The closest translation to that is Happy New Year and as it turns out New Year’s Eve is THE big celebration of the year. And frankly celebrating the birth of 2012, which is supposed to be a momentous year in evolutionary and spiritual terms, in Uganda is a bit surreal. I keep thinking I should be doing something BIG about now, but the fact is: it’s 11:42 and I’m sitting here surrounded by a cacophony of sounds from all directions and I’m writing a blog… I fear I have reached “old fartedness,” but that fear is somewhat assuaged by the fact that some of the younger ones also opted to stay out of the fray of Gulu-gone-wild at midnight. Still – we are celebrating what we’ve survived or transcended in the last five months and devising ways to continue same for the next twenty two.
There are parties – no, make that bashes – in all directions. At about 7:30 friends and I went to a little club that is literally in my front yard and the crowd was beginning to gather. It seemed to be a private party, so we ambled through a rutted dirt road to a guest house known as Absolute Comfort (hmmmm) and had drinks on their “patio,” replete with flashing disco lighting and a sports game on a big screen in the inside bar. We ordered a beer and two Smirnoff Ice Black Label vodka coolers. Communication not going so well, our waitress announced that all they had was Red Label. When she “verified” two shots, I knew something had been lost in translation. When she showed up with two shots of Johnny Walker Red, it was confirmed.