housing

To the right, in the tent, a woman now emerges who passes a note through the rows that makes its way on to me. I just pass it on, and she walks around the whole row to pick it back up again on the left side and redirect it emphatically towards me. It’s an invitation to the dinner following the event, and evidently, out of all the teenagers who squeezed into the VIP tent in with me and are now listening to endless speeches without showing any signs of exhaustion, it was in fact intended for me, but unmoved, I pass it to my neighbor on the right. I hope she’ll go. They’re now handing out bottles of water and orange juice to the people in the tent. It’s noon, and we’re near the equator, and for hours now we’ve been listening to speeches about bananas and oranges. There’s no longer an outside. The sun makes it impossible to leave the tent.