Preparations for a wedding (and Passover)

My coworker, Anita, is getting married just before I return home. Weddings are big events here- often many hundreds of people- and are costly. The cost of the wedding is borne by the community so the invitation comes with a pledge card and often a budget. Clothes for the bride and her bridesmaids, food (e.g. one cow, 4 goats, 20 chickens, 30 bunches of matoke, 25 kg of cornmeal, etc.), spices, vegetables, fruits, drinks, decorations, and entertainment are included. I’ve been to one wedding planning meeting so far. The meetings can occur weekly and are attended by friends and family. They are conducted with meeting rules: there’s a chairman, attendance is kept, and minutes are read. The point of the meetings is to collect money. People who have pledged money pay up publicly and more money is collected. A ‘chairman’s bag’ for donations is passed initially and then the meeting goes on for more hours (sort of like a telathon), during which speeches and challenges for money are made. (I was asked to play the part of the village elder at the meeting to inspire all present to donate generously.)

The Introduction and Give-Away will take place the day prior to the wedding. These are traditional events in which the groom and his family come to the bride’s home. Part of the Give-Away involves a bride price, which is hefty. A number of cows are usually part of the deal, though Anita told me that money could be substituted. People wear traditional clothes to the Give-Away and I am very much looking forward to this part. The fabric choices are endless though the dress pattern is always the same. So my current challenge-so tough- is to choose the fabric and then a seamstress will make the dress.

The photos are of Anita helping me at the fabric store and, completely unrelated, my first Passover Seder, organized by my housemate Henry and attended by housemates from across the world.

Millennium Voice 102.2

Millennium Voice, a radio station with a broadcast radius of 50 km, is one part of the Millennium Villages Project. Lots of people have radios here- operated by batteries or solar- and the station was put up as a public service to play Runyankole and Ruchika music and to disseminate information. They do shows on best agricultural practices, gender discrimination, health topics, and entrepreneurship. There are large solar panels to power the station but there are challenges. I’m learning about things like why inverters help- ours is blown. And it’s rainy season so that the sun doesn’t shine all day every day. They usually use a gas-powered generator in the morning (a problem since gas, which is more expensive than in the US, needs to be carried in jerry cans by motorcycle on the steep and slippery dirt roads) though they are often able to turn it off by noon. My spot of fame on the radio says, "I'm Dr. Linda. I'm from the US. I stay in Isingiro (district) and I listen to Millennium Voice 102.2!" The line-up is Wake Up, Workers, local music mixed with call-ins (this week they talked about things like whether jealousy is good or bad and why cross-generational sex occurs), then Welcome Home. The DJ in the photo is ‘DJ Papa’.

Rwanda

Kigali, Rwanda is a 5-hour drive from Mbarara. Crossing a border is always exciting, but Uganda to Rwanda seemed particularly so. The language changes (to French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and only newly introduced English), the driving changes from the left side of the road to the right, and the country looks and feels different. The first thing any Ugandan says about Rwanda is ‘it’s so clean’. It is. It’s illegal to bring the ubiquitous plastic shopping bags into the country and there’s a once-a-month ‘voluntary’ Saturday country-wide community cleanup. Unlike Uganda’s widespread deforestation, Rwanda is covered with trees. It’s illegal to uproot a tree without permission and there’s one week a year for widespread tree planting. The toilet in the inexpensive guesthouse we stayed in had a faucet on the lid of the tank so that the water could be used for washing hands before it flows into the tank (my response was ‘of course!’). The landscape is stunning. It is lushly green with mountains and high volcanic peaks in the north. And everyone we met (with the exception of the unknown person who we think stole our driver’s cell phone) was friendly and helpful. My Ugandan housemate, Sam, would often get out of the car when we asked for directions to ‘experience’ the interaction and would typically return to the car with his arm around the person’s shoulders, talking and laughing. More often then not, the person would drop everything he or she was doing and offer to come with us to show the way.

And, of course, the history is different. We arrived on April 8, a day after the anniversary of the start of the 1994 genocide, during which 1 million people (out of a population of 8 million) were killed in 100 days. There is a yearly one-week commemoration with fires, ceremonies, and community discussions as well as other events throughout the 100 days. So throughout the country there were purple (for sadness) and white (for hope) banners and ribbons. We went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial where there are gardens; a museum that contains many photos, remains, and belongings of victims and that explains events before, during and after the genocide (including it’s roots in colonialism and the roles of hate speech and mass media) as well as rooms devoted to genocides throughout the world; and a mass grave containing 258,000 victims. There is a wall of names containing only about 1000 names, as the work of trying to name the victims is ongoing. From there we went to the Hotel des Mille Collines, the site of events depicted in the movie, Hotel Rwanda, and then to a church, which was the site of a massacre of 10,000 people who’d taken refuge there. It was profoundly sad. Yet the insistence on preserving the past- the overwhelming horror and occasional good-, on honoring the victims, and on talking as communities and countries about the events was extremely moving. Seventeen years later the events have immediacy. When we arrived at the church, a local leader had just come to bring bones for cleaning and burial that had just been found. The photos are of the garden dedicated to women, a statue of an elephant (who never forgets- though I just realized it's actually a gorilla) holding a cell phone (trying to tell the world), a flame in front of the memorial which burns for 100 days each year, and the church with the Rwandan flag at half mast.

Biking

A housemate from Holland (of course) found a place that rents bikes and we took a bike ride. The business sent someone with us apparently to make sure we wouldn’t steal the bikes (though there were 4 of us and one of him). Riding the dirt roads around Mbarara felt completely different than driving in a car. The day was gorgeous and the scenery spectacular. There was the predictable flat tire- these bikes and tires have been fixed and patched many times- but it turned out there was a man who repaired bikes 10 feet away. Bikes are used for transportation and to carry heavy things- multiple huge matoke bunches, chairs, other bikes. People don’t bike for pleasure here so a string of mostly muzungo bikers was enough to bring villagers out and empty classrooms of children who ran to the road to shout, “Muzungo, how are you?’ to which I answered a minimum of 100 times, “I’m fine, how are you?” We rode through small villages and down obscure dirt tracks through matoke plantations. The downside was that at about the half-way point, the ride became a bit of a struggle for me. I’m not sure what contributed most- the 30 extra years I had on anyone else, simply being out of shape, the substantial hills, the upper 80 degree weather, or the washboard dirt roads. But I made it and my bike-mates kindly waited for me at intervals (and my Ugandan house-mate likened our situation to ‘no child left behind’- humiliating but funny).

Birds

I’ve never been a bird watcher. But then, I’ve never been in East Africa before. I ordered a pair of binoculars after my first trip to a national park. And once I had them, I realized I did want to know the names of the birds I was seeing. So I ordered Birds of East Africa from Amazon on November 16. It arrived January 31 but was worth the wait! (We just got a package addressed to a prior project intern that had been mailed in 2009. The letter is going back to the states with someone who’s leaving; we’re eating the beef jerky but I’m not sure anyone is interested in the jelly beans.) I used to think that the way to see birds was to walk around and find them. I’m realizing that here the better strategy is to sit in my backyard and wait till they fly through. My only photo is of the Ugandan national bird, the crested crane, which I took in a national park. But, if interested, you can ‘google image’ the Ross’s Turaco, Eastern Gray Plantain-Eater, Speckled Mousebird, Double-Toothed Barbet, Gray-Headed Kingfisher, African Cuckoo, and Western-Violet Backed Sunbird - the prettiest of the 32 species that have flown through my backyard.