Introduction

from last night...

So, it’s Friday night around 8pm and I’m just getting settled in at home for an evening of “normal” Friday night-ish activities like ice cream and a movie. Yep, you read correctly, I wrote ICE CREAM! I’ve been sleeping in an empty room next door at Stephanie’s because her roommates and my housemate are all gone for the week and, well, when one is a single woman living in Africa it’s nice to go to bed at night knowing there’s someone else in the house ☺ Anyways, the point is, they have an ice cream maker and it was my night for taking the evening portion of DMC’s milk (the Myhre’s cow is named Dairy Milk Chocolate) last night and so we have fresh, pasteurized on the stove, cream settled on the top, whole cow’s milk to make ice cream with, so I’m super excited! Maybe I’ll put chocolate chips in it and make chocolate chip ice cream…anyways, can you tell I’m just a little bit looking forward to this?!

So, a few notes from the day…

- one of the unfortunate things about wearing long skirts and living on the equator (ie. it’s HOT here), is that when sitting, it doesn’t really work very well when one tries to cross one’s legs…one leg just slips and slides right off of the other slick and sweaty leg…and I’m sooooo figety when I’m sitting for long periods of time because of my back or something, it’s really hard not to be able to cross my legs…
- Affection is evidently only something experienced between friends/siblings here. Men/boys will hold each others’ hands while talking or walking together as will women/girls, but men and women do not. I told Karen Masso that I’ve noticed that there’s no PDA (public display of affection) here, and then I asked if affection is really a concept/notion here between men and women at all and she said it isn’t, that affection is only experienced/expressed between friends/siblings.
- Men and women don’t really ever date here, you’re either sleeping together or married and it seems that neither really involves much (if any) of what I would recognize as love/affection. Getting “ringed” is becoming a bigger and bigger deal in the church at large here. The first Ugandan home I was in, the couple started asking me about my family and one of the first things they asked was whether my parents were “ringed” and when the wife began to tug on her wedding band and looking inquisitively at me I finally understood what she meant, and I shook my head yes and told them my parents were indeed “ringed” and they both smiled and said “EHhhh” in approval. In most families here the father has many wives and each “marriage” is simply an economic and conjugal agreement of sorts it seems without a formal ceremony or rings involved, so it’s a big deal when a man and woman commit to faithfulness to each other as one, and that’s what the wedding or “ringing” symbolizes.
- Women are not usually offered, and therefore don’t usually drink, alcoholic drinks here (ie. when there’s an event in someone’s home or in the community and alcohol is served, it is served to the men in the room/yard/space).

I’m thinking about all of these things because today I went to a 6 hour “Introduction” ceremony/event for a young man and woman who intend to be married (the wedding was actually supposed to be tomorrow but her dad decided he’s too busy and important to come from near Kampala right now so it’s being pushed back until April (this is the 3rd postponement in the last 3 months). Basically the ceremony included the families/friends of the couple (back in the day this would potentially be the first time they were meeting each other); the woman’s family doing a series of skit like exchanges offering other women to the man’s family first and the man’s family has to pay the woman’s family money to send the other women away, etc., the woman’s family bartering with the man’s family for money, goats and cows since they are giving up their precious daughter (can you tell that so far it’s just one way after another for the woman’s family to milk as much money from the man’s family as they can?!) There was eating and there was soda ☺, and then the best part came right at the end, the exchanging of engagement rings. Ndyezika and Juliet each spoke briefly, before placing a ring on the other’s middle finger, of their love for the other, of how God has answered their prayers for a wonderful God fearing spouse and how He had brought them this far and they pray He will keep them forever, and Juliet added that if anyone in her family should try to “disturb” her being married to this man, she will laugh in their face! You go girl! It really was totally worth the 6 hour wait. I had been sitting spending most of the time lamenting what marriage seems to be in this culture in my mind and then this young man and woman blew their cultural norms out of the water in such a beautiful way!