Valerie's Uganda Blog 09

6th week – Kampala
Saturday August 22, 2009
11:30pm
Weddings and Goodbyes

Today was a long, long day. Reaaally long. Last night, I didn’t get to sleep till past 11pm due to intense writing and packing of bags. Also playing with Coco (my black chicken) till very late – I let her sleep in the room last night, on a bed of newspapers.

I was expecting to be awoken at 5:10am by my cell phone alarm, so I was not-so-pleasantly surprised when Rebecca crashed into my room and bellowed for me to get up. It was totally dark and I could barely see her face, only hearing her thundering voice.

“Time for get up!”
“Okay, okay, just a few more minutes….”
“The vehicle is coming.”
“Yes, I know it’s coming at 6. I already set my alarm.”
“It is coming.”

I lay back in bed for a minute, waiting for Rebecca to leave the room, but she remained inside for a long time, irritatingly enough. I couldn’t wait for her to get out so I could wake up in peace – my last morning in Busolwe – but she wouldn’t leave. I was getting so annoyed.

Then, suddenly, I heard the hum of a motor and tyres squelching through grass into our yard. Oh no, I thought, please don’t be it. A shrill horn sounded, cutting through the night air. I realized this had to be it and reluctantly got up.

I checked the time: 5:15. God was I pissed to wake up this early and find out a bus that was due at 6am had come 45 minutes early. When would I be able to say goodbye to everything and everyone? What about breakfast? I hadn’t even packed 100% of my belongings yet.

Then Ivan came in, and Hariet and Lucia (the maids). All rushing me to leave. I put a startled, just-waking Coco into Hariet’s arms and told them to take good care of her. I gave Rebecca a long hug. Then I took a banana and a piece of bread for breakfast on the road, and climbed aboard the mini bus (twice the size of a regular taxi bus – much more comfortable but still squishy, as everything here is) in complete darkness (idiots couldn’t seem to turn on the interior lights). I could hardly see anything and immediately sat down in a single seat at the front of the bus. Ivan and Hirome were coming with us, as were the church leader and the bakery business guy. I was very disappointed to learn that Rebecca wasn’t coming, as she had told me she would be yesterday – well, it was to be expected.

We were off by 5:35. We had to stop at another house for 30 minutes to load a ton of passengers also heading for the wedding – then we finally rolled.

It was around 6:15 when the sun began to rise. By 7 it was quite bright. I enjoyed the ride mostly. At 8:15 we stopped in Mabira Forest Reserve just a little past Jinja for a quick pee stop (at first I had no idea what everyone was doing – I just saw a woman squatting down about two meters from the bus’s front bumper, in plain view of everyone else including the passing vehicles on the highway, and then I realized); the ride got tiring after that and I slept for a bit. By 10 we had reached Kampala, but we didn’t make it to the school where the wedding would be held till around 11:15.

When we finally got out, it was raning and very cold! I was quite grouchy. No one was telling me what was going on and I was pretty confused. I wasn’t even sure when Sharon would be meeting up with us. We made our way down to breakfast (good rice plus very tough beef!), then eventually drove down to church for the actual ceremony. We ended up watching three weddings (the one before ours had a much larger crowd; ours was the wedding of Geoffrey and Ruth; there was another small one after that one, too).

It was nice but mostly just singing, talking in Luganda, and then Mendelsson’s exciting Wedding March (or “Match” as it was written in the program…). The newly wed couple was quite old (at least 30-35). I took a ton of photos – we met Juliet there, even – then at last we made our way to the reception back at the school. I was a little annoyed by the fact that Sharon had said she would be at the wedding ceremony, yet hadn’t appeared and wasn’t communicating anymore.

Reception was fun. There were four tents with dozens of chairs, a group of musicians/dancers, and tons of food. Sharon arrived shortly after we were mostly seated. She was actually dressed somewhat formally, which was surprising! We ended up having a lot of fun with the “cultural troupe” as they called it – taking photos with the young musician’s arms around me, smiling and waving coyly at them. There was one particularly cute young guy (only 18!) who I actually got to kiss me – three times! Yes, seriously. I have the pictures to prove it. He was totally effeminate-looking, very young, skilled in music, nice and mild-mannered – perfect! His name was Swaibu or something like that. I got to talk a lot with his friends and their band leader as well.

Dinner was good; a buffet of well-made African dishes. I especially liked the potatoes and the chicken (some of which seems to be still stuck in my teeth!). I took two helpings. Also had plenty to drink. The cake looked really, really good on the outside but – as usual – it turned out to “African-style cake” again (ie, dry, brown, not particularly tasty or soft – basically, a sweet bread loaf with icing sugar). It was much better than the usual fare, but still! Not good enough!

After cake, there was a giving of presents (lots and lots of them!), then dancing under the flashy artificial lighting (it was now quite late at night). Crazily, Sharon had her mind set on going to Jinja tonight (to meet one of her new “friends” as well as to eat at Aaswad, the vegetarian Indian restaurant), so we had to leave with Isabel and Ivan the pastor at around 8pm. We said our goodbyes to librarian Ivan and the others from Busolwe and drove back in their nice car (it was a good ways to Isabel’s place!).

Her place turned out to be really nice with a super huge TV, leather couches, nice bathroom, lots of bedrooms available. Me and Sharon got a bed each in our own room.

Sharon really wanted to go to Jinja, even though it was past 9:30 by this point. Everyone thought she was totally insane, including myself. Against everyone’s warnings, Sharon decided she had to go and at least check if there were taxis heading to Jinja right now, so we set out, at 9:45, to drive to the taxi park. David (Hirome’s son), Nora (Hirome’s youngest daughter) and I accompanied Sharon just to see if there were any taxis for her. As we expected, there turned out to be none – thank God!

So after a good bowl of Milo cereal and a little bit of playing with Jesse (Isabel’s spoiled toddler son), me and Sharon settled down in our room to… talk for several hours about random topics? Yep. Not work on our report, which we still had made no progress on, of course.

I am so bushed. Let me sleep.

-Valerie