Friends,
I had the opportunity to travel to Nothern Uganda to attend
the ordination of a Jesuit friend and learn more about East Africa. I wish to share with you some of my journal
entries from the trip so that you might feel some of the joy I felt during this
immersion into another part of East Africa
21.Aug- Written on a
bus traveling from Kampala to Gulu
Yesterday we reached the Ugandan-Tanzanian border at 2:00pm
and entered into the land of bananas.
Mwanza [a Tanzanian city bordering Lake Victoria] had helped to adjust
my eyes to a world of green that I have since forgotten during these dustiest
days of Dodoma, but the mountains and trees of Uganda were a new beauty that my
eyes devoured the full four- hour bus ride from the border to Kampala [the
capital of Uganda].
In Kampala my life changed from a partial-understanding of
what the Kiswahili store signs and billboards and people of Tanzania said to
the overload of information that being in a place that speaks your native
tongue can bring. I now had to hesitate
before speaking and remind myself not to use the Kiswahili greetings that have
come to be natural, almost instinctual, during my interactions with others.
Our friend met my community mate and I at the bus stand upon
arrival in Kampala and in his private care we slowly squeezed our way through
the disorganized mass of traffic that is the streets of Kampala on a typical
day. Twice I fell asleep in the midst of
traffic jams as we waited with the engine off for the vehicles in front to nose
their way into an opening. I believe
there were traffic lights, but the drivers seemed to dismiss any instruction
the lights were intended to give. The
fourteen-hour bus ride from Mwanza had worn me out enough for this misuse of
space to annoy me and make me long for the fluid and at times empty streets of
Dodoma.
Our friend took us to our house for the night- a concrete
abode sitting not more than two blocks from Entembe road, known well as a major
highway jetting through the city of Kampala. The
Mama hosting us had milk tea prepared for us while her gregarious four-year-old
daughter taught us Lugandan. Dinner was
served- potatoes boiled with tomatoes and sautéed spinach, and my first Ugandan
banana- a fat tiny one no longer than the average-sized person’s index
finger. With shampooed hair and a full
stomach I fell asleep on a pillow-less floor bed before having time to remember
where I was.
--~--
24. Aug – Written in
Kampala, after returning from the ordination
Upon our arrival in Uganda our close Ugandan friend told us
that people in Uganda are very expressive.
This became apparent to me the day of the ordination when the joy and
excitement began even before reaching the church. On the way our van picked up a load of
people, mostly women and children.
Within seconds of the door sliding shut a woman inside let out a cry
that I mistakenly took as a cry of pain.
I swiveled my head to see what the problem might be and saw only smiling
faces. A moment later there was a
van-load of shrieking, ululations and singing with such great ardor that I
began to loathe all the quiet times in my life that made this moment so
un-earthly as if my eardrums could not endure such high-decibels and would
surely shatter from the forceful vibrations that could not be cushioned to
soften the noise. I come from a family
where laughing is acceptable only for an exceptional joke and we raise our
voices only during conversations when it seems necessary to increase the volume
to support one’s point. Shrieking and
singing is very far from our form of expression. Discovering the novelty of such and
experience changed my attitude that was at first irritation to admiration. That form of expression is a kind of freedom
I do not think I could ever bring myself to know.
“The Ordination”
The churchyard was filled with people neatly arranged in
tents according to their community affiliations: ‘Seminarians and Sisters,’
‘Kampala-Arua,’ ‘Choir’, ‘Business Community,’ ‘Government Officials and NGO Representatives,’ ‘Other Religious Representatives (Protestants
& Muslims),’ CWAAD/Catholic Action,’
‘The Two Deacons and Their Parents,’ ‘Main Celebrant and The Clergy,’ and
‘Parish Members,’ to name just a few. I
was told at least 3,000 people would be in attendance. The tents, tables, altar chairs, trees and
dancing children were decorated in yellow and white; the choir and band danced
and sang as people were seated and we were lead to the Kampala-Arua section (perhaps
because the usher didn’t know where else to put us as their wasn’t a section
that described our connection with the Jesuits). At the end of the celebration we were graced
with the petrifying honor of introducing ourselves as ‘Jesuit collaborators’ to
the thousands of faces before us and so made up for the missing sign that would
have otherwise explained why we were there.
The ceremony began with a grand entrance led by the dancing
children, women dressed in floor-length satin gowns tied with a wide sash -a
traditional Ugandan outfit worn only by married women called gomesi- followed by four women dressed
in simple local fabrics and carrying on their heads pots of incense and
flowers. Next the priests paraded in:
Jesuits, Franciscans, Salesians, Diocesans, among others and finally the two
Deacons walking in front of the Jesuit Provincial, Bishop and Parish
Priest. The ceremony went as one might
expect an ordination to go- there was much singing from the choir, music played
by drums, electric guitars and local instruments, and dancing by children, the
four simply-dressed women, and two Jesuit scholastics. The Deacons said their vows, laid face-down
on a mat as prayers were said, the Bishop made the laying on of hands and gave
the blessing of the kiss, etc, etc. Five
hour later, just before the final blessing there was a song and celebratory
dance by the community. The Mama sitting
on my left, dressed in an elegant bright green and black gomesi, had actively participated throughout the entire ceremony:
singing, laughing, dancing, and passionately waving a small bouquet of yellow
flowers that was nothing but leaves and stems by the end of it. She was among the first people to dance to
the middle of our square, pulling two other mamas into the center to dance with
her. Within a matter of moments the
majority of the 3,000 guests were gathered in the center dancing and waving
their hands around the two newly ordained priests.
After the Mass the church committee went to work preparing
tables of food to feed the masses. By
this time we managed to slip into the ‘Seminarians and Sisters’ section so that
we could sit with our friends. Our slick
transition won us an early spot in the food line, although once seeing the
amount of food that had been prepared it became clear that position in line
would not determine whether one would be fed or not- the table-sized pots of
rice, pasta and potatoes promised everyone would be well-fed that day! There were Ugandan stables- starting with
stiff porridge made of millet and cassava, mashed and cooked bananas called matoke, rice, pasta, boiled potatoes,
boiled spinach, savory beans, boiled cow and goat meat, boiled cow intestines,
roasted insects in peanut paste, and chopped cabbage and carrot salad. The dancing continued as we devoured the
food. There were traditional
performances by the local clan and choreographed routines danced by the youths
in the community. Satisfied with food,
we slipped away from the dancing and merriment to take a walk through the quiet
village surrounding us. A light rain
came in the late afternoon but in the distance we could hear the drum still
beating as the celebration continued into the evening…
--~--
We spent a few more days in Uganda, staying on a farm in a
village with our friend’s family. The
family shared with us the many uses of bananas- from teaching us to make banana
beer (called mwenge), to showing us
how to weave baskets and mats from banana fibers, to cooking our food in banana
leaves and serving us piles and piles of
matoke. We toured the hills of their
coffee farm, visited the sweet-hearted woman across the swamp who brings the
family fresh milk every day, and entertained the family as they dressed us in gomesi.
The family’s warm welcoming and hard-working lifestyle deeply reminded
me of my own hard-working farming family in Kansas and for the first time since
moving to Tanzania, I began to feel the pains of homesickness: that longing for
the comfort and familiarity of our lives as we experienced them when we were
young.
From the village in Uganda, I went back to Mwanza in
Tanzania, and then back to Dodoma! Now,
we have one more week of “fall” break before the students return for an
exciting last three months of classes.
Peace,
Mary
