Regarding Wedding Feasts

I just got back from my third Ugandan wedding. Unsurprisingly, weddings here are somewhat different than in America. For one thing, there are usually two parts to weddings here. One is the culturally Ugandan “introduction,” where the bride price is decided and paid. I haven’t been to one of those yet. The second is the “church wedding,” which borrows a lot from the traditional western ceremony.

A major difference, though, is that frequently the wedding ceremony is combined with something else. Both of the weddings I have attended at Kasana have taken place during the church service. The wedding two weeks ago in Kobwin occurred as part of the school’s end of year ceremony. My understanding is that this is done to save money.

Weddings are also a much more open affair here. In every wedding I have heard about, an open invitation was extended to the whole church and/or the surrounding community. This goes along with the more communitarian lifestyle here. So at a wedding, many of the guests may not know the bride or groom personally – certainly not in the same way as at American weddings where each guest is individually invited.

The receptions (and meals) are also usually open to whoever wants to come. So far I have only been part of one of those, so my experience is fairly limited. But that is what this post is about.

As I wrote in my post about my trip to Kobwin, I helped a bit to prepare the food for the wedding there. The ladies on staff at Kobwin spent hours preparing a feast for the wedding party and special guests (community leaders, plus members of the staff who came from Kasana for the wedding). These VIPs had matooke (steamed banana, a traditional food) with g-nut (peanut) sauce, rice, beef and sauce, chicken and sauce, and sautéed cabbage. That is a fairly typical “special meal” here.

For the general public who were going to come, the cooks prepared pilau, flavored rice with some beef mixed in. This was the very first wedding to take place at Kobwin, so everyone was excited about it. But that also meant that we really didn’t have a good way to know how many people would show up.

In the middle of the wedding ceremony, I tried to estimate how many people were there. There were probably more than 100 children sitting on mats on the ground in front of me, probably at least 250 people sitting on chairs or benches under the awning on one side, plus more people behind me. A few people were still arriving as the wedding ceremony was wrapping up, even though that was more than five hours after the event had been scheduled to start.

I had offered to help serve the food to the community, so as the wedding party and VIPs headed over to another area for their meal, I went over to the area where we had cooked the food. The pilau was staying hot in a huge pot. Here is a picture from earlier in the morning to show you just how big it was. I don’t know how they managed to pack so much food into that pot, but when I went to help serve it was mounded high.

The first thing we had to do was use bowls to scoop the rice/beef into somewhat smaller (but still two times bigger than anything Americans have at home!) pots so that we could serve food from multiple locations to different groups of people (the extended family of the bride/groom, the other guests—men first, and the children). We had what seemed a big stack of bowls for people to eat out of….until we started splitting them up and looking at the crowds.

As I said, there were more than 100 children there, and those were just the ones under the age of 10 or so! The lady in charge had the children all come sit on the ground under a tree. We had one washing basin full of food for them, and maybe about 20 bowls. There was some food still on the fire in reserve, but it was easy to see that there was not an overabundance of food.

I could feel the tension and frustration level increase a bit among those who were preparing to serve the food. Ugandans tend to serve very substantial portions of food, two or three times the portion size I typically eat. But there was no way the food was going to last like that. So with the kids, we were serving up a typical Uganda portion, but then trying to have three kids eat from that bowl.

The kids crowded towards the food….they had been sitting for hours and hours, and I’m sure they were very hungry. There wasn’t much I could do to help, there were several of us standing there trying to keep the horde somewhat orderly and figure out how to make things work. We took a big serving tray and had seven kids share from the food we put on it. Slowly the crowd of hungry children began to diminish. But by then it seemed we really were out of food, guests from the other groups were even coming to the cooking area trying to get food.

I think there were about 20 children left who hadn’t had anything to eat yet. I’ll never forget their eyes and their faces. Hungry eyes, somewhat desperate expressions on their faces. I felt like we had failed them. Even the ones who had gotten some to eat probably hadn’t had as much as they wanted.

Feelings and emotions started clashing and flooding my heart. Frustration over the cultural norm that meant so so many people came, some who I negatively assumed had come only for the purpose of eating the meal. Pain when I thought about these kids who weren’t getting the meal they had hoped, for whom—as far as I knew—this may have been their best chance at a good meal for the day. Helplessness that there was really nothing I could do. Recognition of the orphan heart that New Hope talks about in these kids—the orphan heart that always wants/needs more than is given.

Any joy and celebration of the day had left me. I could feel a flood building, I knew my inner dam would break soon. I turned and left, walking towards the rocks to escape and vent. As I went, I met the bridal party coming back from their feast to rejoin the guests for the rest of the celebration reception. Honestly, deep inside I was angry…..so angry…..but, either by God’s grace or plain hypocrisy, I was able to greet and congratulate the bride and groom, and my two good friends who were the best man and matron of honor. Once the interaction had passed, though, I was only closer to tears.

I attacked climbing the rock as the sobs started coming. I didn’t care that thorns were scratching my legs, that tagalong seeds and burrs were catching onto one of my nicer dresses. I finally felt myself out of sight, and I let it all go. The tears streamed down my face as I thought about the children’s hungry eyes.

I should point out that I was pretty tired from having woken up very early to help fix food. I was also overly emotional that weekend for other reasons. Now as I look back from a more rational mindset, it does not all seem as dire as it did then. But it is still something I will always remember—my first experience seeing the expression of hungry children who feared there would not be enough for them.

In the midst of the stormy tears, all I could do was pray for those kids. I knew God loved them, I knew God could see them….I knew they were important to Him. My mind flew to the future wedding feast of the Lamb that we are told about in Revelation. I couldn’t help but think about how that wedding too is open to all who will come through faith in Christ—but there, there will be no running out of food. And so I prayed that somehow those precious children would know the gospel of Christ so that they may join us at that feast.

I lay on the rocks until I had calmed some, then went down to the house where I was staying. I was still emotionally raw, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to eat any of the food Constance said was left over from the VIP’s meal since all I could think of was the children who hadn’t gotten food. Hearing her comment to someone else that the large bucket for food waste needed to be emptied for the second time (leftovers from the VIP’s plates) just set me off again.

I retreated to music on my tablet, to anything to get my mind off of being stuck in what I had felt. Two of the foreign staff ladies could tell something was wrong, and one pushed gently to get me to talk. I explained what had happened through heaving sobs, and she was just there with me in that and prayed for me. After some time alone reading, I was finally able to move on.

On Monday evening, we had dinner with the Kobwin staff member who had been the one coordinating the food for the community. She mentioned the fact that I had disappeared from the wedding, and I asked about how things ended. She said that everyone had gotten fed, that as the rain storm came in everyone else was leaving and so she took the last of the food for herself to eat. She even said she had invited some people to come have seconds once everyone else had gotten some.

So I have chosen to take her at her word on that, even though I didn’t see on Saturday how in the world that outcome could be possible. Maybe some of the leftovers from the VIPs were used to serve the community. Maybe they had some extra rice they could cook. I don’t know how it worked. Part of me wishes I had stuck it out to see how it ended. Most of me just takes it all as a reminder that we in ourselves can never truly satisfy the needs of others. Only God is enough to do that. Praise Him that His goodness never runs out!