https://nyanchwani.co.ke/2016/05/02/20-ways-how-to-throw-a-party-for-adults/

“Sorry, I don’t do small talk,” she said, then added, “I am sorry,” smiling facetiously, all the while dismissing me, effectively hurting my self-esteem for good. I have never recovered.

She was tall, beautiful after a fashion—the face so artificially smooth you would think she was a commercial for some cosmetic product–and wore her ponytail like she was supposed to. She didn’t say anything afterwards. I stood there, rooted, benumbed and I hated her so bad that I wanted to hold her head, plant my mouth on her ears and scream into her ears so hard until she was deaf.

I felt so worthless, like a piece of shit. May be I am.

See this was one of the better parties I have been invited to. The food was eclectic. The atmosphere, electric. The drinks were flowing unbounded like a river. People were happy. And in my effort to mingle, this woman deflated my ego, punctured my pride and damaged my self-esteem forever. That took away all the good things about that party set in Nairobi’s leafier suburbs.

Frankly, I have never been invited to a party that met my expectations. The good food, almost always runs out before half the guests have arrived, leaving some terrible rice and potato stew. By the time you get there, minutes after 11, you find only Kibao, or a Gilbeys that nobody has touched. It could be worse: some low-rate whiskey that stings your tongue like no man’s business. The music is inexorably terrible and the guests’ list invariably a mix of people with an overblown sense of importance by virtue of their career or station in life.

People to avoid in parties include: journalists (writers are cool), politicians and anyone who works in the NGO world (the bigger the NGO or the agency, the cockier they are likely to be.)

People generally, don’t know how to throw a good party.

It was the late comedian Gary Shandling who said, “everyone at a party is uncomfortable. Knowing that makes me comfortable.”  I use the same principle when invited to a party. I know everyone at a party is anxious about something; a kiss, a quickie, food poisoning, their partner being snatched, the toilet being too close to the sitting room, getting late to work the following day…You know.

As a host, there are a number of things you can do to make the party remarkable, memorable and your guests at least satisfied to a greater extent. Here are the top 20 things you can do.

1. Have an oversupply of meaty products. Whatever you do, the barbeque, the beef stew, the chicken, meat balls have to be in abundant supply; whatever meaty products you are serving, make sure they are fresh and in endless supply.
2. The salad too should be garden fresh, and the dressing goes along away in impressing the delicate ladies in the house. You want the women happy, don’t you?
3. Ice cubes. Ice cubes. Buy a sack or two. If you are expecting 30 guests, have enough ice cubes as if you are expecting 180 guests. For three days.
4. Nothing spoils a good party like running out of drinks and it is 10.17 p.m. and everyone is on the way. While on drinks, actually get some decent drinks too, not drinks meant for first year college students on a budget.
5. Enough lemon.
6. Don’t invite friends with smelly feet. Telling an adult that their feet stinks is not an easy thing. Yet smelly feet is a mood killer.
7. Don’t invite creeps. Creeps are mostly short men, who have a phone that was last in fashion in July 2006, have afro-hair, and they always come with bad intentions. No sooner they arrive than you see them being slapped by a woman for touching her indecently. They dance with women like they want to sleep with them on the dance- floor, and they skipped all classes of human decorum. Don’t invite them.
8. Don’t invite rapists and pedophiles. A party should be a safe place. Spending two hours solving a case where some man wanted to force his way against the woman’s will at night is not the best way to spend in a 5-hour party. Vet your guests well.
9. No shisha. I assume by now you have dissociated with women who smoke shisha. It is shady, bad for their health, bad for their personality, period.
10. Don’t invite phone thieves.
11. The playlist should be fairly popular. A mix of mainstream hip-hop, soul, danceable R&B, mainstream neo-soul (Think of Raphael Saadiq or Angie Stone when they add some pace to their music). Throw in a couple of old schools Bongo, Genge and some Ugandan music. Some tolerable reggae, decent ragga (is their such a thing as decent ragga?). Some Nigerian, South African and mainstream Rumba too. The idea is to have music that is fairly tolerable and agreeable. There are some animals with extreme music tastes that can’t be satisfied in a crowd. See 11.
12. Kick hard any creep who interferes with playlist to play rock.Throw into fire anyone who wants to play house. If someone wants to play underground hip-hop, call the police.
13. Don’t invite people who will start arguments on religion, conservation, capitalism or gender or racial debates. It is a party, not an aid-seeking forum.
14. The toilet has to be clean, fully supplied with all the tissue paper in the world, and water must run, 24/7. It helps if the someone can regularly clean and freshen it up. 7 out of 10 adults don’t know how to use a toilet. Men especially can be messy. And women too.
15. Definitely people will be boring, mostly they are. So make sure there enough sockets and android chargers in full supply. At some point the guys with no seduction charm will be forced to browse Mirror Sports and their Twitter feeds when people get busy in the car park, the extra bedroom, the balcony or in the roof.
16. If people have to smoke weed, find them a place where they will not disturb the whole neighbourhood. You don’t want people looking at you suspiciously in your hood as an adult hooked on drugs.
17. Provide transport to the people who will be stuck, when people start leaving, more so if the party is in one of those neighbourhoods not served by public transport. Have a cab on standby to drop people where they can get home conveniently.
18. The music doesn’t have to be too loud to be distracting. Keep it reasonably low.
19. Blacklist anyone who gets drunk and behaves badly, throws up or sleeps when the party is underway, have them sleep outside, near the stagnant water so that mosquitoes can feast on him.
20. Have a big room, where guests can sit, stand or dance. Don’t hold a part in a tiny apartment where people have to sit on armrests, wrestling with a goat rib.