My New Years was saved by a last minute facebook post. I saw that one of my white friends was going
to be in Kampala for New Years, and I asked her what she was doing, which led
to me getting myself invited to the small gathering of our “group” of white
people. There are about 30-40 young,
white, expat development workers, most of whom are Christian who do things
together. Generally we meet weekly for
dinner and some random discussion, but we also throw parties and celebrate
holidays together sometimes.
Thanksgiving being the most notable.
I thought the whole crew was away, but on New Years Eve
found out that a faithful few had returned from various Christmas travels. It was a dinner party, I took dessert… which
was a hit, thankfully.
I was so grateful to be with my white friends on New
Years. I know that sounds strange, but
we celebrate very differently than Ugandans do.
My sanity was not telling me that being in a big church for 9 hours,
overnight, was going to be my best bet.
Many African spend New Years in church… which is cool. I have nothing wrong with that, it just was
not what I was up for.
The food was great.
The people and random things we did were very fun. It’s a fantastically “safe” group of people…
so just a lot of laughing and strange conversation. Good strange.
We decided that we wanted to watch the ball drop, but seeing
as we are 8 hours ahead of New York, we knew that wasn’t really possible. But Bethany and I put our heads
together. We decided to find the oldest
ball drop video online and use that.
YouTube had a 1963-1964 video which we went with. But right during the count down the internet
stopped working , and for some reason jumped to the ball drop of
1979-1980. So we saw that ball dropping,
but they had no count down… so we were all rather confused. Finally we just decided it was new years as a
very bright colored (VERY 80’s) screen came up on the video saying 1980!
We all toasted our champagne and wished each other a very
happy 1980.
The rest of the night consisted of very bored development practitioners trying to find fun things to do.
We did an online quiz to see if we could name all the Disney movies, and
also all the countries of the world. We
did ok. Then the 4 of us who were still
around realized that none of us actually lived in the house where we were and
that everyone who did had gone to bed/was in their room. So we decided we should probably leave.
Finishing off the bottles of champagne, we decided it was
not time to end this party. It was me,
Scott K, Scott A, and Bethany. Both of
the Scotts live in the neighborhood we were in.
Scott K had his car, so we went to his place (which is sssuuupppeerr
nice). Then, at 2 am, we started a game
of Monopoly.
Apparently there is
strategy in Monopoly, and Scott K and Bethany apparently know this
strategy. I wasn’t really paying too
much attention to actually winning.
Scott K killed us all.
Then we wanted to get on the roof, to see if there were any
fireworks. But the roof was
inaccessible. However, the water tower
was not. Scott A and I went looking for
other climbing options, and Scott K and Bethany went up the water tower. I also checked out Scott K’s boy’s
housing. Most African compounds have a
separate house for the young men/cousins/ random gate keepers/etc. But no one is living in Scott’s right now,
and I am thinking about moving in there if I have need. It’s a nice place, a sitting room, small
bedroom and very nice bath. Nice and private too.
Then I joined them on the water tower and told them the view
wasn’t very good. And because of the
lack of view, we decided to go see my view, on top of my apartment. So at about 3:30 we got in the car and drove
the 5 minutes to my place, climbed the stairs to the roof and enjoyed the great
view. We eventually randomly started looking up bible verses about Justice, which proved an amusing conversation.
They headed out about 4:30 and I went to bed. For just a moment I felt like I was back
where I do fun, exciting and random things with people… which has generally not
been my African experience.
At 10:15 on New Years Day I was woken up by the loudest
music in the world.
What a great start to the new year.
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