The Introduction

            As of last Wednesday I moved up to the "Ranch", Cornerstone's property in the Nakasongola district where the boys school is that I will be teaching at. I will be (and have been) teaching mathematics and computer. I'll talk about that at some point later. I will not be able to blog as often as I did before as I don't have internet. If you are frustrated with my lack of blogging or getting back to you quickly, remember that I traveled about an hour to get to internet, and it took about 45 minutes for my blog to open. My email hasn't opened yet. Anyways, this is a blog I wrote a few days ago about a ceremony here. Some of the details may be wrong as I didn't always know what was going on. I may slowly make corrections as I gather more of the details. I'll have pictures later: I don't have them on me right now, but they are taken.

            Last Saturday (June 16), I went to an Introduction in Kampala. To those who don’t know what it is, it is basically the ceremony to “officially” announce or introduce a marriage (hence the name). In particular, the husband’s family pays the bride price to the wife’s. It’s usual here for the husband’s family to give gifts, usually some number of cows and a few lesser gifts, to the wife’s in order to help supplement the loss incurred from taking her away. When married, the wife moves in with the husband’s family, joining his clan. This last thing is a little more complicated as sometimes the wife and the husband will live by themselves, particularly in cities like Kampala. Even in these cases, though, it is still common for the couple to live with relatives from the husband’s side. For example, I was talking with someone from Kampala who said that her husband’s brother and sister, while they were having trouble finding a place of their own, moved in. It’s considered selfish for a couple to live just by themselves without any relatives.

            Let me get back on topic. I put officially in quotes in the above paragraph (see the second sentence) because the marriage is usually well-known beforehand. In particular, the families agree upon a bride-price beforehand, and this is the day where the agreed upon gifts are given/received. There is a certain amount of acting involved in the ceremony. For example, the bride’s clan head (just think of this as meaning extended family including relatives, on the father’s side that is) pretends to have never seen the groom’s family or about the intent of marriage. I will get into more detail about that later.

On Saturday I went to my first Introduction. It was actually between two ex-pats living in Kampala. They wanted to perform a ceremony here for their Ugandan community and then will hold another marriage ceremony in the U.S. for their friends/family there. Because of that this was a rather staged Introduction. People pretended to be in each’s family. I was “on the husband’s side.” Because this couple is marrying primarily according to American marriage customs, this Introduction was more of a mock Introduction in order to involve their Ugandan community in the marriage.

For men, the typical dress for the ceremony were kanzus and a suit jacket. Kanzus are robe-like shirts that go down to your shins. Here, by which I mean southern and central Uganda, they are formal wear for men. Women wore gomesis. I don’t know very well what these are, mostly because I never put one on. Basically they are rather colorful, involve multiple interlocking layers, and remind me of elaborate dresses.

Here’s a description of the actual ceremony. The husband’s clan stands at the gate of the bride’s. They are invited in as strangers (remember the bride’s clan leader pretends he’s never seen them before). The wife’s family is represented by the clan leader, and the husband’s family is represented by an elder from neither family. He’s the one who coordinated the marriage in the first place, but I won’t get into that here. We were greeted by the daughters and then sons of the clan leader. The daughters and sons came out in trains led by one of the sons (there were three such trains of daughters and one for the sons), and each time marches out dancing to a song. Then the husband’s representative gave the wife’s leader a drink so that they can talk. All the while the wife’s leader was cautious and paranoid. For example, he pretended that the drink was poison, requiring the husband’s representative to drink some to make sure, and frequently misinterprets the husband’s representative’s statements to be intended as a threat. He also frequently threatened to throw the husband’s leader, and presumably the whole family as well, in jail. The husband’s representative gave the wife’s leader the drink on his knees and then states his intentions. Okay, well he sort of stated his intentions here. He told a story that the wife’s leader’s sister told him to come at this time during a family meeting. It’s unclear to me whether this is intended to mean biological sister or not. The term “sister” is often used to refer to any female from the same clan. Also the bride’s father’s sister has an important role in the marriage, and I believe this is who this is. The bride’s leader pretended to be offended, that secrets from their house had been revealed to strangers. He brought out his sisters to ask them if they have seen him before. If they didn’t, we’d be thrown in jail according to the bride’s leader. The sisters came and testified that they knew the representative and the family. The head sister (the auntie, the bride’s father’s sister) said she gave the information. She told a story where they were getting water and were having trouble carrying it back. A man from this family came and helped her. The bride’s leader asked who, and she said she needed her glasses so that she can see enough to spot him. They then left. It should be noted that each time the sisters came in and went they danced in, led by one of the sons and accompanied by music.

There was a sort of informal intermission while we waited. The sisters eventually came out, this time with the bride. That’s why it took a while. The head sister (and another one who I am not sure who she was exactly) went through the husband’s family and picked out the man who helped her. (This is a made up story remember.) He was sitting in the middle of the group for a while, actually right next to me. He is then brought to the front and center of the group of his family. The auntie then testified about the husband, and gifts were presented to her as well by the husband’s sisters. The representative then also introduced the husband, explaining his ancestors up to his great-grandparents and his achievements. The husband’s family then got gifts to give to the bride’s. The gifts were presented. I won’t go into the detail of what gifts were given, except to say that the bride’s brothers received a rooster. When it crowed, it was to remind them that their sister is no longer available. There were many different gifts with different meanings. I kind of lost track all of them. I know one cow was given, though I am unsure how that works in this case: this Introduction was pretend and the wife’s family lives in the U.S., so I am not sure who got the cow. Giving cows though are important for marriages here though. The bride was then introduced, with her family and achievements, and the bride’s leader asked the auntie and then the wife if they approved. We then took a break for dinner. After dinner, the husband pledged to the bride and her parents, and then the bride, auntie, and her brothers presented a cake, with fireworks. She pledged to the husband while feeding him some cake. The husband’s family then processed out like it came in, and this marked the end of the ceremony. There was then a dance.

I doubt I have described everything correctly or that I got the details right. This is both because I am unfamiliar with the customs and because my memory has forgotten many of the details. The exact roles were also confusing because they were all acted. No one was actually the roles they were supposed to be. They were all coworkers at Cornerstone of the bride and groom, and so it took me some time to think of them as different family members. Over the course of the whole ceremony there were many dance performances as well, which did not function in the overall ceremony but were entertaining. The ceremony lasted about 5 hours. This was considered a short Introduction by the Ugandans here, shorter because the American couple wanted a shorter one. Usually they last the whole day, like 8 hours. I am talking about only the ceremony here, not the dance/reception afterwards.

I don’t know how long the dance was basically as it started: we had a couple hour drive ahead of us to go back to the school. That being said it was a long day. We got up at 5 to go. The 2 hour drive to Kampala actually took 5 because of frequent stops and errands. We had tea twice along the way; well I had tea twice not everyone in the van did. We left two hours late as well, intending 5:30 but wound up leaving at 7:30. For Uganda we were making good time! The ride home wasn’t quite as bad: we stopped only four times.

I do have pictures, but I won’t be able to post them for a while. I don’t have enough internet right now to hand pictures. You’ll have to be patient.

Quick correction. Above I may have described the representatives of the family as the bride's and husband's father. This is false. Okay, so here is the long story. These among the Buganda (the tribe where Kampala is located whose customs this introduction was modeled after), the parents of both are not allowed to attend the Introduction. I asked about the roles from a person from another ethnic group that doesn't have that role. They used to be (say 50 years ago) much smaller, discrete affairs, with only key people in each family (not the parents though), but now they are usually public ceremonies that are longer and more elaborate. 

Food in Uganda

            Someone told me to describe what food in Uganda was like, so that’s what I will do in this blog. I will basically describe the typically lunch I have here every day. This is while I am in Kampala (the capital city), though when I was in Nakasongola (a rural region) I had the same exact lunch so there you go. Here is what a plate looks like:

            First there is posho. It is maize (corn) flour that mixed and boiled. It looks sort of like mashed potatoes, white but slightly more solid-like. Then we have matooke (pronounce the “oo” as in “go” or “no”), a banana-like plant (similar to a plantain), that is mashed and then boiled. It also looks like mashed potatoes, except they are yellow. On top of the matooke they put g-nut sauce. G-nut is short for groundnuts (i.e. peanuts). The sauce is effectively peanuts grounded up into a powder and turned into a sauce. This is my favorite part of the whole lunch: I love groundnuts. Groundnuts here are slightly different than peanuts in the U.S. They are smaller and don’t have as hard of a shell. I also think they taste better. The posho and matooke take up half the plate. On the other half is beans usually boiled and rice dipped in some kind of meat broth (though sometimes they put the beans on the rice instead). They then also give me a piece of some kind of meat, usually chicken, beef, or fish. Which one they give me depends on what they have that day. Which meat dictates which broth they will add onto my rice (chicken means chicken broth, beef broth when they have beef, and fish means they put my beans on top of the rice). They also give some kind of cooked greens. They have another word for it, but I have forgotten what it is. I always thought it was spinach, and at the least it is very similar to spinach. That has been my lunch for the last several weeks.

            Here are some other notable foods. There’s chabate. It’s a thin bunch of flour that is cooked with a frying pan. It’s kind of like a tortilla but thicker. I really enjoy these. I’ll often eat them plane and sometimes add other things to them to make a little burrito like thing. For example, there’s the rolex (not the watch), which is eggs encased in a chabate (like an egg burrito). Avocadoes are also common and often added as flavor additions. I have noticed them less in Kampala though. In the rural areas, you add them to your rice or beans. There’s also mile mile (spelling may be wrong), but I haven’t had any here yet, so I won’t talk about now. That’s about all I can think of right now as far as food goes. It’s usual when at a restaurant that I don’t know what I am ordering. Sometimes this is because the menu includes words I never heard of before and sometimes I think I know what I am getting but I am gloriously wrong. For example one time I ordered kabobs to find out they are not grilled meat on a stick. I don’t know how to describe them except that they are this like deep-fried breaded meat. I'd include a picture of my lunch, but I don't have enough internet data to spare to upload it.


Quick addition: it turns out that milet is a Western Ugandan food found no where else. That's why I didn't find it in Kampala nor here at the Ranch , which are both in Central Uganda. Someone from Western Uganda did cook it for me. Evidently, it's the staple plant there. They make this bread and/or porridge out of it.

OMG London!

This will probably be my last post in a while. I did three in the last two days. In a few days I will be heading up to the school in a rural area with very minimal internet. That will significantly hinder my ability to blog. I wrote a bunch of these now to get some of my blogging obligations out of the way because I knew I wouldn't be blogging in a while. This is something I wrote a while ago but forgot to post. It's about my trip to London on my way here to Uganda. 

As I travelled to Uganda, I had a 14 hour layover in Heathrow: leaving Chicago Wednesday evening, I got in early Thursday morning around 7 am and left for Entebbe that night at around 9 pm. So I spent the day in London. These are my adventures in London.

Around 9, I finally went through customs (the line was really long) and was ready to head out. I grabbed two maps. The first was a tourist map, which displayed London’s main tourist attractions. Unfortunately, it had no street names, just empty streets with dots on it, making it practically useless. On top of that, it didn’t include half the streets in London, namely the small, “unimportant” streets. So without street names, I would try to count so many streets from where I am, say turn on the third street in some direction. This failed miserably though because there would really be two or three unmarked streets to screw me up. I also grabbed a train station map, which was only of the downtown area. It was only useful for a the subway system and a very specific section at that. Anyways after buying my train ticket, I promptly boarded the wrong train. The train I had taken was a one-stop express train to London. Ironically I remembered from visiting London last year how to get to the touristy area of London by the normal subway, but the station it dropped me off of was nowhere near there. And of course the station was out of range for my subway map and my nameless street map.

I got rather confused trying to figure out the subway system. I eventually figured which train I needed to get but couldn’t find where it was at the station. At one point I decided to ask someone for directions to the , who then asked me whFrustrated I decided to just board the next dumb train I saw, and although not the train I had originally wanted was an equally acceptable alternate route. I got off at the first station that looked close to the touristy area – i.e. on my subway map – too mad at the subway system to use it any further.

It turned out to be about two or three miles away from where I wanted. At the station I grabbed a street map with actual street names (hip hip hooray!), but it only covered the few blocks surrounding the station. I started walking to the Buckingham Palace, my first destination both because it was closest to where I was, within about two minutes was beyond the scope of that map. It only really functioned as a reminder of what a street map should be like.

After a while I realized that I should have noticed the palace by now or at least the Thames River (from the river I could find the palace and any other tourist attraction easily). Confused I just kept going. It turns out that I had totally missed Buckingham (not a surprise, I was really shooting for the river) and that slightly west of where I wanted to be the river does a 90 degree turn away from me, meaning that instead of being only a few blocks away, the river avoided me entirely. After about 1.5-2 hours of walking I finally found the queen’s abode. It should be noted that I oddly kind of enjoy learning about a city by getting lost walking through it or at least that’s how I rationalize getting lost so often. It was only 11 am now, and with a 9 pm flight, I had plenty of time, so I wasn’t worried.

After looking at Buckingham for a while, I took the normal touristy trip, looking at the Parliament building, those soldiers with the funky hats marching around, Big Ben, that large cathedral next to the Parliament building, etc. I do this for about 2 hours. I then take a break from the touristy stuff by trying to find a café with wifi. From last year, I knew of a Starbucks with internet next to a certain museum, whose name I forgot and confused with this other museum on the map, (the Imperial Museum). It was a few blocks on the over side of the river. Once I got there I quickly realized it wasn’t the same museum. I asked someone where the nearest place with the internet was, and it turned out that the museum had free public wifi. A museum with the internet. Go figure. I went in, grabbed a table in their café, and hooked myself up. A guy joined me: there weren’t any other open tables. We were talking about my trip to Uganda and then he gave me half his lunch, an incredibly helpful thing for to save money I haven’t eaten all day (I doubt he knew that).

Then I left and decided to find the London Tower, but instead of just reversing my steps back to the Thames and walking along it, the easier but longer route, I decided to try to walk directly. My nameless map completely threw me off, and I wound up I believe about three miles away in a residential area. I eventually managed to backtrack and found the bridge. After walking around it and the nearby castle, I finally took the train back to the airport. It was about 5pm, and it had been a long day (it needs to be remembered that at that point, I hadn’t slept in about 30 hours).  

The Wedding

Last Saturday I attended a wedding, well the reception not the service itself, of someone from Cornerstone. Some friends invited me. It was held about 50 feet from my room, so in a way I had no choice as to whether I attended.  

            I won’t go into too much detail explaining the wedding process. This is because many of rituals were not very different from those in the U.S. and those that were I was far too confused about to intelligently describe. Most of it was in Luganda (a local language here), so I did not know what was going on. I will make up for this by providing pictures.

            The ceremony started with the bride and groom walking in. They entered a doorway-like thing decorated with white and purple fabrics (see the picture below). In the doorway was a piece of tape that had to be cut (like the tape used for racing).

            Once they came in they sat down in the front along with other men and women, who looked like groomsmen and bride maids. See the first picture below for where they are sat (it was taken before everyone arrived). By the time of ceremony all the audience seats to the left and right were full of course and the area was much more crowded. They also put white paper on the ground as a pathway between the door (where I was standing when I took the picture) and the front entrance. This building is right next to my room and is the common meeting room for Cornerstone (the organization I work with). The reception starts with different dances performed by local children/teens. There may have been a group hired for the dances, although I recognized some of the girls as friends of the bride. I think there was a mix of the two. The second picture below of a dance. The dances are not easy to describe, but the most notable thing about them is butt/hip shaking. The girls in particular tie furs and other cloth to their butts (see the picture) that are shaken to the rhythm. The music typically features African drums with a singer chanting one phrase many times (in a different language). The girls often did this while rotating in a circle or in a line.

            After the dances there were a few speeches, all but one of which was in Luganda. The MCs who explained what was happening did this in Luganda, so I mostly didn’t know what was happening. (As a side no one should comment with something like “This shows that you should learn Luganda, Stephen”. I will try to learn the language, though where I will be for the rest of my internship I am told has a different local language, so I may learn that one instead.) The bride’s father, who was also the Imam over the service, spoke, and so did the founder of Cornerstone. The latter was American and spoke English, which was then translated into Luganda, so I knew what he was saying. It was a Muslim wedding, and he wanted to ensure that Muslims felt welcomed at his organization. (I won’t explain Christian/Muslim relations in Uganda now, but there is a context of tension.)

            There were some more dances and music, including a drum-fest (that’s what I am calling it, but let’s say just like a dozen drummers making beats while the dancers danced) that was my favorite part. I really like the drums here. Then we ate dinner and socialized. As we ate and socialized, there were more dance performances, and then everyone had cake. The new couple fed each other cake, an important ritual here. It involved the husband feeding the wife and vice versa. Then there were toasts and gifts given to the couple.

Finally there was a dance. This was different than the dances before. The previous ones were performances to the bride and groom; whereas, now everyone could dance freely. The music also changed from African music to American, particularly hip hop and R&B. (A little side note: U.S. music is very common here. Most music on the radio is American, and most songs we’ve song in church or in worship are American as well. Rap/hip hop/R&B are very popular here, as well as contemporary worship music like Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, etc.)  I didn’t get any pictures from the dance because the area was too chaotic to be able to get pictures.

So that is the first Ugandan wedding I’ve been to. Something I noticed is that the more the guests the better the wedding. Ugandans don’t understand why our weddings are so small. When I tell someone the average wedding size in the U.S. is 40-80 people (I hope this is true as I am no expert on U.S. weddings), they just laugh. Here the weddings are huge. This was much smaller than what is considered normal, with only like a hundred people. The larger the wedding the more honor to the couple. I think that’s one reason I was invited.

I have two last pictures of a friend of mine here whose name is Denise. He picked me up at the airport and showed me around town on the first few days in addition to driving me to the homes. So the first picture is right outside the room where I am staying. The window above the motorcycle is my room. This is where the reception was held. In the second picture he is showing me how Ugandans dance. It may be hard to tell, but he is shaking his butt up and down.

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Conference in Nairobi

I have spent most of this last week in Nairobi at a youth leadership conference, called African Youth Leadership Forum (AYLF). I left on Tuesday and got back on Saturday. I really enjoyed the conference. There were many students and young adults from different east African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and even the DRC. It featured many speakers and the focus was on fostering leadership based on the teachings of Jesus. Some high-up people spoke including the CEO of the Daily Monitor (an east African newspaper) and two people from Cornerstone (the organization I’m interning with) as well. It was a great time to get to know different people from different parts of east Africa. I have friends from multiple countries, and yes I was the only American there (with the exception of Tim Kreutter who is the head of Cornerstone and one of the conference organizers). Many of them are college students or recently college students. Most of them are interested in being in some sort of leadership context whether in politics, business, etc. On Thursday night we had a dance which some of the pictures are from.

On Thursday morning we went to the Kenyan National Prayer Breakfast. This is an annual breakfast for Christians to pray for the country of Kenya. There were many elite people there including the president of Kenya and several parliament members. As part of the service there were speeches from the president, the same CEO who spoke at our conference, the Kenyan bishop, and Senator Coon (I will be embarrassed if this is spelled wrong) of Delaware. I sat with two Kenyan bankers and two other people from Nigeria as we ate breakfast and then did the prayer service. After this there was an open-mike discussion with at least several hundred if not a thousand people about the Kenyan elections. A little context the last elections in 2008 resulted in ethnic violence, and this is the first election year since. I could go into more detail but won’t here. The discussion was about how to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen in the upcoming elections. It was interesting seeing what Kenyans are talking about and concerned about. The focus on the conversation was between the following themes: basing one’s votes on their position as opposed to ethnicity, being okay with differences of opinions and having one’s candidate loose, and empowering the youth. The last one may not make that much sense but the basic gist is that Kenya has a very high youth unemployment rate, I believe over half, and that was a significant factor in the post-election violence. At the end the young adults all came to the front, myself included, and made an individual pledge to what we were going to do for our respective communities. We, by which I mean us youth from the conference, went to a lunch run by different leaders. I met a few elite people including parliament members of Nigeria and South Sudan and the former vice president of the DRC. I really enjoyed it.  

Random side note, Dr. Robinson knows everyone! The student from the DRC goes to UCBC, the school Dr. Robinson helped found, and he even knew Senator Coon, who spoke at the prayer breakfast and another speaker there as well.

On Friday after the conference I briefly visited Debbi Omondi, a fellow student at Wheaton from Nairobi. This was right before I left to go back to Kampala.

We rode a bus from Kampala to Nairobi, a 13-15 hour bus ride. The length and bumpiness took a little time to get used to. The second one was hard because it was at night, and I am not used to the bumpiness to sleep. I did manage to get about 3 hours, really 1.5 hours and then 1.5 hours. I would only wake up a few times in these periods.

Now I am back in Kampala and recharging, both physically and socially. At some point this week, I will head out to the school where I will spend the rest of my HNGR internship. There I will be staying with the head teacher who is in his twenties and lives right next to (by which I mean like 50 feet) from the classes.

Quick note on the pictures: The first picture is a group photo of everybody in the conference. It was chaotic when taken and so people were walking in and out and may have been looking at another camera. The next three pictures are of people are from the dance on Thursday night. The next picture requires a little story. At one point people from each country went up and sang the national anthem. So for example, all the Ugandans, a group of about twenty or thirty, got up and sang the national anthem. I was the only person from the U.S., so I had to sing it by myself, a capella mind you. I quickly realized that I didn’t actually know the words and that I couldn’t sing (I have known the second for a long time), but it was still fun. The next two pictures are from the prayer breakfast. The first is of Geoffrey and me at the entrance to the hotel where the conference was held. He’s from Burundi, and I got to know him both at the conference and because I sat next to him on the 15-hour bus ride there. The second was taken during the open-mike, trying to get a sense of what it looked like. The prayer breakfast was in the same room, though they did not allow cameras, so I have no pictures from that. The last picture is of me with Debbi taken right before I left on the bus to Kampala.