boda.

hi. hi. hi.

ok soooo today was a very interesting day. wooohooo. jon, his research assistant (george) and i went to namugongo to the martyrs' shrine. i had my first boda experience (a motorcycle taxi) so that was quite awesome. we then took a taxi van the rest of the way. the amount of people there was just insane! probably about 2 million...and they come from all over the place to participate in this national holiday. people were there from tanzania, congo, kenya...just to name a few. in the 1890's the king of buganda (the region i am in) had 25 catholics and protestant christians killed on june 3. there were several others that took place over the course of a couple of years, but this was the day that the most people were martyred. it was very interesting, and kind of incredible that so many people would come from all over the place for this. i think i said it already, but some people started walking over a week ago so that they could be in namugongo.

anyways...we were at the catholic shrine, and it was kind of hard to see because of the masses of people, but we got to a spot where we could kind of tell what was going on. the president (museveni) was at the catholic service, but all we saw of him were his cars leaving afterwards. there was a lot of singing, and the music was close to traditional african music. it was explained to me that the catholics allow more of the traditional type music, while the protestants taught the hymns that i would be more likely to know. jon and george started talking to a couple of high school students, who said they wanted to become priests if God allowed it. they talked about praying to the martyrs and how anyone who was there would receive a blessing from God simply for being in that place today. it was interesting to hear different people's take on things.

afterwards, we started walking down the road to the protestant shrine. on the way there, we kind of got caught in a stampede of people...a little scary. especially when a taxi tried to pull out into the crowd of people. that was a little much. but we finally made it through, and took another boda because we found out it was quite a distance away. the protestant shrine was interesting as well. there was a small chapel building, and signs posted saying that the martyrs were buried underneath. there were also a couple of artistic pieces set up to pay tribute to those who gave their lives there so many years ago. if it did not take so long, i would post pictures of them...but i guess we all will have to be patient. :)

it was really really awesome to learn about some of the history of this country, especially from a religious aspect. i am still just blown away at the number of people, and am grateful that i got to be there with them to witness it all....very cool stuff.

kirsten.