Giveaway

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I had the honor of attending a Giveaway last week at the church. To the best of my understanding, it is part 2 of 3 of the marriage process. Step 1 is the Introduction, where the families of the bride and groom meet together and negotiate the bride price. The bride price is not a “buying” of the bride, but viewed as an expression of appreciation to the bride’s family for giving her up to join theirs. The bride price will vary and be a mixture of animals, food items, etc., but is quite expensive.

Step 2 is the Giveaway, or the giving away of the bride to the groom’s family. This is hosted by the bride’s family. Friends and family (or strangers like myself) will come for a meal before the festivities begin, and brushera will always be served. This is a local porridge made out of sorghum and fermented into an alcohol, but with honey to make it sweet (but it has a very strong smell). Fresh brushera that has not yet fermented is drunk as a soft drink. From the time I arrived until the end of the Giveaway was about 6 hours. During the Giveaway, there was some singing and dancing sprinkled here and there, formal/public introductions of the bride and groom to each other’s families, presentation of gifts from the bride and groom to each other, the presentation of the bride price, cutting of some of the cakes (and the bride feeding it to the brother of the groom), and some words from the Bishop. Various friends can also present gifts to the couple (in front of everyone), and an offering was taken for anyone who wanted to give the couple a little bit of money.

The bride’s family sits on one side and the groom’s family sits opposite of them so that they are facing each other. There appeared to be a sort of spokesperson on each side that would talk on behalf of the family, either to the other spokesperson, the bride or groom, or the audience. There is a lot of walking around by the bride, groom, and others and the entire space up front is being used by people during various parts of the ceremonies.

Language made for an interesting dynamic. Only a handful of sentences in the 6 hours were in English, so I could understand nothing without someone explaining to me what was happening. I just assumed that everything was being spoken in Rukiga (local language in Kabale) until my roommate Sarah told me that there were actually three languages being spoken. The bride’s family spoke Luganda, the groom’s family spoke another language, and all of the friends in attendance spoke Rukiga. I’m not sure how much each group was able to understand of the others, but I personally just stopped listening after awhile and just paid attention to what I was seeing.

Step 3 is the actual wedding. My understanding is that this part is only done by Christians who wish to be married before God. It is held the day after the Giveaway and hosted by the groom’s family. I wasn’t invited to the actual wedding since I had actually never met the bride and groom, and it was 2 hours away, so I can’t attest to what happens at the wedding ceremony.

Overall, the marriage process is very intensive and expensive. Pastor Magambo explained to me that getting married will cost something like 13x a person’s annual salary, as opposed to the U.S. where it is only a percentage of a person’s annual salary.