“Iwe Boaz, otamariramu enyama y’ekivune!” exclaimed a woman with a rainbow of colors on her head. I figured this was definately not Fiona’s relative. Her relatives wouldn’t be so meat-starved to a point of pleading for meat on a wedding. They eat enough meat at Kampala’s top hangouts.
And as the woman wore a seriously concerned look at the lack of sufficient animal parts on her plastic plate, I wanted to laugh but since I was a visitor, I avoided the wrath of these muchomo-starved women chopping me up and serving me to their pot bellied kids.
Opposite the kitchen was a 50-litre drum filled with tonto, the local brew made from bananas. Old men, some staggering while others sleeping on the ground held mineral water bottles coloured with the brew. To them, it seemed like paradise had been reached.
Welcome to village weddings
Last month a close friend of mine invited me to her wedding and since i didn’t have beer money for the weekend, I couldn’t say no since everything was free.
As usual, I never attend the mass session so i arrived just before the food was served. The priest was ending the mass so i had to fix my behinds to a small kafoomu (bench) since the tents were full.
People were impatiently waiting for the food. Lucky for me, the safuriyas (saucepans) were being set up just next to where i was. So i wouldn’t have to push people for food. How wrong i was, I was like the tenth to pick a plate but how thirty hungry women with their kids grabbed plates and queued before me would require Albert Einsten’s logic to understand.
When my turn finally came, Boaz who was serving the meat was all dripping with sweat and if i was to eat his meat, it would be too salty.
I almost lost appetite due to their dirty environment but the illegal occupants in my stomach were already rioting so they needed some tear gas. I settled for rice and g-nuts, i skipped the kalo (millet) because it looked very solid so i had pity on my digestive juices in their ability to register any success in breaking it up.
The village wedding turned out great and i managed to sip a few brown bottles since i was from Kampala. From the speeches, the cheap gifts wrapped with utmost tenacity taught me that money is not everything, it’s the small things that make special moments memorable.
At the end of it all, it was thoroughly comical, with the emcee unleashing sarcasm capped with local idioms and proverbs. Am sure to give him a call when my big day finally arrives (God forbid). Though he will have to let go of his over-sized coat and the old brown hat.
Last thing I want in my wedding-If it ever happens-is everyone should wake up the following morning without any idea of what happened the previous day.
Now that’s a bad-ass wedding
The bachelor in Kabale 
Hahaha trust me that emcee won’t be funny enough without his over-sized coat and the old brown hat. The dripping sweat prevented you from eating the meat but to those women and their kids, Boaz was the hero of the day.
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