Uganda Wedding and Community Development Project in Iganga

Uganda wedding

Juliet and I returning from the wedding;
notice the craziness of our town,
under construction.

         One of the teachers here at the school got married yesterday. All of us staff where invited. I did not want to go by myself, so I asked the other staff here when they were planning to go. They told me that they had other things and were just planning to go for the reception. All except for Juliet; so I went with her. I asked Juliet when it started "11:00, but we shall leave at noon, because the bride will still be getting ready and won't get there at 11:00" ok sounds good with me, I had some things I wanted to get done in the morning. So I came back from the farm around 12:30 and get ready. Juliet tells me she still needs to pick up the gift the school had bought for the bride. So we hop on motorcycles "boda-boda's" or the Ugandan version of a taxi. We get to the church at around 1:00 pm and the groom and groom's men are slowly dancing up the isle with anyone from the audience dancing with them; with loud music too, of course. No problem, we walk in and find our seats; since everyone else is up getting pictures, I do too. Then we wait for the bride to come. The waiting is filled with very loud music, singing, dancing, etc. Around 2:00 when the bride is supposed to come in, someone comes  up front and says "she is still not finished decking out". "Bring her in anyway" they said. So half an hour later she makes her way in. They have the red carpet laid down for her. There is an arch and a ribbon she

Standing ready for the bride to come; notice
the ribbon across the door.

cuts when she comes in. Of course everyone gets up from their seats and goes to meet her as she comes through the arch, with loud music and dancing. Since I was trying to get video footage of this, they kept telling me "go up front there so you can get a good picture"; so I stood where I could get "ok" footage. Finally, the bride makes it to the her seat, the choir sings a song challenging the bride to treat her husband well and the husband to treat her wife well. Then there is a sermon, presenting of the rings, and the vows. Oh, and Juliet is still was trying to figure out how to get the mattress delivered as the gift. So in the middle of the vows, she makes a call to see if they can deliver the mattress. The call was no problem because other people were also answering their phones during the wedding. It was so loud no one cared about people making phone calls anyway. After the prayer of dedication, Juliet and I leave for the reception. Except she needed to pick something up at home and I needed lunch. So She drops me off in town to get food.

Dancing up the isle;
Make sure you watch to the end.

         After 30 minutes she comes back with some others from the school who are now with us because it is time for the reception. The reception is packed out; people are seated on chairs facing the front, there is loud music playing. There is a table for the bridal party and wedding cakes, lots and lots of cakes. Finally the bride and groom arrive and dance up the isle. It takes 10 minutes for them to dance up the isle. Here again everyone is around them and getting pictures, so I do too. They serve everyone cake first. One thing that was different was that the groom sat on a chair and the bride at his feet on the floor; the bride fed him cake and then a glass of juice to wash it down. Then they switched places. If it

This was cool, except I don't know if I could
do it without cracking up.

was me, I would probably burst out laughing in the middle of taking the juice (Those who know me well could also see this happening). Then the bride and groom left; the bride changed dresses, came back in and the couple gave cakes as gifts to groups of people they appreciated. Our school got a cake. Then people presented their gifts to the couple. Finally, at 8:00 we came home, I was ready for it to be finished! As I reflected back at the wedding, I realized that the order of the wedding was similar to our weddings; the only difference was that each process was done differently, ex. dancing with the bride as she comes up the isle. 

Visiting a Friend in Iganga

Pastor Daniel's wife; she was so proud of her 300 chickens,
it reminded me of my mom.

      Several weeks ago I went and visited a friend in Iganga, a town about 1.5 hours away. I had met Pastor Daniel on facebook. Luke Kuepfer has worked some with Daniel and connected me with him. As it turns out, Pastor Daniel is a man with a very big vision for raising up Christian leaders. He has planted 3 churches, speaks on the radio 3 times a week, does community development up in northern Uganda, and has 5 acres of land that he farms and hopes to make into a demonstration farm. His wife keeps chickens; they have over 300 laying chickens.

Banana corms, similar to flower bulbs.

        I arrived Friday evening; after getting settled into the guest house that he got for me, we went to church. There we both preached. On Saturday, the goal was to plant bananas on his farm. So we picked up George, a man educated in agriculture who teaches ag at a high school. We went to see one of Pastor Daniel's friends, Pastor Dawson, who has a large farm. Since Pastor Dawson had bananas, we went and picked up plants from him. Now, for those who aren't familiar with bananas plants, bananas spread similar to flowers with bulbs; you plant one stem and after several years, you will have 5-15 small banana plants that need thinned. 

Pastor Dawson and I with his cash crop of corn
he hopes to use to fund his school. It was a 13 acre field.

        Pastor Dawson is also an incredible guy; he is a pastor and runs a school for less fortunate students. Instead of asking for support from the States to run his school, he asked someone in the States to buy him land, so he can support the school with the land. Talk about community transformation! He has 30 acres and hires 15 families to work for him on his farm. His goal is to teach students and other families advanced agricultural practices. He has bananas, passion fruit, papaya, cassava, peanuts, maize, vegetables, soybeans, mangos, oranges, and hopes to build fish ponds. He was intercropping his crops and seemed to know what he was doing. Pastor Dawson is not afraid of hard work either; when we got to his place, him and his wife were both out working on the farm. 

Digging holes to plant bananas.

         Once we got the banana plants, we went to Pastor Daniel's farm. George showed us how to trim the outside layer of the small banana plants to remove the nematodes. They had done some soil preparation several weeks before we got there. They dug a hole 5 ft sq. and 3 ft deep hole. Then they mixed chicken manure with soil and added some leaves into the hole and filled the hole 2/3 full with a soil and manure mixture. After planting the small bulb-like banana plants, we covered them with a thin layer of leaves to keep the soil from drying out. This was a planting technique that Pastor Dawson was using and was having very good success.

Fun picture with Pastor Daniel.

        The next day was Sunday and Pastor Daniel's church had a 5 hour church service that lasted 6 hours. Different ones of us preached and the choir sang a bunch of songs. After the service, several of us were invited to a couples house for dinner. After dinner I returned to Mbale. It was a really good weekend. It was great to see Pastor Daniel's vision for raising up leaders, spreading the gospel, and doing community development work. I could talk a lot about him, but it would take too long. He had been working for the UN, passing out solar panels. He did such a good job that the UN rewarded him with his own van; so now he has his own van he can use for ministry. He loves his wife, family and those close to him. It was very encouraging for me to see his faith and commitment to God and those around him.