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.