Inside the van, as it plied the long route from Kampala to the hilly town of Nyagatare in Rwanda, it was impossible to tell the groom from his friends. They were all young and loud, as if this was their last chance to enjoy moments of youthful banter with a young man who was about to get hitched so far away from home. If the road trip was inspired by love, the dominant tenor of the conversation was far from it.
The talk was mostly about the good old days, about the joy of being young and reckless, and about the possibility of losing all of that. The groom --- nearly everyone called him Emario --- bore the brunt of this nonsense, this searing parody of marriage, but he seemed to take it in good stride. He understood what they were talking about. They visualised the road he was taking. All of us knew there was no turning back. Jackie Umuganwa, Emario’s beautiful bride, was waiting in Nyagatare.
“You are coming down,” one of Emario’s friends yelled early in the journey. Another deadpanned: “I am also going to plan my downfall.”
If this silly banter was a brilliant critique of marriage, it was also a paean to boyhood. And no one anticipated this fact better than the groom’s uncle when he decided, early on, to lecture us about metaphysical questions. “If you have money and life, what is there to stop you from enjoying this world, from having many women?” he asked. “You need to live responsibly, and you must have God in your life.” The response from the young men was encouraging but wild, attentive yet dismissive. Nearly all of us had decided from the start, long before we crossed the border into Rwanda, that we would be stubborn in all the ways available to us. We would recall our days in high school. We would pour scorn on each other. We would make sure it was fun for all the 30 or so people inside the van, even if by sheer force.
By the time we arrived in Nyagatare, several hours later, it was already March 13, on the warm afternoon that Emario was set to be engaged to his bride in a traditional Kinyarwanda ceremony. The groom was still with us, but this time he could be distinguished from the crowd. He was now more attentive than most. And yes, he was in the thick of things. A traditional give-away ceremony in Rwanda, or Gusaba, is not spectacularly different from what obtains in, for example, Ankole. The head of the host family and the leader of the visiting entourage engage in what might be construed as pretentious dialogue, but they mean serious business. The long chat between the two men, which lasted about two hours, put enormous burdens on both. It required each of them to be funny, to be serious, and perhaps to be a good actor. You do not have to be Denzel Washington (or even Abbey Mukiibi) to excel in this exchange, of course, but you need to project machismo. It was as if the men were fighting for superiority, with the host asking tricky questions and the visitor trying hard to appreciate the experience. There is no excuse for weakness. At some point, the head of the host family asked our delegation what the groom did for a living, and I heard the letters “c” and “v” mentioned in a long question. It was time for the head of the visitors to say all the good things he knew about the groom. I glanced at Emario and noticed that he was at ease. Good.
Then, moments later, the host family announced that the groom had been accepted into the family. In our case, because most of us did not understand Kinyarwanda, we missed most of the jokes and often had to be asked, in a language we understood, to clap whenever the host said something gracious. If the ceremony was tough on the head of the visiting delegation, it was so kind to Emario himself. For the most part, the groom was required to just shut up, to wait until his time came to do the glorious walk from one tent to another, to greet his in-laws. He had taken a back seat in the visitors’ tent, perhaps in honour of a norm that requires the groom’s identity to be mysterious in the hours preceding his eventual appearance, and later, along with his best man, had been invited to occupy the seat of honour. In his sofa, appropriately coloured red, Emario watched proudly as his bride joined him there, setting the stage for the glory to come. Traditional dancers, in black-and-white ensembles and matching headgear, would soon torment the ground in a rhythmic dance routine, the dust rising out of the ground to bless the ceremony. It was the dust of joy. Nothing could beat it.
As he put the ring on the lucky finger, around 5 p.m. local time, Emario’s friends cheered for him one last time. It was the moment, as many of them had joked, that he “went down”. In that instant, as everyone scrambled to see what was happening in the tent, Emario had achieved so much more than going down the marriage path. He had found a wife and a new family, united two cultures, and given many of us the chance to make new friends. If Emario was actually going down, we were going up.
As the van took the opposite direction, the ceremony finally over, it was not long before the groom and his best man loosened their ties. The jokes resumed, sometimes with greater tempo, often with nostalgia for the days when Emario and his friends were unencumbered by the new responsibilities he had just assumed. In a good sign, he was still smiling. Emario, whose real name is Emmanuel Gyezaho, is a Daily Monitor journalist. He is my friend.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Kampala Is Feeling Hot
The first thing Ramadan Kiraga had to give up when he saw a passenger was his prized spot under a tree. Then, before his motorcycle gave a violent lurch to the right, and just as someone prepared to take his place, the man also had to empty into his stomach whatever was left in his water bottle.
Later, after doing the trip, Kiraga would claim that he was spending as much on water as on fuel, the inevitable result of surging temperatures in recent times. “I have taken two liters by now,” the motorcycle operator said. “The heat is killing us. We may have to charge people for this. I don’t know when this is going to end.”
Kiraga is not alone in his misery. After all, the whole of Kampala is feeling unseasonably hot. In the capital, as in some other parts of the country, especially in northern Uganda, temperatures have been rising since late January, severe conditions that are forecast to last until the end of February.
Jackson Rwakishaija, a senior communications officer with the Meteorology Department, yesterday said that, while the month of February has traditionally been hot, there is now a marked rise in average temperature over the same period last year. “For about five days, the temperature has been 31.6 degrees Celsius in Kampala,” Rwakishaija said. “I think it was 32 degrees Celsius yesterday. I am sure even today it will be 32 degrees Celsius. It used to be a maximum of 30 degrees Celsius [in this period] in Kampala. On average, there is an increase of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius around the country.”
Despite this significant rise in temperature, Rwakishaija was reluctant to sound the alarm bells, saying that some of the heat would be lost starting in March. “February has always been like that, except that that the degree now makes a big difference,” he said. “Maybe our bodies have now become very sensitive. I can say that we are now more conscious about climate change.”
The dry spell, he said, would “continue for the next three weeks,” towards the end of February. "It is mainly in the central and northern parts of Uganda because the dry winds move from the north southwards,” Mr Rwakishaija said. “It’s winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. The intensity of winter [there] creates a similar intensity [in the degree of heat] here.”
The heat in Kampala has recently attracted a frenzied discussion of the subject on social networking sites, especially on Facebook, where some young people occasionally post comments to reveal how “hot” they feel. “Oh, Lord, it’s too hot,” one of them cried out. Another raved: “There’s almost nothing as disgusting as inhaling truck exhaust on a boda-boda on a hot day in Kampala. Okay, maybe a few things, but this one is up there.” And one even offered greetings from “a steaming hot Kampala.”
Their cries, like several others that do not get heard, seemed to represent a growing consensus among Ugandans that climate change is upon us in a real way --- in conditions we can actually feel. In a 2008 assessment of climate change in Uganda, a study commissioned by the Department for International Development and conducted by sustainable development consultants LTS International, it was noted that temperatures would continue to rise over the next 20 years and beyond. “Human-induced climate change is likely to increase average temperatures in Uganda by up to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 20 years and up to 4.3 degrees Celsius by the 2080s,” the report said. “Such rates of increase are unprecedented. Changes in rainfall patterns and total annual rainfall amounts are also expected but these are less certain than changes in temperature.”
The report noted that the grim forecast was not unlike what was being expected in other parts of the world. “In Uganda, as for the rest of the world, there are likely to be changes in the frequency or severity of extreme climate events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms,” the report said.
Maruzi MP David Ebong, who chairs the Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change, a pressure group whose mandate was partly derived from the grim statistics mentioned in the LTS report, yesterday said his group had failed to find its rhythm. He did not say why. “Our forum is still a young forum,” Ebong said. “Nobody can demand too much from us as this point. This is the year when we could do more.” The forum, the first of its kind in Africa, was established in mid-2009 with the hope, Ebong said, of making Uganda “responsive to the challenges of climate change." A realistic goal, he said yesterday, would be the passing of legislation that deals decisively with climate change in Uganda.
Independent experts, citing everything from the unrestrained importation of second-hand vehicles to the destruction of swamps and to poor regulation of industries, say Uganda is not doing enough to combat climate change. “The worst is yet to come,” Frank Muramuzi, of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, said yesterday. “Many things are going to happen, and people are going to fall sick. Ask yourself: How many junk cars are in this country?”
Every ministry must have a climate change unit, according to Muramuzi, who charged that Ugandans have not been sensitized to lead environment-friendly lifestyles. “All they need is to be guided,” he said. “The rise in temperature is abnormal. I don’t cover myself these days. This is the effect of climate change.”
Later, after doing the trip, Kiraga would claim that he was spending as much on water as on fuel, the inevitable result of surging temperatures in recent times. “I have taken two liters by now,” the motorcycle operator said. “The heat is killing us. We may have to charge people for this. I don’t know when this is going to end.”
Kiraga is not alone in his misery. After all, the whole of Kampala is feeling unseasonably hot. In the capital, as in some other parts of the country, especially in northern Uganda, temperatures have been rising since late January, severe conditions that are forecast to last until the end of February.
Jackson Rwakishaija, a senior communications officer with the Meteorology Department, yesterday said that, while the month of February has traditionally been hot, there is now a marked rise in average temperature over the same period last year. “For about five days, the temperature has been 31.6 degrees Celsius in Kampala,” Rwakishaija said. “I think it was 32 degrees Celsius yesterday. I am sure even today it will be 32 degrees Celsius. It used to be a maximum of 30 degrees Celsius [in this period] in Kampala. On average, there is an increase of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius around the country.”
Despite this significant rise in temperature, Rwakishaija was reluctant to sound the alarm bells, saying that some of the heat would be lost starting in March. “February has always been like that, except that that the degree now makes a big difference,” he said. “Maybe our bodies have now become very sensitive. I can say that we are now more conscious about climate change.”
The dry spell, he said, would “continue for the next three weeks,” towards the end of February. "It is mainly in the central and northern parts of Uganda because the dry winds move from the north southwards,” Mr Rwakishaija said. “It’s winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. The intensity of winter [there] creates a similar intensity [in the degree of heat] here.”
The heat in Kampala has recently attracted a frenzied discussion of the subject on social networking sites, especially on Facebook, where some young people occasionally post comments to reveal how “hot” they feel. “Oh, Lord, it’s too hot,” one of them cried out. Another raved: “There’s almost nothing as disgusting as inhaling truck exhaust on a boda-boda on a hot day in Kampala. Okay, maybe a few things, but this one is up there.” And one even offered greetings from “a steaming hot Kampala.”
Their cries, like several others that do not get heard, seemed to represent a growing consensus among Ugandans that climate change is upon us in a real way --- in conditions we can actually feel. In a 2008 assessment of climate change in Uganda, a study commissioned by the Department for International Development and conducted by sustainable development consultants LTS International, it was noted that temperatures would continue to rise over the next 20 years and beyond. “Human-induced climate change is likely to increase average temperatures in Uganda by up to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 20 years and up to 4.3 degrees Celsius by the 2080s,” the report said. “Such rates of increase are unprecedented. Changes in rainfall patterns and total annual rainfall amounts are also expected but these are less certain than changes in temperature.”
The report noted that the grim forecast was not unlike what was being expected in other parts of the world. “In Uganda, as for the rest of the world, there are likely to be changes in the frequency or severity of extreme climate events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms,” the report said.
Maruzi MP David Ebong, who chairs the Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change, a pressure group whose mandate was partly derived from the grim statistics mentioned in the LTS report, yesterday said his group had failed to find its rhythm. He did not say why. “Our forum is still a young forum,” Ebong said. “Nobody can demand too much from us as this point. This is the year when we could do more.” The forum, the first of its kind in Africa, was established in mid-2009 with the hope, Ebong said, of making Uganda “responsive to the challenges of climate change." A realistic goal, he said yesterday, would be the passing of legislation that deals decisively with climate change in Uganda.
Independent experts, citing everything from the unrestrained importation of second-hand vehicles to the destruction of swamps and to poor regulation of industries, say Uganda is not doing enough to combat climate change. “The worst is yet to come,” Frank Muramuzi, of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, said yesterday. “Many things are going to happen, and people are going to fall sick. Ask yourself: How many junk cars are in this country?”
Every ministry must have a climate change unit, according to Muramuzi, who charged that Ugandans have not been sensitized to lead environment-friendly lifestyles. “All they need is to be guided,” he said. “The rise in temperature is abnormal. I don’t cover myself these days. This is the effect of climate change.”
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