The Introduction Ceremony: as Cultural as it Gets!

It was 5:00AM when two phone alarms vanquished the silence in our dorm room and thrust us into one of the most intriguingly African days I’ve experienced yet. What was on today’s agenda? Drive to a district beyond Jinja (where I spent 15 hours connected to an IV for malaria treatment, remember?) and participate in a traditional Ugandan introduction ceremony—the ceremony where a soon-to-be groom brings a dowry to the bride’s side of the family. Traditional costumes, music and dancing, mountains of food, and processions involving goats, cows and chickens are all part of the day’s package.

What role we were supposed to play in the event we had no idea, which is probably a good thing for me! If I had known beforehand what participation in such an occasion would entail I would have taken more pains to panic thoroughly enough ahead of time. But let me start at the beginning…

(To access the whole story, a good deal of cultural notes, and a pile of pictures,

please be sure to click "Read More.")

A bus was scheduled to arrive at the Bible College and pick up those bound for the introduction at 6:00AM. Thus, as the punctual sun rose to splash orange light across the horizon, three literally-thinking Canadians stood luggage-in-hand at the college waiting for the bus to come. The sun rose higher. More people came over and stood with us. Two dowry chickens, bound by the foot, arrived as well and waited with us in the spot where they’d been plopped down on the cement. An hour passed. Two hours. …And still no bus!

Not until 8:30 AM did the bus actually arrive; not because of miscommunication but just because of the way time can often happen here. Nevertheless we were soon on the road, meandering out of the city and its surrounding villages to the open landscape of the highway. Past fields of sugar cane and green-carpeted hills of tea plantations we went, through deep forest and over the Nile River towards our goal. “It should only be a little further now,” murmurs throughout the bus began circulating.

"Fast Food" being trust at us through the bus windows
when we pulled over at a market along the way

We drove further and further down the now dusty, rutted road past thatched huts of the deep villages. Finally at about 1:30, after five hours of life spent in bus seats, we pulled over at a certain village to change out of traveling clothes and into traditional wear. The clothes Alyssa and I were to wear were waiting at the destination, but pretty much everyone else disappeared off the bus and returned in brightly coloured gomesis and long white kanzus.

At last the bus turned down a long dirt drive and parked seemingly in the middle of a maize field. From here we disembarked off the bus and walked the rest of the way to where a stir of activity surrounded a certain guesthouse. Approaching the scene I could see a passel of children sitting and standing along the outside of the house in the foreground, a series of decorated tents set in an open space beyond that and two such tents hosting full audiences of guests beyond that. But instead of going and sitting down with the audience, we were hustled into the house to a little side dressing room.

The ceremony, which does not happen in English,
 is so culturally distinct and removed from anything
these westerners have ever seen before that I honestly
 can’t explain to you exactly what goes on during it.
 Another writer more researched than I explains
 it with a little more detail in this blog:

“Here, put these on,” someone said, handing us long white garments resembling lab coats. Alyssa and I had been told that we were going to play the role of “nurses,” and would be dressed accordingly. So these must be the nurses’ uniforms, I realized.

Gomesi dresses on the women and kanzus for the men
 are traditional to Bagandan culture

 See, an introduction basically functions as an engagement ceremony, involving a good deal of drama and role play. The groom’s family and the bride’s family meet each other in an epic confrontation carried out by spokespersons. The two sides play out the story of the two people finding each other and the bride being given away. Somewhere in there are four people (including moi) who stand as “nurses” on the bride’s side to greet members on the groom’s side.

All I knew was that when the two other Ugandan girls standing as nurses with us moved out and walked outside, we had to follow. We went to where two lines of well dressed people—one line of kanzu-gowned men on the groom's side and one line of gomesi-clad women on the bride's side—stood behind a decorative arch. We proceeded to distribute ribbons for each person to pin on; not that I actually found anyone who hadn’t gotten one already! Meanwhile, a lead nurse went over to the men’s line with a stethoscope.

I only discovered after the fact that during this portion of the ceremony the nurses are literally inspecting the people for personal flaws. A physical deformity, a soiled kanzu, or any other trait a nurse can find to disqualify a man earns the groom’s side a monetary fine payable to the bride’s side of the family. Apparently people actually come to introductions with extra money in their pockets in anticipation of such issues! It’s culture, I’m told. Fortunately for the groom however, half of us nurses (the muzungu half) didn’t know what we were doing and so did not disqualify anybody. Not that we would have…

“Tell us what we’re doing!” I pleaded in an urgent sort of whisper to the nurse beside me.

“We’re going to dance!” she stated.

Oh. No.

I. Don't. Dance.

This is the very phrase I kept repeating as the two Ugandans ahead of me started down the red rolled-out mat on the processional path, moving to the beat as though nothing were unusual about the situation. I suppose the only unusual thing for them about dancing today was having me behind! Their steps were so unpredictable that more than once I smacked into the person ahead of me as I moved forward and they hopped back. I glanced to the right, still using the heels of the girl ahead of me as a treadmill, and noted the unbridled merriment of those witnessing my plight. At least I’m making their day, I consoled myself.

We moved off to the sidelines and continued dancing as the lines behind us passed to file into a separate tent. Then we stood placidly listening to Lugandan orations until moving to join a line headed for the lunch table. I shuffled down the table, watching as my plate accumulated a mountain of traditional food, and we walked over to the participant’s tent to eat. Sitting there in my plastic chair and looking from the brightly garbed guests in the opposite tent to the rainy-season mud on my sandals to my own fingers tangled in a pile of matooke, I suddenly experienced a reality check. Yikes…this is Africa…and this is ME living in Africa!

A mound of matooke cooked in banana leaves

I had very little time to continue with my contemplations, however, before we were moved back inside the house. Before long we stood lined up at the door, ready to go out again. The nurse in front stepped out into the sun—“We ah dahncing,” she informed us quickly—and away we went! Only this time we were alone. What was I to do? I just bit my lip and started “dancing.” I’m pretty sure that with every step we took I saw little white sign posts pass by with numbers on them reading “outer limits of comfort zone: 40 miles behind…50 miles…60…”

We danced our way into one of the tents and knelt down in greeting. Yes, knelt. In certain tribes here kneeling is expected on the part of a woman greeting any man or other superior. In the home a wife may be required to kneel, for example, when serving her husband meals or meeting him entering the house. At a function like this we women on the bride’s side were now kneeling to greet the family of the groom, culturally taken as a sign of respect. The topic sprang up later as a very animated discussion at school lunchtime of whether women should kneel, how a husband should discipline her if she refuses, and whether kneeling is human worship. It’s a definite cultural controversy among different tribes!

Only one other time did we have to kneel, when we were greeting a few men after we’d donned gomesis of our own. Afterwards we joined in with a posse of the bride and sat with her in a tent facing the other family while several other people brought in the dowry. Filled, covered baskets, buckets of soap, sacks of rice and crates of soda—not to mention the two chickens—all began to cover the ground between the tents of the two sides. A brown cow stood off to the side, while the still-fettered chickens drank out of puddles left by the recent rain. We sat and listened without understanding to some back and forth words, and watched as the groom handed his two chickens to the brother of the bride. I learned later that it’s always a brother, as opposed to the father, who gives a bride away in this culture.

The Passing of the Chickens

Presenting the Dowry

The ceremony ended not long after this, climaxing with the cutting of the introduction cake and the exchanging of engagement rings. We spent a good deal of time afterwards posing for a multitude of photo opps, and then climbed back onto the bus as dusk began to settle.

As we drove back through the bustling night-time village scenes, I could see that most of the heads of passengers in the bus seats ahead of me were beginning to slump to one side or the other. I tried to sleep too—and almost did until the crescendo of a discussion heated up and overtook the entire front half of the bus! Oh well, I decided as we pulled up to the college again just before midnight, it won’t be much longer that I get to sit back and listen to arguments in Lugandan anyway. It’s a suitable end to a very cultural day!