Kwanjula

A few weeks ago, I went to a Kwanjula, or introduction ceremony, for one of the workers at Dwelling Places. “What is an introduction ceremony,” you ask? Well. Good question. But I don’t really have the best answer for you. The closest thing we could equate it to in the West is an engagement party. But it’s a very formal event, and everyone who gets married will have one, usually a few months before the wedding. The purpose of it is to introduce the groom’s family to the bride’s family. 

Uganda is somewhere sort of in between tradition and modernization if you ask me, and the area of courtship seems to be one of those areas that I’ve observed. Many people are happy to let their children date whomever they please and to choose their spouse for themselves, but tradition is that marriages are pre-arranged, and some people still hold onto that tradition. So part of this introduction ceremony carries the traditional sense of introducing the groom’s family to the bride’s family, bringing them gifts, and asking them to give over their daughter in marriage to the groom. While the whole thing seems to be a lot of pretense and whatnot, I’m told that the bride’s family can even say “no,” even after the whole charade of the ceremony and everything! 

So like any event here, it lasted all day, and even though we left around 9 pm, I was told the party went on well past midnight. We arranged to leave from the office at 10, which means everyone showed up around 10:30 to START getting ready. Both men and women wear traditional dress for these ceremonies—a gomesi for women, and a kanzu for men. It was kind of fun at first to play dress-up, but the dress is deceivingly uncomfortable. You start with an undergarment which is basically a thin blanket wrapped around your body, tied painfully tight at the waist, then folded down over the rope to give you a little extra umph in your caboose. Then the gomesi is buttoned and folded and scrunched and wrapped and draped and sent to China and back before being tied with a massive, cardboard-stuffed sash around the waist. Then voila, you’re ready to “fly away” with your “shoulder flaps” as my good friend Sarah put it. Aren’t the shoulders funny?

Anyway, so we probably left around 11:30 and arrived at 1:00, which is when the groom’s family was supposed to show up. Of course that means they showed up around 3:30. Everyone seemed to be appalled that the family was late… and I was only shocked that people were shocked that they were late. But I later learned more about how the groom’s family is actually there to convince the bride’s family to give her over in marriage, and it reflects poorly on them if they’re late. So that makes sense, but I’m still not shocked that anyone was late. While we were waiting for it to begin, there was entertainment of traditional music and dance, and a whole lot of a guy on a microphone talking for like 30 minutes at a time, all in Luganda of course, so that I couldn’t understand anything. So instead I went for playing Snake on my phone. (Oh yes, that’s right. Remember old-school snake, that eats the dots? I have a cheap phone here and while I usually miss my iPhone, the one redeeming factor of these phones is that they have the snake game!)

traditional Ugandan dance

Anyway, so the family did finally show up. Then there was about 2 hours of various parts of the ceremony, mostly greetings to the family. A group of people—friends or family members of the bride—would walk out of the house, parade around the courtyard a couple of times to music, kneel down in front of the family, then it was a whole lot of “Hello ladies and gentlemen.” “Hello.” “How are you?” “Fine, how are you? “Fine.” “Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too.” Then a little more something in Luganda, then they’d present them with gifts, then parade around the courtyard a few more times to the music, and go back in the house. 

The groom's family entering... and even better, one of my favorite aspects of Ugandan events: the action is clearly going on behind the cameraman, yet he is filming who? The audience. Every event I've ever been to has been like that-- they love taking hundreds of photos and hours of footage of the audience!! Isn't the event happening in the other direction? Not in the audience? haha

A group of relatives... parade, parade, kneel, greet, parade, parade, leave

A few groups of people did this, then there was a lot of other parading around very slowly to music… the bride, the bride and groom, the groom and an aunt… etc. 

Omugole-- the bride

Then we had dinner, then the groom’s family brought in all sorts of gifts. This part was pretty crazy! They brought in all sorts of baskets of food and various things, all on their heads. I couldn’t believe it—the gifts just kept coming! Basket after basket, and even things like a bunch of matoke bananas, and furniture! 

Then just as it got dark, the power went out. So they put on a generator. Which lasted for about 5 minutes, then went out. So we sat in the dark for about an hour, waiting for it to come back on. The DP crew eventually gave up and decided to go, and just as we were leaving, it came back on. But by then it was 9:00, we’d already changed clothes, and we had work the next day, so we left. After we left, they had other parts of the ceremony to do such as cutting the cake, exchanging engagement rings, and dancing, but alas I have nothing to tell you about those things because we were busy sitting in a traffic jam for an hour rather than being at the ceremony for those things. 

(I feel a disclaimer is somewhat necessary. I realize this is a very... outsider view of the ceremony. I'm just writing from my perspective, and don't intend any disrespect on the culture. It's a very curious tradition to me, and I really enjoyed it!)

I put together a little video of the event, but Blogger wouldn't upload it. So here's a link to it on Vimeo. It's not the best quality, but it will give you a taste of what the event was like!

Click here to go to the video!