for a bit. When a boy comes and sits down next to me, I only moan to myself that yet another tourist guide has to bother me and only after he has been trying to talk to me for a few minutes I lift my head from between my arms crossed over my ears and listen to what he is saying; "Do you want a drink? Hey can I get you anything?" "No, don't worry, just leave me alone" "just out of bed and already another unasked for suitor I think to myself. Then, as he keeps insisting I think why not take advantage of him a little bit, he could fetch me a bag of water after all, next time he repeats his question I'll send him off. Yet, unexpectedly; the next phrasehe utters is "Don't you recognize me?" and I diplomatically decide not to answer truthfully but instead with fake indignation mutter "of course I do" - hoping he doesn't see me checking him out more intently for once, out of the corner of my eye. I still don't recognize him, but employing my sense of logic I have to deduct that there is really no other possibility than that the old saying of alcohol making members of the other seks more appealing than they would be soberly seems to bear a great deal of truth here, and that he must be one of the boys I was making out with last night. When he comes back with a bottle of beer instead of the coveted drink of water this assumption is corroborated. After all wasn't I extra-avid last night of scoring free alcohol on all sides? It'll make me feel better about my hangover I reckon so I overcome my initial reluctance and take a big gulp.
Not much later on I meet Kat at a tea stand. "I talked to the guy you were dancing with last night" "oh, I just met one of them, which one did you catch?" "the one with the turban" "there were about 5 of them!" "well, the one you were shoving your tongue down" "umm -which one? There were 3 or 4 of them if I remember right" "Well the one you were shoving your tongue down while you were slow dancing with the little boy with the baggy pants" "Oh that one, Boubacar" I pretend to remember his name."