June 17th, 2007

I attended my first Ugandan wedding yesterday. My counterpart from my organization was getting married which was awesome because I actually know him pretty well. I had an outfit made for it, which I’ll be posting the pictures of very soon. It takes forever to upload pictures so that’s why there haven’t been any up yet. All in all, it was a good time. The basics of the wedding were the same—speeches, food, cake, gifts, etc.—although the set-up was a little different. The activities were more of a performance of the bride and groom. There was a gift-giving ceremony when everyone lined up to personally hand his or her gift to the couple. For the wedding, I was given the task of helping to cut the cake. One difference there is that they have many cakes in addition to the main cake. They cut and serve the main layered cake to the guests at the reception and then the rest of the cakes they wrap up and give out to certain people at the wedding. My organization received one of the cakes—so we’ll be eating it at work one of these days.

One more exciting thing…I felt my first earthquake here. I was sitting in my room when I felt my bed start to shake a little—almost as if a train was going by. There’s no train here…so I was a little confused and then I realized it must be a baby earthquake. Anyway, it was the first one I’ve ever remembered experiencing. I don’t think it’s a normal occurrence here, so it shouldn’t be a concern. But I have to admit I was a little surprised and confused.

May 31, 2007

I had a very interesting transportation experience recently that I felt I needed to share…I was on my way back from a not-so-far away place, about 25 kilometers or so. I was the first one in the taxi and so as usual, I expected it to be a little while before it filled up and we headed off. Well it was a small sized sedan, and after squeezing four of us in the back the driver proceeded to find more passengers for the trip. There clearly wasn’t enough room and the Ugandans beside me voiced this to the driver. After much arguing back and forth, the passengers all exited the vehicle and I followed. I got into another taxi, now waiting for this one to fill up. When it did we were off…not for too long though. The bus stalled and we were stopped on the road. This isn’t so unusual, so about 10 men got out to push the vehicle to push-start it. We got going and the engine started again…we were off…no we weren’t…the bus quickly filled up with exhaust. We stopped, but the smoke was quickly pouring into the cabin and people were scrambling off the bus. Of course I was in the back of the bus, so what did I decide to do…I climbed out the window…HA. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal in the US, but everything that a muzungu—white person—does is somehow the most interesting thing—even when it is nothing out of the ordinary. So the fact that I was doing something out of the ordinary made it very amusing to them…