Pastor Mike is the youth pastor for Victory Outreach Church in Lira, Uganda. He is going to be getting married in December and about two weeks ago he invited us to his “meeting” ceremony. He has known his fiancée for 6 years but tradition is tradition so before Mike could be officially engaged to his fiancée they had to have their meeting ceremony. The point of this ceremony is for the groom to negotiate (actually done before hand) and provide the bride’s price. The groom shows up with his family and friends to choose a bride. The brides representative parades out groups of women dressed in traditional formal wear for the man to choose a wife from, with each successive group he has to pay a higher price. His friends, or in this case his sisters, go through and examine the women to find the groom a suitable wife. Throughout this process there is a continuous dialogue of witty banter between the brides mother and the best man. In Mike’s Ceremony his bride did not appear until the 3rd group, she was hidden in the middle by the other girls, including the 2 Norwegian exchange students who arrived last week and there was a small struggle to pull her out.
Once the bride was selected , the family went behind closed doors to pretend to negotiate while a Christian dance troop performed various dances for the crowd. One member of the troop was severely physically disabled, his legs and arms were thin, withered and uselessly twisted beneath his torso, but he danced with as much fervor as anyone else. I made my way to the back of the fray, where I took some pictures before finding Richard and Hope. We chatted awhile before the family emerged and then I made my way to the field to view the 8 cows that were paid for the bride (she was expensive). After the cow viewing, Hope introduced me to her sister Faith and told me about her other sister Mercy and her brother Love. Hope advised me to return to my team before the food was served and things got crazy. During the course of the day I had been taught to do the excited screaming yell thing the women here do and was feeling quite comfortable and included. Dinner was yams, 2 kinds of ugali, motoke, rice, peas, goat, amazing yummy cabbage and beans. I ate with my hands which I quite enjoy. The rain clouds were rolling in and so we were going to leave soon and were told to eat quickly, I ate as fast as I could, left the ugali on my plate and downed my pepsi, I wanted to dance. The women were dancing a sort of step dance that went exactly as I felt it should. I came to dance with them which quickly turned into a “you got served” kinda “can you do this” competition or so I think. All I know is that I was definitely goaded into copying whatever the person in front of me was doing, when I could do it another would replace them doing something different. I am not sure if I was successful in my performances but they laughed at me, nodded their heads and shook my hand, so I guess I am happy with that.
The rain clouds were coming quickly and the van would not be able to get out on a muddy road so we said our goodbyes and made our way to the van. To make it easier to get out the van had been moved to the grass at the start of the road. Three people who hadn’t ridden in with us were getting a ride back which meant 4 in the back, 3 in the middle and 2 on the engine block. Jen volunteered to be the 4th in the back, she stood at the door a long while before getting in, I thought “I hope there are no ants here, I’m not going to look” and hopped into the van and sat on the engine block facing the 2 ladies in the middle seat since my legs are short and long legged Jeremiah got the last middle seat, closed the door, put his legs up and yelled “what the…”. His legs were full of ants, just then Jen started to squirm and yell, hitting the ants off herself. I felt myself descend into a sort of numbness and disbelief before the terror hit me. We were packed so tight and it was so dark I could not see my legs, but I could feel that they had ants on them. I tried as calmly as I could manage to brush them off, all the while trying not to jostle the driver sitting behind me into losing control. I was getting bit and becoming illogically angry at Jeremiah who had absolutely nothing to do with it ( I think in my mind I thought he made the ants happen, by being the first one to know about them). I tried to regain some semblance of composure only to be over come by the nausea ridding backwards causes. I put my head down closed my eyes and sang praise, its all I could do.
