I would say put me out of my misery but im pretty sure hell is an introduction ceremony

The day after I arrived at my site, my headmaster took me to an introduction ceremony. A teacher at my school was the groom to be and seeing as I had talked to him for a total of 2 minutes, naturally I was invited. The most important thing for me to do was to get the required attire. The white dress thing is a konzo, which is not Ugandan but adopted from Arabs for historical reasons, and the jacket was adopted from the British because why not, its not like its hot here. The resulting combination had me chuckling.

I left my house around 6am to go to Mbale and get the konzo before the ceremony. I met up with with my headmasters nephew and he babysat me while I did a bit of shopping for my house, he was an effective deterrent of the muzungu tax that I usualy encounter. After a full morning of shopping and carrying stuff around I was really hungry and tired and ready for lunch. I changed into my costume and got on a crowded bus that would take us to the party. I was struggling to hold it together, hungry and hot as I was. The bus driver started up the bus and then we just sat there for another 20 minutes, breathing in the exhaust and sweating profusely while absorbing the heat of the bodies squished next to me and hating the British for being so fashionable. Finally we started off and the fresh breeze was enough to lighten my mood and get me chatting with my seat mates. It was not to last though, because when we did get there and walked single file into the ceremony we were not allowed to sit down. There were little white boxes on each chair that I was pretty sure contained food but I couldn’t think of a culturally sensitive way to get at it, so at this point I texted the title of this entry to my friends in the area.

The whole idea of the ceremony is to introduce the families to each other and to make sure the groom knows who his bride is. There are a series of what I can best describe as skits where a series of girls are brought out and the groom must pick his bride out of the bunch or call for a new batch. This takes hours, and the only reason I know the story is because another volunteer filled me in. whenever I asked a Ugandan what the heck was going on they would say “oh, just a bit of drama”. they mostly seemed bored, some read newspapers but all were obligated to spend their entire day sitting through a bit of drama. Finally we were allowed to sit and so i devoured my roasted goat and seasoned potatoes, suddenly the world was a whole light brighter and I no longer hated the bride and groom.

They had me participate in the gift giving, never mind that I didn’t bring anything, just grab something from the pile and wait your turn to place it at the couples feet, I hope they enjoy their new lamp. I was the last in line to give my gift, awkward, the women in front of me was holding a chicken no big deal, its just the ceremonial marriage chicken. The stupidity of chickens never ceases to amaze me, they can be on the way to their doom but as long as you bind their feet they seem completely indifferent. You can tie 20 of them together and throw them in the back of a taxi but as long as those legs are tied they don’t even try to struggle. This particular chicken played an integral part in the ceremony and as he got closer to the couple I got closer to supper. This was the first time it really hit me that I'm white. Until the ceremony, I had never been the only white person at an event. Also, recently I realized that when I'm reading, im now visualizing characters as black, the main characters are still white though, does that make me racist? So the chicken is given to the groom and he hands the dangling bastion of stupidity over to the brides dad and the bit of drama part was over and it was time to eat.

Basically a  hobo pie wrapped in banana leaves instead of aluminum foil.