Wedding guests treated like nightclub hoodlums
You’re at a wedding party taking place at a posh hall located on a seaside structure. You’re impressed, to say the least.
On arrival, you’d been led to the high table, where you and others enjoy VIP treatment. Your beers come in twos, and these are immediately opened.
You’re hardly halfway through the first bottle when an attendant arrives with two more bottles! It’s like they want to kill you with beer!
A senior host—referring to you as mzazi mwenzangu—visits your table regularly to ensure you’re well served.
He even asks if you needed more of the delicious roast beef served in foil paper.
You decline, for you had actually eaten just a quarter of your helping, giving the rest to a gluttonous nephew seated at a table not far from yours.
You’re an adherent of Prof Janabi, Bongo’s senior medical guru, who’s apparently keen on seeing that all his fellow citizens live to be 100. You take seriously the good old prof’s warning against red meat, for you need to live happily till you knock 100. Ahem!
Even as you enjoy the drinks and the physical ambience of the place, you’re increasingly getting annoyed by the big noise produced by the powerful music and public address system.
The music is so loud you can’t hear what the person seated right next to you is saying.
Many guests, especially the young, take to the floor to show their skills—kwaito, doing the twist with bared teeth, probably to demonstrate they’re enjoying maximally.
The dancers cannot, of course, talk to each other. And yet, this not being a nightclub but a wedding party, we should be having conversations, whether seated or dancing—like civilised and sociable people.
Music ought to be played at acceptable decibel levels, but nobody is daring to tell that to the DJ, who, being alone in his corner, is stupidly happy with himself, not knowing he’s jeopardising our eardrums!
According to available scientific literature, sounds above 80 to 110 decibels (dB) are considered very loud.
Indeed, say health experts, sound levels exceeding 85 dB are not just very loud; they’re also harmful to human hearing and potentially dangerous!
They recommend you use hearing protection whenever you’re exposed to sounds exceeding 85 dB. It means all of us in this hall should be wearing some hearing protection, but none of us is!
When you suggest to a fellow guest you’re going to request the MC to order the DJ to reduce the decibels, at least during the dinner hour, he remarks, “But we’re just invitees, how can you impose your preferences here?”
That’s the trouble with us, you say to yourself. It’s incredulous when decent guests get exposed to health-damaging noise, and none of them says anything.
Here they are at a party, clad in suits and all manner of expensive designer outfits, and allowing a crazed DJ to treat them the way he treats nightclub hoodlums!
You ignore your fellow invitee and approach the MC, and God bless him, he obliges.
We take dinner in relative peace.
