The waiter was referring not to the impending arrival of mass tourism but to a more immediate invasion: a tour bus had just pulled up by the entrance gate and two dozen well-heeled tourists in their sixties were pouring into the lobby, the villa's former living room; a small army of uniformed waiters showed them to their table.
At the end of the school day, armies of uniformed middle-grade students crowded in and around a bus stop shelter, spilling onto the sidewalk and into the street.
The prime minister was responding to statements by a uniformed army officer on state television and radio that a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy and Development was "taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people," news agencies reported.
Just outside the large concrete arches and the military inspection post that serve as the gateway to Kut, we passed an army barracks where uniformed men who seemed to be recruits were being rallied at the roadside, but there was a desultory look to their activity.
In an old-style conflict like, say, the Second World War, big, uniformed armies squared off against other big, uniformed armies.
Smith believes that Western, industrialised armies struggle to win in "wars amongst the people" because their opponents are not uniformed armies.
The number of wars between states, where regular, uniformed armies square off against each other, has fallen sharply.
There are 2,000 caddies on duty: a red-uniformed army, battalions of which are always standing at parade rest in a staging area where golfers assemble before deploying to the courses.
The defining characteristics of "war amongst the people" are that conflicts tend to be timeless, more political in nature, and fought between parties that are part of, and in amongst, the civilian population rather than between uniformed armies on a battlefield.
On Christmas Day 1974, a 21-year-old lieutenant in the British army led four fellow uniformed but unarmed Catholic riflemen to mass at a church in west Belfast.
This established 16 Regional Health Insurance (Sickness) Funds along with the Health Insurance Fund for so-called "uniformed workers" (army workers, policemen, railway workers) and their families, which operated at interregional level.
