I was on the Miller Rock The Boat Cruise. An article in one of the dailies claimed that passengers were fornicating in public. I will have you know I did not even get to fornicate in private (I’m still bitter about that). Having read the article I felt like I was in Sodom or Gomorrah and I didn’t even know about it. I was there and my experience was far from what has been reported in the paper.

I got a frenzied phone call from my mother yesterday worried about what had gone on because she knew I was on it. Makes me wanna sue the journalists for almost giving my mother a heart attack after what she read. You know how mothers get, they either assume the best or the worst when it comes to their children. My mother is no exception. She’s OK now, I assured her that I’m still a virgin and I do not drink.

The first time I ever heard of any public fornication or vandalism was from this phone call with mother. Imagine my shock when I eventually got the paper. No wonder my mother went, in the words of said article, “ape” on me as if I was the misbehaving idiot.

Of course there was drunken behaviour! What would you expect on a cruise with about 2 000 young people? But the drunken behaviour I was exposed to was that of overly friendly white people. Drunk white people are just the best, all they wanna do is hug you and buy you more shots. One of the comedians made a remark about this during a stand-up comedy show when he said that even black people were saying: “Yhu, hayi, hayi, hayi, these white people are so loud! They must keep it down!”

Am I saying there was no bad behaviour? With 2 000 young people how can there be none? But whatever bad behaviour there was, it was nowhere near what the paper claimed because I was there. The paper alleges that the cruise company MSC had pressed charges. I contacted the people at Miller and they say no vandalism charges have been pressed. The captain of the ship says no charges have pressed and that there was no serious damage on the ship and no-one was detained.

The funniest thing I saw while I was there, which, I’m sure was not so funny to the person it was happening to was a couple having a quite disagreement. By the look of things she had called for one of those, “We need to talk moments,” he sat there rather uncomfortably. They were in a secluded spot that I happened to walk by as the guy uttered these words that I shall never, ever forget, “I’m sorry I kissed her, OK!” Whatever he said afterwards did not matter because that’s got to be one of the best things I’ve ever heard in my life.

Again, to quote one of the comedians, “It’s so great to see so many black, coloured, white and Indian people having such a great time together. Julius Malema would be so proud of us”. The comedians were brilliant. I even left the boat a fan of The Parlotones.

My question to Miller now is: when is the next Miller Rock The Boat Cruise? But this time I’ll tell my mom I’m going on a church cruise.

Author

  • Khaya Dlanga* By day he perpetuates the evils of capitalism by making consumers feel insecure (he makes ads). For this he has been rewarded with numerous Loerie awards, Cannes Gold, several Eagle awards and a Black Eagle. Khaya has an ego-crushing bank balance but an ego-boosting 6.5 million views on the popular video-sharing website YouTube. Africa's top Digital Citizen Journalist in 2008 for innovative use of the internet, at the Highway Africa conference, the largest gathering of African journalists in the world. Jeremy Maggs' "The Annual - Advertising, Media & Marketing 2008" listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in Advertising, Media & Marketing. Winner of Financial Mail's Adfocus New Broom award 2009. He has listed these accolades to make you think more highly of him than you ought to. * The views expressed in this or any future post are not necessarily his own (unless of course you agree with them). khayav.com http://twitter.com/khayadlanga http://dearbhutikhaya.wordpress.com/ [email protected]

READ NEXT

Khaya Dlanga

Khaya Dlanga* By day he perpetuates the evils of capitalism by making consumers feel insecure (he makes ads). For this he has been rewarded with numerous Loerie awards, Cannes Gold, several Eagle awards...

Leave a comment