Kato and Kakuru
on Postcard from Uganda (Uganda), 08/Oct/2009 08:32, 34 days ago
When twins are born in Uganda they are often given traditional names meaning first and second born, but what these names are depends on which region the parents come from and if they're boys or girls. Now for little James and Jeremy, this gets quite complicated - they were born in Mbarara in the South West, Lucy their mum is from Hoima in the North West and Sam their dad is from Lira in the North. So in effect they could be called any of four names. In the South Western region James is called 'Kato' (meaning first born) and Jeremy is called 'Kakuru' (meaning second born). Lucy is also a twin, so is known to most people as 'Nyangoma' (first born) and her twin sister is known as 'Nyakato'. It gets slightly more complicated when it's one boy and one girl, as the names given depend on which of them was the born first - Patricia was explaining this to me yesterday, but I kind of lost the plot after a while!Jeremy 'Kakuru' on the left and James 'Kato' on the right - don't they look cute....James looks so much like Lucy it's amazing!There was a big open air trade show in Mbarara recently, which attracts vendors and businesses from all over Uganda, and even Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. Healthy Child Uganda is a project in partnership with Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) and each year they hire space at the show and allow HCU to sell their community made handcrafts there. It was a perfect opportunity to display and hopefully sell the flowers, I was inundated with them so really needed to shift them in order to pay the local communities.Now, in principle an open air show in Africa sounds lovely, except when it's held in the rainy season and yes, this unfortunately means running the risk of getting wet, and very wet, saturated in fact, we got. On two ocassions our tent was actually blown away, the second time it landed on top of the national electrity supplier's tent, they weren't amused. On the last day, the wind and rain was so bad the entire stadium looked like a scene from a disaster movie with tents down all over the place and floods of water everywhere. Patricia 'manning' the stand, along with a medical student from the university who was doing free blood pressure tests. Patricia kept herself busy making flowers for Teddy, the project manger, to take to friends in the UKI knew that Lucy would like to go to the show, but unfortunately with two little babies and no money for non-essentails, her chances of going were pretty slim. So when I suggested that I would take her and the boys as a 'treat' she was absolutley delighted. She'd not been further than 10 minutes away from her 2-roomed house in over 2 months, so was really excited about going out for the day and having the opportunity to show off her boys! So with Lucy dressed in her best 'kitenge' (top and long skirt made from traditional fabric), Sam spruced up and the boys dressed in their best outfits too, off we went! We got lots of 'funny' looks walking around the show ground, especially when peopel spotted the 'muzungu' (me!) carrying a Ugandan baby in my arms - they're too little to be strapped around the back yet....I can only imagine the hiliarity that would have caused!Lucy, in her best clothes with Kakuru (sometimes known as Jeremy or Jeramiah) and Kato (sometimes known as James or Jimmy)! They even had proper nappieson for the ocassion!