Celebrate
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance / And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance / I hope you dance… I hope you dance.
-Lee Ann Womack
This weekend was chock-full of celebrations, it was so much fun! Every year on January 8th, the new sisters profess their vows. After you profess your vows the first year, you reaffirm those vows every year for the next 4 years. If you decide that religious life is not for you, you can choose not to reaffirm your vows during those years. (As I was telling Laura, The Sound of Music makes so much more sense to me now- I never understood how Maria could just quit being a nun!) The 5th year that you reaffirm your vows, you reaffirm them for good- you officially dedicate your life to God and to being poor, chaste, and obedient. So, January 8th is a big day, for the new people, for the 5th year people, and also for the people who are celebrating their anniversary of affirmation. Three nuns were celebrating 75 years! Not 75 years old, 75 years of being a nun!!! One of the three is the nun who taught me how to make broom- I was really happy that she was well enough to attend! So, the celebration is basically a big long mass, with the affirmation and reaffirmation as part of it. I sang with the choir (in Luganda) and it was so much fun! It was a really nice day, and sooooo many people came to celebrate.
After mass was lunch, and after lunch there was a lot of socializing as well as many dance performances. Dancing here is amazing- these people can really move their bodies, let me tell you! They have this piece of cowhide (but the fur is long, so it looks more like feathers) that they tie around their hips, which further emphasizes the shaking. There was a group from Rwanda that was hired to come and give dance performances, but at one point some of the sisters joined in and, of course, dragged me with them. I resisted their first attempts, but then several of them came up to me, tied the feathery stuff to my butt despite my protests, and shoved me out there. So, what was I to do? I danced. It was a blast. It was also super embarrassing and kind of caused an uproar, but one thousand Ugandans are now impressed that a white girl too can shake her booty.
posted by Jess @ 1:03 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Nakivumbi,
Not quite as much fun as the nuns' dancing and celebrating, but whenever I run across a Uganda story I make a note to forward it to you. So here are a couple (strangely enough, both relate to health issues):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6915566
Global Health
Tracking a Health-Care Experiment in Uganda
by Joanne Silberner
Morning Edition, January 19, 2007 · A novel experiment to bring health care to poor Ugandans has been under way for several years. The idea was to set up HMOs within already existing agricultural co-ops. How are things working out? [Visit website to listen to this brief report.]
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Note the reference to the "Biblical Ten Commandants" in the story below. Perhaps one commandant was assigned to each commandment?
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6274313.stm
01/18/2007
Uganda's mystic rebel leader dies
The woman who began the long running insurgency in northern Uganda, Alice Lakwena, has died in exile in Kenya after a long illness.
The self-proclaimed prophetess founded the Holy Spirit Movement in the 1980s.
Her followers believed magic potions protected them in battle, but they were defeated by government forces.
Many later regrouped to form the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by her cousin Joseph Kony. The LRA is holding talks to end its 20-year conflict.
Mrs Lakwena, who was in her fifties, continued to inspire devotion among her followers, who believed she could cure various diseases.
More than 1.5m people have fled their homes due to the conflict and thousands of children have been abducted by the LRA.
'Holy Oil'
A Kenyan police commander said the cause of Ms Lakwena's death was not known, but she had been ill for some time, AFP news agency reports.
Ms Lakwena founded her movement in 1986 after the overthrow of the northerner Milton Obote by President Yoweri Museveni.
The spirit-medium said she was fighting to purify the aggrieved northern Acholi people.
She promised her fighters that use of her "Holy Oil" would protect them from bullets, turning them to water.
Her 7,000 hymn-singing fighters reached to within 130km of the capital, Kampala, before they were defeated by the government army in 1988.
After she fled, Ms Lakwena lived in a refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya.
Following the Holy Spirit Movement's demise, Mr Kony went on to found his own rebel group which over the next two decades went on to abduct thousands of children to become fighters or sex slaves.
It has not been clear what Mr Kony, who also sees himself as a spirit medium, has been fighting for but he has said he wanted to rule according to the Biblical Ten Commandants, and create a "new generation" of Acholis.
Progress at peace talks, being held in southern Sudan to end the northern rebellion, has been slow.
Mr Kony says his group will not disarm until the International Criminal Court in The Hague drops war crimes charges against him and other LRA leaders.
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