A Night at the Roxbury

So Friday night we hit the Club, Which was an experience all it's own. I honestly can't really do it justice, it's one of those thigns you really had to be there for. But I guess I'll try anyways.

• The OLMs invited us to join them for an evening of Ugandan Clubbing. The guest list included David and me, The Olms: Terry, Whitney, and Derrick, Whitney's parents who are visiting for two weeks, and Derrick's five german friends, affectionately (not really) known as Der Germans. This was probably the largest gathering of Muzungus (white people) the Ugandan social scene had witnessed in maybe a decade.
• One shocking revelation is that Derrick and Der Germans liked to spend a lot of time outside, smoking and chatting. We settled on describing it as very "European." I personally preferred a word starting with D and rhyming with Pouchey, but I kept that one to myself. Apparently Africa has given me some semblance of tact and restraint.
  
• Anyways I'll start from the beginning. The club is called Sombrero. The Mexican connection is unclear, because we didn't see any Mexican cultural influence or Mexicans. But apparently there wasno other place two muzungus would be expected late on a Friday night, because without even hailing one, a boda driver pulled up next to us saying "Sombrero?"
• The place is actually pretty big and the disco lights were in full effect for oldies night. But in Uganda Oldies means 80's and 90's. There were maybe two songs from the 70's. Reflecting later I realized mainstream music probably hadn't reached Uganda in the 50's and 60's.
  
• When we walked into to this rather large club what did we find? Maybe 30 dudes... that was it. There weren't really any girls there, we counted three the whole night. We had stumbled on a good old fashioned sausage fest. The guys were seemingly just there to dance with each other. And these weren't good dancers either, they just kind of awkwardly swayed to the beat. It was like Hitch (Will Smith) had taught twenty guys to dance and they all hit the club together.
  
• Terry introduced David and me to Ugandan Wine coolers, called Redd's. They don't have Mike's Hard Lemondade, instead it's like alcoholic ginger ale meets sparkling cider. Talk about our new guilty pleasure. So armed with several of these in our stomachs, and to finish off my Hitch reference, we made like Kevin James and hit the dance floor. For anyone who hasn't seen maybe the greatest guy film masquerading as a chick flick ever, this means we danced like white idiots with no rhythm.
• We were just dominating the dance floor. All the Ugandans were now pushed to the outskirts to watch the embarrassing spectacle that is white people on a dance floor. The disco songs were particularly bad with shopping carts, lawnmowers, and sprinklers all over the place. It was just 12 Muzungus looking like fools out there (or at least so we thought).
• Along the night somehow I managed to pick up two dudes. Twice during the night somebody sauntered up to me and just started dancing with me. Homosexuality is a capital crime here so I don't I was being hit on, I really think guys just like dancing together here. Although to be blunt, one guy introduced himself to me and then pulled out his vocational ID card to me proving that he had a trade and could provide for me... So yeah that one I can't really rationalize away. I think I may have been hit on there. But the other guy said nothing, he just sort of copied whatever I was doing and we danced the night away. (Five minutes later I felt weird and ran away to get another drink. What can I say, after Joab proved to me that he could bring home the bacon I was a little uncomfortable with the whole thing)
  
• Later we found out why I was so successfully picking up dudes. Whitney herself managed to snag herself one of the three girls in the place. This girl, later introduced as Christina, just walked up behind her and they started doing a little Bump n' Grind. Christina later said to Whitney, "these ones (pointing to all of us), they are not so good, but this one (I kid you not she pointed to yours truly), he is a very good dancer." Apparently my truly appalling, imitations 70's dance moves rate as good dancing in Uganda. Wow. I guess that's why these guys were getting all hot n' bothered.
• Finally I should mention the decor of the place. It was neither Mexican or Ugandan influenced. On the wall there was a delightful fresco, depicting a battle scene between an army of robots and The Predator. Like straight out of The Predator movie. You cannot make this stuff up, that was the decor they chose for their club...
  
• Later David and I raced Whitney and Terry's home on Bodas. We won by the way, our driver hugged the rail on a turn to shoot past them and got himself 500 extra shillings for getting us home first. We actually never asked him to race but it was fun it wasn't That unsafe. I mean everyone was wearing their helmets after all... To clarify for those of you that have apparently never heard me speak and couldn't pick up on this one, that was sarcasm. I don't even think they sell motorcycle helmets here.
  
• Even though we told everyone to leave the front door open since we were going out, of course nobody here was listening to us and the house was locked down when we got back. This was where we fully realized that every single opening to this place has bars on it. Well except one. After calling everyone inside several times to no avail and several exploratory laps around the house we finally found a barless window, shimmied it open and climbed in. Of course the second we were inside somebody got up to open the front door and see if we were outside. There's the Ugandan sense of urgency for you...

Anyways that all I'd care to say about the evening for you. Ask me in person and I may have a few more stories that I've saved. Guess you'll just have to wait an see. Also this weekend Father Pascal wants to take us to a club with some of his friends. That's right next time we're clubbing with holy men. That experience should defy description.