Miracle: Why the engagement ring at a wedding?

Does anyone else find it funny when at a kwanjula ceremony – which is basically a traditional/customary marriage – the bride and groom go into a bizarre engagement ritual?

Usually done as the last item of business on that day, the groom goes down on one knee and gives his bride an engagement ring, promising to marry her in church or a mosque soon.

Maybe because this part usually comes at the tail end of the function when I am already tired and ready to leave, I find it so pointless and misunderstood. By the time you bring your man home to your parents for a customary wedding, girl, you have already said yes to a wedding proposal. Somehow.

Him going down on one knee before your parents after he has paid the bride price and made you his wife under Ugandan law is quite comical and someone needs to break the chain.

We should normalize saying things like “with this ring, I thee wed…” in our local languages, instead of belatedly asking for her hand in marriage. And as modernity would have it, these days the newlyweds are usually already cohabiting, which adds levels to this comedy.

In one particular case last year, the man dropped off his girlfriend on the morning of the kwanjula at her parents’ home, straight from their shared apartment, then returned with his entourage a few hours later, went through the motions and of course ‘proposed’ and told her to ‘patiently wait for him’, before leaving with the same bride at the end of the long festivities.

Why are we mocking God and the institution of marriage? And don’t get me started on those young men that have vulgarized the whole ceremony by choreographing the dancing to a point where the fainthearted may have to cover their eyes in shame.

Years ago, my pastor vowed not to attend another kwanjula ceremony, after a church member’s fiancée shocked all of us by choosing the dirtiest songs on the market then to dance to, and proceeded to dance like she was simulating sex, or something close.

That was the last such function he ever attended, because these days, even born-again families are succumbing to the peer pressure and going with the flow. But for now, can we kindly stop getting engaged after the wedding?