My 7 hour dinner

So, it was Saturday and I thought it would be nice to take my driver out for a nice dinner to show him that I appreciated the work he had done for me. They grocery store I was trying to finish up was closed (they finally told me at 5:30 PM that the store had closed at 5) so Egidio and I headed out to a restaurant that I needed to get some prices from, anyways. I was thinking 6 PM dinner, I’ll be home and packing by 8:30, 9 the latest. Once we finally found a parking space, we went into the restaurant and sat down. It was about 6 PM. Apparently, the restaurant itself didn’t open until 8 and I couldn’t tell whether or not the bar was open or not, but we were sitting at it. Meanwhile, I am pretty hungry (but there aren’t a whole lot of restaurants to choose from, anyways), but I ask Egidio if it’s OK to wait until 8 to eat. Egidio says “its no problem for me”. Then Egidio pondered over the drink menu for about 45 minutes and I was waiting for him to order a drink, but he never did. So I never tried to either. Instead, he started talking, and talking, and talking which was funny. In the first few days that I went out with him, he spoke very little. I wasn’t sure if he was just shy or if he was nervous using his English. Half of what he said made no sense to me, but I tried to catch whatever I could. He spoke of the Civil War and how most of the men in the country died in it, so there is a huge population of women but not many men. In Angola, if you are of a certain age, you are required to be in the military if needed. So at about 645 the bartender comes to talk to us and I think yay, we are finally getting a drink. Not so much. They need to spray the restaurant (this is a very upscale restaurant for Luanda, by the way) with bug spray so that the mosquitos won’t be a major problem. Really? So we need to leave until 8 pm, but we make a reservation. So I say to Egidio, “where we go?” and he says we will see sights and come back. OK… so we get back into the car after spending nearly a half hour just looking for this parking space and we drive all the way out to the island of Ihle (I think that’s how you spell it?...) We drive to the very end, very slowly, and then we come back. Meanwhile, Egidio is still talking my ear off about imports and how they are required to wait on the harbor for months before they are actually allowed to come in, etc. etc. etc. So finally, restaurant is sprayed, and after a good 30 minutes of parking space hunting we find another spot, kind of far from the restaurant. This was my first time being out at night, and some parts were scary to walk around at night. The shadows that stare at you when you walk by during the day are much more frightening at night. But, I stayed close to Egidio and had no problems. So we get to the restaurant, good thing we put in a reservation cause there was no one there, until about 9:30 PM. They still asked us in the doorway if we had a reservation. So we are seated at a nice little table upstairs and the service is wonderful. The food, not so much. I got shrimp that smelled and vegetables that had been pre-frozen. Egidio orders HIMSELF his own bottle of wine which cost me about 5 million dollars, while I settle on a beer. So we both order entrees and I receive mine and eat it in about 30 minutes. Egidio takes, no joke, 3 hours to eat his full dinner. He spends too much time talking despite the fact that I’m clearly passing out right in front of him so I have absolutely no idea what he’s saying. We finally finish dinner at 12 AM and my quick dinner which I was so sure of was over much too late. I nearly had to stay up all night finishing things that I didn’t get to because I was at dinner. With tip, when all was said and done, dinner cost me almost $200 USD. When we were on our way out from dinner, Egidio was talking about someone who liked to give food to the poor people and I thought, I want to do that! So I took out a package of chocolate wafer crackers that I had only eaten a few of and I looked desperately for someone to give them to on my way back to the car, but was very disappointed to pass very few people on our way there, back to safety.