The Wedding at Jinja

This past weekend, Chelsea, Josh, Emily and I were invited by Sister Dora (head nurse of the outpatient department and TB clinic; surrogate mother to us all) to attend the wedding of one of the nurses. It was in Jinja, located about 2 hours (distance is irrelevant in this country of uncertain road conditions) north-east of Kampala. We, along with about 8 or 9 others piled into a hospital minivan early Saturday morning to begin the trek. We passed vast fields of tea and sugar cane on the way. We arrived at the church, late, and joined the roughly 300 other guests at the ceremony. Fairly traditional, apart from the high pitched undulating shrieks of approval from various women whenever something good happened. After the ceremony, the wedding party went to the source of the Nile river (Jinja is famous for this). There we took pictures, and us mzungos got to see this impressive site. The reception consisted of many speeches of which we could understand only the 2% in English, lots of soda, traditional calypso dancing children (whose hip joints had obviously been removed), and a feast of local food. Many cakes, lots of flowers, and an extensive tent setup. The wedding was a very big production, as they tend to be. There was also a procession where well-wishers could hand presents directly to the bride and groom. Most were colourfully wrapped, but one was a goat who was obviously as enthused as we were. The bird you see was on the shores of the Nile. The actual geography was less than impressive, so this picture was added instead.