This is my second week working with the Rakai Community-Based AIDS Project in a rural area southwest of Kampala (about three hours by road from the capital). Marie connected me to the people here a couple months ago, and David, the director, responded to my email query with a “Yes, you can come.” Both Christian and Marie worked with this project last summer, so the folks already sort of regarded me as family. What I didn’t know was how completely they would welcome me. The staff is accustomed to hosting interns, so they know how to deal with folks who show up with an interest…and it’s not hard to find ways to get involved.
In my first week, several staff members took me around to surrounding villages to meet some of the people the project has assisted – an eye-opening experience and a great introduction to life in Rakai district. Here at the project base, I’ve spent time on the farm and the tree nursery, a beautiful and peaceful place where students and local farmers learn about gardening. And I’m teaching tailoring (and other assorted things) to students in the vocational school. So much to write about but at the moment I could use a little rest!
I’m staying in a little guesthouse called the Sunshine Hotel on the edge of Lyantonde town, from where I walk every morning to the project headquarters just a kilometer or two outside of town. And I need to get walking before it gets totally dark (my daughters gave me strict instructions to not walk alone at night!!).
In case anyone pulls out a map of Uganda: Lyantonde is about midway between Kampala and the southwesternmost corner of the country, where people go to see the gorillas (down near the Rwanda and Tanzania borders).
I’ll describe the project in my next post – soon, I hope, because every day is an experience.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The wedding...in brief
What can I say about the wedding? A few moments hang in my memory with utter clarity, and other moments are a blur. Kind of like giving birth. But I’ll try to hit the highlights…
The wedding was a reflection of the life and love that Marie and Christian share. It was a blend of nations and races and cultures gathered together for a Church of Uganda ceremony that was mostly familiar to me but with African twists, like the aunties who punctuated the programme with loud “Yaiiiaaii!!!!!”s until the Reverend requested the interruptions cease. Paul and I together escorted Marie down the aisle, a twist of our own that Rev. Ozelle permitted. The service, which lasted an hour or two, was mostly in English with some Luganda, like the closing hymn Tukutendereza Yesu which the maternal African aunties sang with great spirit. There were nineteen bridesmaids and groomsmen from three continents, a handsome wedding party. A band with the oldest instruments I’ve ever seen played a rousing wedding march. And the bride and groom? Marie and Christian looked radiant and relaxed and happy, and they recited their vows in strong voices.
After the one-o’clock-ish ceremony (the wedding, like everything else, was on African time), the celebrating began on the lawn outside Paraa lodge. Tents and tables were set up on the hillside overlooking the Nile, and the sun blessed our mingling, eating, speech-making, and dancing. The buffet table was filled with both western food and traditional Ugandan fare, everything from fresh tomatoes to tilapia to matoke. I was delighted to find that the amazing chef had used the smoked salmon that Don and I brought from Alaska to create tasty appetizers and a salmon salad.
When most of us were seated, a group of professional dancers – the Ndere troupe – came bounding onto the lawn wearing colorful costumes and moving with incredible energy. Such gyrations of the hips! Auntie Sarah from Arua was coming along just then and she grabbed me from where I stood and pulled me into the dancing. After the troupe performed several dances, they pulled lots of us into dancing motion. A great way to warm up fast!
Then the speeches got rolling, and rolling, and rolling, as the first of the scheduled speakers and several impromptu speakers shared their thoughts, sentiments, stories, and advice. Aunties gave religious counsel, Barry Goldfarb drew parallels from their senior papers, and Hartvig urged financial care and good sex (and three other things but I’m summarizing here).
Late in the afternoon we were given an hour to rest up. When the crowd reconvened in the lovely evening air, the chefs were lined up at grills on the lawn and again we filled our plates. The speech-making resumed, and I loved hearing Aretussa speak, and my parents, and everyone else who had a word for the newlyweds. By the time it was my turn, it was so dark I couldn’t see all the faces I wanted to see, but the lights illuminated Marie and Christian and I took the opportunity to share my mind and heart with them. Speeches continued long into the evening. It took Ted an hour to thank everyone! Finally Charlotte got to speak of her beloved brother and her new love for Marie.
After the wedding cake – a creation that looked like an entire African village – was cut and served, it started to lightly rain so the party was moved inside the lodge.
But midnight was enough for me given the day’s events and the waves of emotion. For Marie’s dad and sisters and me and for Christian’s closest family, the day had begun before sunrise with the kasuze katya ritual – our giving away of Marie to Christian’s family. Two days earlier, Charlotte had explained this tradition to me, but I felt woefully unprepared for it. It was tearful for all of us in Marie’s original family. Yet, for me, it served a function I never imagined beforehand. It made me squarely face the life that Marie was choosing. I had affirmed Marie’s choice to marry Christian from the moment she called to tell me of their plans, and I knew she was making the decision full-heartedly. But that was way back, when we were all in the U.S. and nothing was being asked of me other than to bless the marriage. Now Marie was sitting in my lap in northern Uganda and I was to tell this new family about my daughter before “giving” her to them. The mixture of grief and joy I experienced during that first hour of the day still overloads my heart. I trust it will sift and sort itself in time.
Later, after the sun was up, six of us – Don and I and American aunties – stepped into a flat-bottomed skiff to boat down the Nile toward Murchison Falls. I’d read that in the fifties and sixties this area was teeming with wildlife, and everyone from Hemingway to the Queen of England came to Paraa and cruised this river. I’d also read that the animal population was nearly wiped out during the Amin years and the civil wars, and that the animals were only recently coming back in any numbers. So what we experienced in those brief hours on the Nile took me by surprise too. The waters and banks of the Nile were teeming with wildlife. In the first twenty minutes, we boated past hundreds of hippos, mama and baby waterbucks at water’s edge, and lots of elephants. By the time we were in sight of the waterfalls, we had glided past water buffalos and warthogs and baboons and a bank full of crocodiles, and we saw an incredible array of birds – fish eagles, weaver birds, kingfishers, Egyptian geese, cormorants, yellow-billed storks, white egrets. At one point, our captain cut the engine so we could listen to the singing of thousands of frogs.
Those of us who went to bed by one o’clock apparently missed a late night visit by elephants. Some of the bridesmaids who had enjoyed the night’s dancing told us the next morning that a couple of elephants came moseying along the grass right outside our rooms. But so it goes…Wild things everywhere. Like the giraffes and antelopes and baboons and monkeys we all saw as we drove out of the park toward Arua. Oh! Arua is another story.
But my most cherished moment of the day is this: helping Marie step into her ivory wedding gown, and fastening the clasps to fit the bodice around my lovely, grown-up daughter, and seeing her so happy and so calm.
The wedding was a reflection of the life and love that Marie and Christian share. It was a blend of nations and races and cultures gathered together for a Church of Uganda ceremony that was mostly familiar to me but with African twists, like the aunties who punctuated the programme with loud “Yaiiiaaii!!!!!”s until the Reverend requested the interruptions cease. Paul and I together escorted Marie down the aisle, a twist of our own that Rev. Ozelle permitted. The service, which lasted an hour or two, was mostly in English with some Luganda, like the closing hymn Tukutendereza Yesu which the maternal African aunties sang with great spirit. There were nineteen bridesmaids and groomsmen from three continents, a handsome wedding party. A band with the oldest instruments I’ve ever seen played a rousing wedding march. And the bride and groom? Marie and Christian looked radiant and relaxed and happy, and they recited their vows in strong voices.
After the one-o’clock-ish ceremony (the wedding, like everything else, was on African time), the celebrating began on the lawn outside Paraa lodge. Tents and tables were set up on the hillside overlooking the Nile, and the sun blessed our mingling, eating, speech-making, and dancing. The buffet table was filled with both western food and traditional Ugandan fare, everything from fresh tomatoes to tilapia to matoke. I was delighted to find that the amazing chef had used the smoked salmon that Don and I brought from Alaska to create tasty appetizers and a salmon salad.
When most of us were seated, a group of professional dancers – the Ndere troupe – came bounding onto the lawn wearing colorful costumes and moving with incredible energy. Such gyrations of the hips! Auntie Sarah from Arua was coming along just then and she grabbed me from where I stood and pulled me into the dancing. After the troupe performed several dances, they pulled lots of us into dancing motion. A great way to warm up fast!
Then the speeches got rolling, and rolling, and rolling, as the first of the scheduled speakers and several impromptu speakers shared their thoughts, sentiments, stories, and advice. Aunties gave religious counsel, Barry Goldfarb drew parallels from their senior papers, and Hartvig urged financial care and good sex (and three other things but I’m summarizing here).
Late in the afternoon we were given an hour to rest up. When the crowd reconvened in the lovely evening air, the chefs were lined up at grills on the lawn and again we filled our plates. The speech-making resumed, and I loved hearing Aretussa speak, and my parents, and everyone else who had a word for the newlyweds. By the time it was my turn, it was so dark I couldn’t see all the faces I wanted to see, but the lights illuminated Marie and Christian and I took the opportunity to share my mind and heart with them. Speeches continued long into the evening. It took Ted an hour to thank everyone! Finally Charlotte got to speak of her beloved brother and her new love for Marie.
After the wedding cake – a creation that looked like an entire African village – was cut and served, it started to lightly rain so the party was moved inside the lodge.
But midnight was enough for me given the day’s events and the waves of emotion. For Marie’s dad and sisters and me and for Christian’s closest family, the day had begun before sunrise with the kasuze katya ritual – our giving away of Marie to Christian’s family. Two days earlier, Charlotte had explained this tradition to me, but I felt woefully unprepared for it. It was tearful for all of us in Marie’s original family. Yet, for me, it served a function I never imagined beforehand. It made me squarely face the life that Marie was choosing. I had affirmed Marie’s choice to marry Christian from the moment she called to tell me of their plans, and I knew she was making the decision full-heartedly. But that was way back, when we were all in the U.S. and nothing was being asked of me other than to bless the marriage. Now Marie was sitting in my lap in northern Uganda and I was to tell this new family about my daughter before “giving” her to them. The mixture of grief and joy I experienced during that first hour of the day still overloads my heart. I trust it will sift and sort itself in time.
Later, after the sun was up, six of us – Don and I and American aunties – stepped into a flat-bottomed skiff to boat down the Nile toward Murchison Falls. I’d read that in the fifties and sixties this area was teeming with wildlife, and everyone from Hemingway to the Queen of England came to Paraa and cruised this river. I’d also read that the animal population was nearly wiped out during the Amin years and the civil wars, and that the animals were only recently coming back in any numbers. So what we experienced in those brief hours on the Nile took me by surprise too. The waters and banks of the Nile were teeming with wildlife. In the first twenty minutes, we boated past hundreds of hippos, mama and baby waterbucks at water’s edge, and lots of elephants. By the time we were in sight of the waterfalls, we had glided past water buffalos and warthogs and baboons and a bank full of crocodiles, and we saw an incredible array of birds – fish eagles, weaver birds, kingfishers, Egyptian geese, cormorants, yellow-billed storks, white egrets. At one point, our captain cut the engine so we could listen to the singing of thousands of frogs.
Those of us who went to bed by one o’clock apparently missed a late night visit by elephants. Some of the bridesmaids who had enjoyed the night’s dancing told us the next morning that a couple of elephants came moseying along the grass right outside our rooms. But so it goes…Wild things everywhere. Like the giraffes and antelopes and baboons and monkeys we all saw as we drove out of the park toward Arua. Oh! Arua is another story.
But my most cherished moment of the day is this: helping Marie step into her ivory wedding gown, and fastening the clasps to fit the bodice around my lovely, grown-up daughter, and seeing her so happy and so calm.
Kampala morning
OK, moving backwards (so what else is new)...from 16 July...
It’s early and still dark, the hour of cool air and quiet streets. Another Kampala morning! This will be my last one for now because the wedding is over, my loved ones have departed, and today I move to Rakai. But for one last morning I’ll make myself a cup of the Africafé that Marie brought around the day we arrived and sit on the balcony overlooking the hilly outlines of the city.
I love these Kampala mornings. Jet lag woke me at 4 am on the first few days, but the seductiveness of the pre-dawn hour is what keeps waking me up. The room that Christian led us to when we arrived a couple weeks ago is five flights up, so we’re at treetop height (and getting good exercise going up and down the stairs). The little balcony offers a nice slice of the city – hotels and corporate buildings rising up behind the trees, hillsides lit with houses, the sky lit with stars (and on the very first morning a full moon), and immediately below me a grassy courtyard and a swimming pool.
Every morning I sit here to begin the day. In the darkness, a smoggy haze hangs over the city. I listen to silence until the roosters begin to crow. At 5:30 or so, an undulating voice sounds from a loudspeaker somewhere in the distance. The Muslim call to prayer is not familiar to me but I’ve come to count on it these mornings. Often the church bell rings out simultaneously. When the barest light is entering the sky, the sounds change into birdsong. The marabou storks wake up and fly from treetop to rooftop, making their strange squawking call. On some of these mornings, the nighttime revelers return at this hour, diving into the pool as if to wake up before going to sleep. At sunrise the air changes almost imperceptibly from cool to warm. Pedestrians and bicycles will soon fill the street and the day will be underway with crazy urgency.
So begins this Monday. Carol’s internet café is terribly quiet. Before this week’s departures there must have been fifty of us here in this apartment building, and it seems I was the only one who traveled with a laptop. A daily stream of visitors dropped by to check their email and send word to loved ones back home. But now…no Hanna, no Heather, no Don, no Lisa, no Paul, no Ann… Nobody left here but me. I guess it’s time to begin the blog I’ve promised to friends and family. If you’re out there, I’m sending word and a big hug!
I’m well and happy to be here. After two weeks in Uganda, I’m sleeping soundly and drinking lots of mango juice and keeping light on my feet as I walk around Kampala (and always alert, lest I be hit by a taxi or boda boda). I’ve met hordes of Ugandan aunties and uncles, and I’ve bumped along numerous roads with new friends from here and afar. Best of all, I’ve discovered what Marie described after her first time here a couple years ago. Uganda is a warm and welcoming country, and Christian’s family and friends have room in their hearts for all of us. So, my longtime beloved ones may have returned to the states, but many new loved ones are here all around me.
It’s early and still dark, the hour of cool air and quiet streets. Another Kampala morning! This will be my last one for now because the wedding is over, my loved ones have departed, and today I move to Rakai. But for one last morning I’ll make myself a cup of the Africafé that Marie brought around the day we arrived and sit on the balcony overlooking the hilly outlines of the city.
I love these Kampala mornings. Jet lag woke me at 4 am on the first few days, but the seductiveness of the pre-dawn hour is what keeps waking me up. The room that Christian led us to when we arrived a couple weeks ago is five flights up, so we’re at treetop height (and getting good exercise going up and down the stairs). The little balcony offers a nice slice of the city – hotels and corporate buildings rising up behind the trees, hillsides lit with houses, the sky lit with stars (and on the very first morning a full moon), and immediately below me a grassy courtyard and a swimming pool.
Every morning I sit here to begin the day. In the darkness, a smoggy haze hangs over the city. I listen to silence until the roosters begin to crow. At 5:30 or so, an undulating voice sounds from a loudspeaker somewhere in the distance. The Muslim call to prayer is not familiar to me but I’ve come to count on it these mornings. Often the church bell rings out simultaneously. When the barest light is entering the sky, the sounds change into birdsong. The marabou storks wake up and fly from treetop to rooftop, making their strange squawking call. On some of these mornings, the nighttime revelers return at this hour, diving into the pool as if to wake up before going to sleep. At sunrise the air changes almost imperceptibly from cool to warm. Pedestrians and bicycles will soon fill the street and the day will be underway with crazy urgency.
So begins this Monday. Carol’s internet café is terribly quiet. Before this week’s departures there must have been fifty of us here in this apartment building, and it seems I was the only one who traveled with a laptop. A daily stream of visitors dropped by to check their email and send word to loved ones back home. But now…no Hanna, no Heather, no Don, no Lisa, no Paul, no Ann… Nobody left here but me. I guess it’s time to begin the blog I’ve promised to friends and family. If you’re out there, I’m sending word and a big hug!
I’m well and happy to be here. After two weeks in Uganda, I’m sleeping soundly and drinking lots of mango juice and keeping light on my feet as I walk around Kampala (and always alert, lest I be hit by a taxi or boda boda). I’ve met hordes of Ugandan aunties and uncles, and I’ve bumped along numerous roads with new friends from here and afar. Best of all, I’ve discovered what Marie described after her first time here a couple years ago. Uganda is a warm and welcoming country, and Christian’s family and friends have room in their hearts for all of us. So, my longtime beloved ones may have returned to the states, but many new loved ones are here all around me.
A quick catcher-upper
A NOTE TO MY READERS: I’m afraid this first posting will be longer than intended because I lost my internet connection back on 16 July and now my access has become consistently unpredictable. So read as you wish and post me a note when you can. I’d love to hear from you! In future, I hope to post more regularly and pithily. Though I make no promises as this is Africa!
Getting to Uganda from Alaska took days for Don and me. We flew from Kodiak to Anchorage to Seattle to New York to Dubai to Addis Ababa to Entebbe. Whew! But a night in Seattle, a night in New York, and a night in Dubai kept us rested, and it was so hot in New York and Dubai that the air in Uganda, when we finally arrived, felt mild. We were a group of about twenty Americans traveling from JFK together, the first bunch to arrive, and it was wonderful being met at the airport by Marie and Christian and Uncle Jim and others who we’ve come to know.
A geography primer: Uganda is the interior country just west of Kenya, south of Sudan, east of Congo, and north of Rwanda and Tanzania. The heart of east Africa! The whole southeastern chunk of Uganda is filled with Lake Victoria, the huge freshwater lake that Uganda shares with Kenya and Tanzania. Though crossed by the equator, Uganda is blessed with temperatures that are easy on a northerner. Thanks to the high elevation – 3,500 feet and more – most days in southcentral Uganda reach barely 80 degrees (I’m still thinking in Fahrenheit temps).
We have been an eclectic group since Marie and Christian have well-wishers from all over the world. My brother and his family from Nebraska. Friends and tutors from St. John’s College and others from Santa Fe. Colleagues from Geneva and friends from Olney school in Ohio. Friends from Georgetown and Columbia, Britain and Germany. Three lovely Greek women. Aunties from New York and Nebraska. Don and me from Kodiak. Paul and Barbara from Anchorage. H & H. And Lisa! I wish I could name everyone, but that’s the group in brief. By the morning of 7-7-07, more than forty of us had flown in from JFK on the flights Marie had arranged, and others came independently from North America and Europe. Sixty-four of us, according to Christian’s brother Ted, have come from abroad for the wedding.
My mom and dad too! The presence of Marie’s grandparents was a blessing for Marie and Christian and for the rest of us as well. Showered with affection and respect, they became Grama and Grampa to everyone. At the kasiki party, Marie’s 81-year-old Grampie danced with her like an energetic kid. At the bridal shower given by Lisa and Ashley at Agnes’ home in Kampala, the African aunties chimed in with Grammie, word for word, when she read from Ruth 1:16 (“Wherever you go, I shall go…”).
Joining up with Christian’s clan, we’ve become a really big family. We’ve met so many Ugandans I’m having difficulty sorting them out. Charlotte has tried to explain. “We have no cousins, just brothers and sisters,” she told us on one of our bus rides. “We have no aunts and uncles, just mothers and fathers.” Of course, they really do have aunts. We’ve met Auntie Cissy and Auntie Lillian and a zillion other aunts. But I’ve witnessed what Charlotte was describing with other people I’ve met here. Aunts and uncles look after everyone, and Charlotte herself has been both sister and mother to Christian since their mother died.
Ted and Charlotte started planning the wedding last year. Way back in January, when I was staying in a little house near Chiniak on Kodiak island, Marie emailed the minutes taken at the first wedding meetings being held by the family in Kampala. That was my first inkling of the seriousness with which Ugandans prepare for a wedding. Ted became chairman for his brother’s wedding organizing committee, and relatives were signed up for sub-committees to start making arrangements for the cake, decorations, dinner, music, video coverage, accommodations, tours. Everyone was asked to donate as much money as they could afford. Ted’s wife Brenda and Charlotte’s boyfriend Malko and Aunt Lydia and Aunt Agnes and a bunch of other aunties and some uncles were all involved in a formidable number of details. Because Marie and Christian had chosen to marry at Paraa Safari Lodge in Murchison Falls National Park, the planning also required transport for a day’s road trip to the northwest part of Uganda. So buses and park entrance fees and ferry crossings became part of the challenge.
Our part was simply to get here.
In the week before the wedding, Christian’s friends John and Don and Nooman and a bunch of others introduced us to life in Kampala. They took us to eating spots and the American Embassy and fabric shops and All Saints cathedral. Malko helped Rose and me pick out cell phones to use while in Africa. On our first night in Kampala, Uncle Jim led a bunch of us down Lumumba Ave. to African Pot for dinner – our first experience eating posho and matoke and ground nut sauce and peas and beans and chicken Uganda style.
On the fourth of July, Charlotte and Ted took us all on a day trip to their ancestral farm in Jinja district, where the children at Kivubuka came running to greet us when our buses and vans pulled in. On the drive there, we passed the road that would lead to the burial place of Christian’s mother and through the Mabira Forest, where we stopped at a rainforest lodge for late lunch (or early dinner or whatever) on the drive back to Kampala at the end of the day. Nothing like salads and grilled chicken and a cold Nile Special after a day bumping along in a bus and walking through oozes of red mud. Oh! The mud was part of the fun earlier in the day, when we took a side trip to Bujagali Falls near the source of the Nile. Our coaster (a bus that seats about twenty people) slid right off the slippery road and had to be pushed out. Twice. Or was it three times? We all got off the bus and on the bus and attracted about a dozen guys to join us in pushing our coaster back onto the road each time. The red soil of Uganda is like magic clay. So dusty when it’s dry. So oozy after a rain.
Getting to Uganda from Alaska took days for Don and me. We flew from Kodiak to Anchorage to Seattle to New York to Dubai to Addis Ababa to Entebbe. Whew! But a night in Seattle, a night in New York, and a night in Dubai kept us rested, and it was so hot in New York and Dubai that the air in Uganda, when we finally arrived, felt mild. We were a group of about twenty Americans traveling from JFK together, the first bunch to arrive, and it was wonderful being met at the airport by Marie and Christian and Uncle Jim and others who we’ve come to know.
A geography primer: Uganda is the interior country just west of Kenya, south of Sudan, east of Congo, and north of Rwanda and Tanzania. The heart of east Africa! The whole southeastern chunk of Uganda is filled with Lake Victoria, the huge freshwater lake that Uganda shares with Kenya and Tanzania. Though crossed by the equator, Uganda is blessed with temperatures that are easy on a northerner. Thanks to the high elevation – 3,500 feet and more – most days in southcentral Uganda reach barely 80 degrees (I’m still thinking in Fahrenheit temps).
We have been an eclectic group since Marie and Christian have well-wishers from all over the world. My brother and his family from Nebraska. Friends and tutors from St. John’s College and others from Santa Fe. Colleagues from Geneva and friends from Olney school in Ohio. Friends from Georgetown and Columbia, Britain and Germany. Three lovely Greek women. Aunties from New York and Nebraska. Don and me from Kodiak. Paul and Barbara from Anchorage. H & H. And Lisa! I wish I could name everyone, but that’s the group in brief. By the morning of 7-7-07, more than forty of us had flown in from JFK on the flights Marie had arranged, and others came independently from North America and Europe. Sixty-four of us, according to Christian’s brother Ted, have come from abroad for the wedding.
My mom and dad too! The presence of Marie’s grandparents was a blessing for Marie and Christian and for the rest of us as well. Showered with affection and respect, they became Grama and Grampa to everyone. At the kasiki party, Marie’s 81-year-old Grampie danced with her like an energetic kid. At the bridal shower given by Lisa and Ashley at Agnes’ home in Kampala, the African aunties chimed in with Grammie, word for word, when she read from Ruth 1:16 (“Wherever you go, I shall go…”).
Joining up with Christian’s clan, we’ve become a really big family. We’ve met so many Ugandans I’m having difficulty sorting them out. Charlotte has tried to explain. “We have no cousins, just brothers and sisters,” she told us on one of our bus rides. “We have no aunts and uncles, just mothers and fathers.” Of course, they really do have aunts. We’ve met Auntie Cissy and Auntie Lillian and a zillion other aunts. But I’ve witnessed what Charlotte was describing with other people I’ve met here. Aunts and uncles look after everyone, and Charlotte herself has been both sister and mother to Christian since their mother died.
Ted and Charlotte started planning the wedding last year. Way back in January, when I was staying in a little house near Chiniak on Kodiak island, Marie emailed the minutes taken at the first wedding meetings being held by the family in Kampala. That was my first inkling of the seriousness with which Ugandans prepare for a wedding. Ted became chairman for his brother’s wedding organizing committee, and relatives were signed up for sub-committees to start making arrangements for the cake, decorations, dinner, music, video coverage, accommodations, tours. Everyone was asked to donate as much money as they could afford. Ted’s wife Brenda and Charlotte’s boyfriend Malko and Aunt Lydia and Aunt Agnes and a bunch of other aunties and some uncles were all involved in a formidable number of details. Because Marie and Christian had chosen to marry at Paraa Safari Lodge in Murchison Falls National Park, the planning also required transport for a day’s road trip to the northwest part of Uganda. So buses and park entrance fees and ferry crossings became part of the challenge.
Our part was simply to get here.
In the week before the wedding, Christian’s friends John and Don and Nooman and a bunch of others introduced us to life in Kampala. They took us to eating spots and the American Embassy and fabric shops and All Saints cathedral. Malko helped Rose and me pick out cell phones to use while in Africa. On our first night in Kampala, Uncle Jim led a bunch of us down Lumumba Ave. to African Pot for dinner – our first experience eating posho and matoke and ground nut sauce and peas and beans and chicken Uganda style.
On the fourth of July, Charlotte and Ted took us all on a day trip to their ancestral farm in Jinja district, where the children at Kivubuka came running to greet us when our buses and vans pulled in. On the drive there, we passed the road that would lead to the burial place of Christian’s mother and through the Mabira Forest, where we stopped at a rainforest lodge for late lunch (or early dinner or whatever) on the drive back to Kampala at the end of the day. Nothing like salads and grilled chicken and a cold Nile Special after a day bumping along in a bus and walking through oozes of red mud. Oh! The mud was part of the fun earlier in the day, when we took a side trip to Bujagali Falls near the source of the Nile. Our coaster (a bus that seats about twenty people) slid right off the slippery road and had to be pushed out. Twice. Or was it three times? We all got off the bus and on the bus and attracted about a dozen guys to join us in pushing our coaster back onto the road each time. The red soil of Uganda is like magic clay. So dusty when it’s dry. So oozy after a rain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
