{"id":858,"date":"2013-04-30T15:36:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T15:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/?p=858"},"modified":"2013-05-14T14:33:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T14:33:46","slug":"the-wedding-at-mukura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/the-wedding-at-mukura\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wedding at Mukura"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fleeing-the-rain-tree\"<\/a>The worst road in northern Uganda may well be the road to Kumi. This road has been a disaster since before I came to Uganda.\u00a0 Over the last seven years it has been more or less in a constant state of reconstruction, and if anything, it has deteriorated.\u00a0 It really does put the route to Katakwi unequivocally in second place — potholes you could drown in, ruts the size of river beds, heavy traffic with massive, overloaded trucks headed mainly to southern Sudan.\u00a0 The road to Katakwi is just poor and neglected, but the road to Kumi has been made worse by years of government attention.\u00a0 According to Dr. Mwanika, \u201cIn Uganda, every man behind a desk is a problem.\u201d\u00a0 So, here, corruption, poor planning, substandard construction, countless inefficiencies, turf wars, and the like add up to a traveler\u2019s nightmare.\u00a0 Thank God for our driver, Francis, who manages to get us past the bad section in little more than an hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Mukura, we turn off the main Kumi road and head up into the little village where the wedding will take place.\u00a0 Mukura is on the old rail line built by the British and was the site of a terrible atrocity in 1987.\u00a0 Yoweri Museveni, was busy consolidating his power in the Northeast following the war that won him the presidency of Uganda.\u00a0 Teso as a region was considered a defeated enemy, and the army moved harshly against suspected rebels.\u00a0 In this case, they rounded up many dozens of people they thought might cause trouble, mainly young men.\u00a0 They were accused of \u201crebel activity\u201d and herded into cattle cars on a siding near the station.\u00a0 Then the soldiers put stacks of wood under the cars, doused them with gasoline, and set them ablaze.\u00a0 The captive young people were burned alive.\u00a0 Over a hundred died.\u00a0 The commander responsible for this atrocity later died in Rwanda, but the people here have never forgotten his name.<\/p>\n

\"Pastor<\/a>

Pastor Wilson before the wedding in Mukura<\/p><\/div>\n

We pick up Pastor Wilson and head to the wedding site in a clearing near a huge mango tree.\u00a0 Many of the guests are already there, and there are long tents on two sides protecting the in-laws from the sun.\u00a0 Pastor and I sit down to work out the order of service, while choirs from the village churches take their turns singing spirituals and hymns.<\/p>\n

Pastor Wilson has asked my help, not only as an honor for me, but also to celebrate Pilgrim Africa\u2019s<\/a> work in the region. \u00a0Wilson has huge standing as a spiritual leader in Teso, and though he is a Pentecostal, he is intrigued by the Book of Common Prayer (especially the American version) and wants me both to preach and to conduct the entire service from it.<\/p>\n

\"Flower-girls-at-Mukura\"<\/a>This poses a couple of problems.\u00a0 I managed to get in touch this morning with the <\/span>Church of Uganda<\/a>\u00a0Bishop of Kumi<\/a>, so he wouldn\u2019t first find out about a wandering American bishop in tomorrow\u2019s newspaper.\u00a0 Bishop Irigei could not have been more gracious and gave me carte blanche.\u00a0 But it is clear that I\u00a0don’t\u00a0have any civil authority to do any marrying in Uganda; so I tell Pastor that I can really do only the instruction and declaration of consent. The couples can take their vows, then he will have to manage everything else, using words, shall we say, inspired by the Book of Common Prayer.\u00a0 He nods enthusiastically.<\/span><\/p>\n

The grooms arrive first, stepping very slowly and in a stately fashion, together with their best men, to the singing of the choirs.\u00a0 They are seated, and within a few minutes the brides arrive.<\/p>\n

\"Four-brides\"<\/a>Just as in an American wedding, this is the moment everyone is waiting for. They pile out of the cars with their entourage, greeted by the high-pitched trilling of the women of the community.\u00a0 They come in similar fashion to the men, led by the cutest flower girls on the planet, and are seated in a separate section next to the grooms.<\/p>\n

And this is the point at which the emcee of the wedding makes a serious mistake.\u00a0 In spite of the darkening skies, he does not adjust the program.\u00a0 Instead, he allows the village choirs to continue, one after another, with their musical offerings in honor of the couples.\u00a0 By the time we get to the moment of the actual wedding, we are overshadowed by a skyful of black clouds.<\/p>\n

It is surprising how long the instruction and declaration of consent can take, when\u00a0you’ve\u00a0got eight couples, and have to do this with a phrase-by-phrase translation into Ateso.\u00a0 The consent, obviously, has to be ascertained one couple at a time, and after the first two responses (\u201cebo\u201d meaning \u201cI will\u201d), the brides and grooms start padding their lines (e.g. \u201cI will, and as God is my witness, he will be my first and last!\u201d).\u00a0 After each of these little affirmations the crowd goes wild, which helps to explain why we only get through six couples before the heavens open.<\/p>\n

\"Guests<\/a>

Guests fleeing the rain<\/p><\/div>\n

Rain in Teso is no quiet affair.\u00a0 What doesn\u2019t come down in sheets, comes down in buckets.\u00a0 Everybody heads for the tents into which we are packed like sardines.\u00a0 I can safely say I have never looked a couple more eyeball-to-eyeball than I do with these last two.\u00a0 The whole thing feels like marrying sixteen people in an elevator while being sprayed with a fire hose.\u00a0 We manage to get it all done. Pastor Wilson is, in fact, inspired. \u00a0Rain at a wedding is considered a special blessing, so in spite of some grumbling about the emcee\u2019s poor judgment, everyone is in remarkably good humor.\u00a0 Until the tents start to blow away.<\/p>\n

\"Saving-the-tent\"<\/p>\n

When the first one collapses, there is mainly a lot of confusion, laughter and scurrying for alternate cover.\u00a0 The second, the one\u00a0we’re\u00a0in, is set on steel posts with a steel frame.\u00a0 It lifts suddenly off the ground, like Dorothy\u2019s house in the Wizard of Oz, the rear of the frame pulling out of the supports in a nanosecond.\u00a0 By the grace of God, about a dozen young men react instantly, grabbing the frame and holding onto it until it can be re-secured, avoiding what almost certainly would have been some serious injuries.\u00a0 After about a half-hour, the rain subsides, the cake is cut, some pictures are taken, but most people just start heading home.\u00a0 The feast will have to happen another day.<\/p>\n

\"Fleeing-the-rain\"<\/a>On the way back to Soroti, there is a lot of laughter and commentary in the car.\u00a0 My favorite remark:\u00a0 \u201cWell, the parents of any girls ought to be happy.\u00a0 They won\u2019t be tortured for weeks by their daughters saying, \u201cDaddy I want my wedding to be just like that one!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worst road in northern Uganda may well be the road to Kumi. This road has been a disaster since before I came to Uganda.\u00a0 Over the last seven years it has been more or less in a constant state of reconstruction, and if anything, it has deteriorated.\u00a0 It really does put the route to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pilgrim-africa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3rrkF-dQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}