The Fourth of July

4th of July… WOW, what a night!! Invisible Children threw a party for the 4th of July at the Acholi Inn. It was outside near the pool on the lawn, and it was such a beautiful night. The party started at 6:30, but about 6 of us headed to Da Pub for a pre-party drink. From there we took boda bodas to the Acholi Inn. The music started at 6:45 pm, and the dancing started at 6:50 pm. At some point, the food was ready so most people took a break from dancing to eat. They had something close to a hamburger, and it was absolute heaven. They also had “coleslaw”, fried zucchini, some type of burrito, and baked goods from Café Larem. Amy said that she ordered 300 beers, and we estimated that there were about 100 people there. The Acoli people are not drinkers at all, so there was plenty of beer to go around…we drank 12 crates of beer by 8:30.
Once everyone finished eating dinner, the dancing started again and did not stop. They played a mixture of American and Acoli music, heavy on the Michael Jackson. I think the DJ played “Billie Jean” 4 times, but we sure did enjoy it every time it played. My teacher Grace stayed there the entire night, and she tried to teach us the Rockarocka (not how it is spelled), a native Acoli dance where your hips move forward and back mostly. I feel like I got better as the night wore on, but I am not sure that an impartial observer would agree. About 9:00, the music stopped to allow a man dressed in a traditional marbled green tunic (think pajamas) to give a speech, which is something that Ugandans love to do. I asked who this man was as the entire group immediately got quiet to allow him to talk, and Lindsey said that it was Museveni, the president of Uganda. He was not, and we are not really sure who he is, but he did claim to have been the president of Uganda for 3 days. I will do some research on this mysterious man…. Research is complete; evidently he is the deputy of Gulu of their police force. We also met the owner of the Acoli Inn. The police deputy was very funny spending time with him. He wanted to do a toast but none of us had any drinks, so he ordered out, “Bring drinks to my friends. Who needs beers?” So we all got beer and toasted; I am not sure what the toast was about, but it did not matter. We were all among friends. We closed the Acoli Inn down and then looked for an after party.
We decided to head to Bamboo, so we started walking down pitch black roads with huge muddy potholes. About halfway there, Obie stopped in his car and told us to get in that he would take us. So Sharon and I got in the back seat with several other munos whom we did not know. We then found out that we were not going to Bamboo but were instead going to a party at “Creepy Guy’s” compound. We did not want to do that so we got out of the car. Then Catherine and several others got back in the car because they found out that Bamboo was closed. So we all piled into Obie’s car; there were 5 in the way back, 4 in the back seat and then Obie and another passenger. Creepy Guy’s compound ended being the US Navy Headquarters, so Creepy Guy was not so creepy any more, and his name is David. We hung out there; it was a very chill atmosphere as people were hanging out in the yard or in the house. They had a fire pit going, which is still weird for me as in South Carolina, you would never light a fire in July because of the heat.
We stayed there until about 3:00 am, and then Catherine, Bill, Kate, Sharon, Ryan, and I decided to head back to Katherina’s. Apolo agreed to drive us, and on our way, someone asked, “Anyone up for Havana’s?” Havanas is a local nightspot that has dancing. We decided to drive by to see if it was still open, and of course it was, so we stopped and went in. We were the only munos in the place, and with black lights every where, we really stuck out. However everyone there seemed to be into their own thing, so we got water and began dancing. Again. At this point, I think that I had danced about 7 hours. About 30 minutes later, Apolo got a text from Obie wondering where he was, and we all remembered that Apolo was supposed to drop us off and then go pick up the rest of the crew. Kate and Apolo left to go get them to bring them back. They took forever, and Ryan got tired of Havanas, so he left about 20 minutes later. Catherine, Bill, Sharon and I finally called it quits about 4:00 am, so we walked home. The streets were deserted, and it was so peaceful. I crashed into my bed about 4:15 am. This was one of my favorite July 4ths ever!!!!

BTW: Apolo brought the cake that he promised. It was decorated as an American flag and had so much icing on it!! It took forever for someone to find a knife, so I did what Dad always does and started scooping the icing onto my finger from the back of the cake. It was delicious and just the sweet that I needed.