I take it back, I did celebrate, I had to, I swear. We recieved a summons to the party at the residence of the sous-prefet (he is like the boss of several mayors in a district). When I say we, I mean Roy and Aleta as representativs of the agrilcuture work here. However, they have important visitors so they could not go. I went looking for the Central African head of the program, Benoit, but he had conveniently slipped away to his garden, not being one to celebrate the holiday either. So that left me. I figured it was duty to go, so I got dressed up in my finest, took the keys to the truck and headed to the party. On the way, I ran into Nadege and coaxed her into going with me. She got all fancied up and we sat amongst 60 or so other invitees to the party. Everyone else in attendance was either a local organzier of the President's political party, moslty women, or funcitonaries of the local government, from the mayor, the military, police, etc. We ate, we drank (pineapple pop for us, beer for everyone else) and took our leave after about 2 hours.
While it wasn't exactly fun, it wasn't torture either. I had a great time talking with Nadege and we laughed at the various people around us. I didn't have to pledge allegiance to CAR or anything like that but I didn't get to give any speeches either.
