Getting invited for a wedding is something that is bound to happen to you if you spend some time in Uganda. A muzungu at a wedding is a sort of a prized trophy, a public show-off of the good connexions and a question of social prestige. Besides, your chances of an invitation increase simply because most people don’t have one, but two weddings, often months apart: a traditional wedding (called an “introduction”) and a church wedding. In fact, sometimes even two weddings are not enough – I know someone getting married three times (to the same person): through a traditional introduction, a civil wedding at the registry, and a church wedding.
The first wedding we were invited to was a traditional “introduction” in Lira. It was a bustling mixture of tradition and non-tradition (the bride was from Karamoja and the groom from Papua New Guinea), with many speeches, but also with a lot of colourful dancing and traditional programme. All in all, I found it interesting, nice and generally pleasant (though admittedly somewhat lengthy).
 |
| The guests dancing |
 |
| The Karamojong dancing |
 |
| The bride and the groom |
 |
| And the bride and the groom again |
The second wedding we were invited to was a church wedding. I had met the bridegroom twice in a bar, and not seen the bride until the wedding day. It was tedious, desperately boring, and I seriously considered running away in regular 5-minute intervals throughout the endless hours of speeches which filled the after-ceremony party. Lucky I didn’t run away, because when all the speeches finally culminated with the speech of the bride and the groom, the groom invited first his group of friends to join him in front of everyone, and then called on his “special friends, Javi from Spain and Susana from... ehm... errrm... Czecho...slovakia” to stand and present themselves in front of the 400 guests. After this wedding I developed an acute phobia of Ugandans with microphones.
When a colleague of mine told me about a month ago that he was getting married, it was obvious that an invitation would follow. It did.
I feebly raised some excuses. Besides, I had nothing to wear. And as if by magic, within a few hours I had a complete Karamojong attire for the occasion ready on my desk, swiftly assembled by a colleague, composed of a traditional skirt, beaded belt, necklace and earrings (you might have noticed that typical Karamojong wear is much about beads and bracelets). There was no way out.
And so in spite of swearing after the second Ugandan wedding that I would NEVER attend another, I eventually found myself agreeing to go to a third one...
Mood: *mildly worried*
No comments:
Post a Comment