5. “I Went To A Wedding”
By Lily Escara-Lare, BSE Biology’85
T
wo months after I arrived in Africa, one of my former students from West Visayan Academy in
Iloilo invited me to attend her wedding. Although now a resident of Alberta, Canada, her wedding
was to take place at Kitale, an agricultural town in western Kenya. Because her mother was unable
to come to Africa, the young bride asked if I would be willing to represent her family and be the
“mother of the bride” during the wedding ceremony. Being new to the continent, I had no idea where
Kitale was but I accepted her invitation. I knew it was going to be a great adventure!
Two nights before the wedding, the groom, his brother, his cousin, and I, went to Nairobi
International Airport to meet the bride and her son. It was around midnight when we got around to
having dinner. We had a hearty Kenyan meal where we enjoyed Kenya’s staple foods: Sukuma wiki
with beef stew and ugali. It was around 3AM the morning of December 22 when we finally started for
Kitale. It took us twelve hours to reach the place.
Because the couple had met online and the airport encounter was their first personal meeting, I
thought we