Happy hour in the Wild, Wild West

Rock ‘n roll and good grub aplenty at this way station for the weary, the wide-eyed and the wild like me who come to Kenya for its multi-spirited spin on America’s Old West.

Que Pasa. It’s a joint. A neighborhood hangout. A “local” where the equally local color, Karen-ites, raggedy KCs and city slick youngsters come together. Sometimes they clash for an hour (or two or three or often into the dawn of a new day) after work. Or they might bump and grind in a Friday night rumble on the dance floor. A pub with pizza, if you will, where friends gather and new friends are made.

And that’s the thing about Que Pasa. The friends you make, the friends you never knew you had. Friends, you feel in the heat of the moment (or is that the Tusker talking?), you’ll treasure for life. Like Merry, a pilot and aviations operator who has a wonderful sort of Minnesotan accent (the “o”s are accentuated). “I’d like to take him to the ass end of the world, ya know!” she pronounces at two a.m. Or Peter, the one-time rugby star from Nigeria, the perfect gentlemen who deflects a KC’s flippant comment, “You’re no rugger”, with a diffident, “You never know”, carrying on with another shot of tequila. And a huge, knowing smile.

Then there’s Kiki, one of the managers, who’s launched the truest of happy hours in the bar-cum-restaurant-cum-lounge, Tuesday and Friday nights, five to seven p.m. “Did you girls really come into see me, or are you just here for the Bloody Marys? I don’t know why we let you in here.” (She gests! There’s nowhere else where we so belong.) Not to forget Maybelle, the ever-popular Aussie import, who’s got everyone plugged in just as they should be. “Whey!” she says with a dolphin-like flip of her hands. “It’s full on, man. Heartbreak Hotel all over again!”

On Wednesday night, suffering from an oonch (Irish slang for ounce or smidgen) of heartbreak over the man I’ll only refer to as Peerless, I sat next to two neighbors, Shaker and Phyllis, and got a tremendous education on where to buy on the East African coast. Tanzania, where beachfront is supposedly going for Ksh 200,000/acre and up. All things considered, it could be a good bet.

And like all cliques (and village-life clichés), there are secrets. Many, many secrets. Oh, the beans I could spill. Of course, these usually involve the Que Pasa friends you wish you’d never had (in every way that that’s conceivable). Housewives gone haywire romancing their housegirls; safari guides “adopting” Kenyan girls in their twenties to show them the world; stout, towering Brits (and Scandihooligans) who laugh like hyenas but are truly a barrel of monkeys. (You’ve never had a real belly laugh until you’ve heard a “joke” from a Swede, a Dane, a Norwegian, or (especially) a Finn.) Best of all (at least in my tenure at Que Pasa): the “bunny boiler”. Do you remember FATAL ATTRACTION? Well, this lisping girl with the ‘70s haircut had it bad for a Kiwi who introduced her to threesomes, now her favorite number.

I’m an Irish lass (hence “The Ex-Patrick”), a two-year veteran of Nairobi life, and

I still can’t find a better happy hour in town. Whether the bar stool next to you is occupied

by another ex-pat, or a third-generation, leather-capped KC (could be a boy or girl), or a

six-foot stretch of haughty model (what my pal Mike calls “a long, dark, luscious road to

somewhere”), I guarantee you’ll make a friend or two.

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