It became the kind of scene that makes you want to be a writer so you can capture a transient unique form of social agony being undergone by people who have it made in every way, the observer excepted. The bouts of wind continued. Z turned out to be right about the saté, but it appeared during the appetizer phase. Emissaries came out with salvers of skewers of it but never made it to our neck of the woods. Where are these treats? a Motswana said plaintively. Overhead there were strings of paper lanterns with real candles in them, a poor idea because the lanterns were jerking around and spilling hot wax on selected prominent people. We joined a move to get into a pergola that had been erected on a platform over a drained swimming pool. AID directors are forbidden to live in houses with functioning swimming pools. Had this thing been constructed for this number of people? I wondered, thinking I could feel the floorboards yielding. I got out. I pulled Z back out into the teeth of the gale with me.