Day 45 Saturday 5 June – Barbacoa at the office

I started the day with asking Lenin for an interview. He agreed and would come to me later (but when he did, I had to get started on the barbeque). After that I went to the general manager and asked him for the rest of the interview. He had time at that moment. However, after a while Miguel stumbled in after he had been planting trees for his political campaign (now I get why sometimes the boys would shout Rendón Presidente) and besides making it impossible to ask certain questions, he also started answering for Ricardo in a joking fashion. I decided to wrap it up and maybe ask some separate questions later. I thanked him and went to the task of the barbeque.

Miguel told me he had asked his wife to take care of things, though he had forgotten to tell her I don’t eat meat. The general manager and Miguel laughed about it, but when I called her, she was sympathetic and told me she’d arrange something for me. She showed up later with some vegetarian ‘meat’ that I had seen at the lunch canteen multiple times before.

I started out with cleaning the tables a little, putting the stereo and some chairs down. Stalyn and Victor helped me with cleaning the floor a bit. Juan cleaned out the pool. At around 1PM there was a barbeque and meat and the place looked alright for a party. But we still missed some basic stuff like gas and a wine opener. Miguel set the tone by pushing Juan into the pool, getting himself in there as well. Juan just laughed at this and started swimming a bit in the pool. People started opening the crisps bags and eat those. Miguel told me to call everyone down, because it wasn’t time for working, but for having fun. Some people were still working in the office and that couldn’t be. I did so and it still took a while for everyone to come down. So after a while, Miguel went up himself to order everyone to come by the pool.

Then everything else arrived. Though some things were still missing, but that is the result of asking a vegan to organise a barbeque and then tell your wife to buy the stuff. Though I had invited most people, (some didn’t show up) the organisation wasn’t so very good. But it was about the fun and the time spent together. The meat was put on the barbeque; the wine was poured in plastic cups and the music was playing. Miguel made a game, doing a really absurd laugh and saying that the one to guess who it belonged to would get a bonus. I don’t think anyone guessed. But everybody laughed while he did this.

A while later Miguel did a toast. After thanking me for inviting the people, he said this was the first party of many more to come, as a way of strengthening the ES family. Then the party continued.

After eating a bit the younger men were starting to push each other into the pool, after Miguel had also thrown Paolo into it. Javier, Luis and Walter were the first to go in. Lenin and Stalyn went in voluntarily later. The general manager and Victor were cooking the whole time (the women from administration had helped with preparing the meat earlier).

Later at the party, even Victor, Nicolás and David were pushed into the pool, but not after their consent and the opportunity to empty their pockets of cell phones. The younger guys were not really fond of the wine, and gathered money to get some beer as well. Miguel just sat and watched with a smile on his face how everyone seemed to have fun at the pool. The gestures of throwing Angel, Ingrid or me in the pool were responded to with a ‘no’ and this discouraged the rest of further attempts. Even though probably neither of us would’ve been angry about this. I understand they didn’t dare throw me in the pool, since they didn’t know me well enough to know whether it would make me angry.

When later the guys spur on Paolo into pushing the general manager into the water while he’s is taking a picture with his blackberry, things take a different turn. When they help him out again, he definitely doesn’t look pleased. Later Miguel tells me the general manager was very angry and left after he fell into the pool. Miguel blamed the beers for this, making the young guys more drunk and this made them spur on Paolo into doing what he did. And that this destroyed the party. Indeed the pool was getting empty, we cut the cake and ate it and people were slowly leaving. Most of the meat and all of the wine was finished.

The boys cleaned up the place, I helped a little, and we took a company car to drive home and drink some more at our house. Now this is not clear to me, but supposedly Miguel called and said this wasn’t allowed. I’m not sure why, though at the moment of writing I recall the amount of alcohol involved… We drove the car back and each of us took a taxi or a bus to our own homes, and that was the end of the day.