I’ve never been one to sit in the VIP section of anything. It draws too much attention to one. People gawk. So it felt oddly surreal to find myself seated in the VIP booth at Ciel Lounge in Nairobi’s Westlands last Friday night. My friend – who also happens to be my dentist – and I were there at the invitation of Antony Owich, the proprietor. My first time at Ciel, French for heaven.
There was already a full-blown party in motion. Ciel feels like the kind of place where a party is always in progress. It was bigger than it looked in photos, grander than I had imagined. A couple of brightly lit bars kept the crowd well lubricated. The place was packed, and people kept streaming in.
“This isn’t even a busy night,” Owich leaned over to say. “There are nights I can’t even walk down that path.”
He held court from the booth, facing the room. He was dressed in an all-black complete with sunglasses and sparkling earrings, like Boris Becker, the Belgian dancer and internet personality.
The crowd consists largely of people who have either always been cool their whole lives or have always wanted to be cool. And generally young, if not in age but in spirit. Lots of bottle service arriving at booths in a dramatic carnival. Hot babes. Lots. “It’s like a river of them,” my friend said. If you stuck your leg in the aisle, your leg would be swept away by sheer beauty.
The music was excellent, with a deejay who knew the score. And the sound was especially terrific, loud enough for it to be a party but not for it to sound intrusive. Behind us, through the big windows, cars occasionally zipped past in the expressway.
Owich presided over this little kingdom, the night flowed around him. Calm, like a man watching his own fire burn.
Bottles of Glenlivet materialised from nowhere. Tequila flowed. Other cool people drifted by to kiss his ring and whisper in his ear.
A bouncer with an earpiece kept sentry outside our booth and, whenever Owich rose – even for a trip to the bathroom – the bouncer led the way.
Heaven, it turns out, needs someone to run it.
