Okurut Wyclef
Apparently, there wasn’t much cause to worry, as he found out later after doing the obvious thing, which was to call someone, a friend and work colleague, who had vehemently professed his attendance and taken it upon himself to represent the company, to find out exactly where the wedding reception was. The friend had made it earlier and quickly picked up the phone to tell him he had made it earlier. He breathed a sigh of relief when the friend told him to make it to the tent a hundred yards from where he stood.
He saw the tent and it affirmed that he wasn’t lost after all, but there was still little to explain the silence. This was a wedding reception and it was 3 p.m., for the sake of all that’s good! Where was the disc jockey testing his machines, the master of ceremonies blubbing incoherencies into the microphone to an indifferent audience? There was nothing, just the heavenly quiet of the gardens that had quickly transformed into the deathly quiet.
He kept on the phone until the friend emerged from the tent to meet him.
“I thought I was late,” he blurted.
“Me too,” the friend quickly replied. “But it seems we are the first people here, so we are seated as we wait for the rest.”
“Where are you seated?”
“This way, in the first tent; there is another one of us there.”
“What time is the event scheduled to start? It’s already 3; I expected movement, and a lot of it.”
“Well,” he started, “I don’t have the answers; we will just wait.”
When he made the turn at the tent, he saw the second work colleague, who was a jolly fellow, could easily have made it through a seminary top of the class, a Boy Scout fellow, clad in glowing red and with a consistent smile. He sat beside the two colleagues and workplace banter filled the air at the table. He remembered the total number of people as being about eight, with five of them running about with no visibly seen purpose.
One other particular person that got his interest piqued was a man who walked with a slight limp and seemed to be everywhere. Whenever he set his eyes from him, he would raise them again and find he had teleported somewhere else, so his eyes often drifted to the table and the man. He found out later, curiously, that the man was the master of ceremonies. At some point, he came close to their table and seemed to be skimming through a document that looked like the day’s programme.
The MC had quickly become a comic figure on the chair next to him, fidgeting with the day’s schedule and mumbling under his breath what seemed like prayers or remembrances of catchwords he would use. He found the lack of preparation and pointed it out to the friend, who downplayed his fear of the terrible performance he anticipated.
It was quickly 4 p.m. and the trickle became a pour when more people came to the venue. He figured why and also remembered why the same thing always happened: weddings weren’t always about the bride, hardly. It was the time people unveiled their best dresses to an imaginary audience of perceived onlookers, and it made little sense that one came at a time when there was no audience. So it was always a race of who came latest and made the most use of the audience. Now it made sense to him why the venue was deserted at 3 p.m. and a race for seats by 5 p.m.
As he had anticipated, the MC did a bad job for stretches. He left the programme largely uncoordinated and the married couple had to wait in the open before he called them to the floor. The DJ too fumbled his set a couple of times, playing a repeat of the same five songs. If one posited that there was a deliberate sabotage of the function by the pair, it wouldn’t be conspiratorial or far-fetched. It was quickly food time and the number had grown to 200 or thereabouts, with tents filled.
Food did the trick; the programme that seemed to suffer greatly before the food appeared much better coordinated after the food. One would be forgiven for thinking it was hunger that stood in the way of a good programme. More work colleagues made it and it quickly became comfortable; the anxiety had quickly dissipated and the function grew quickly on him and he found the experience lovable.
The last two hours of the reception were particularly memorable; it made one wonder what sort of farce the reception was for the first three hours.
The speeches were heartfelt, and the smile of the bride when he saw the work group all together and thanked them for coming, when the function was wrapped at 8:30 p.m., the world seemed right again.
The rumours lingered about at the office a week later about what didn’t go well at the function, and it was entirely from people who hadn’t attended. But they didn’t even get him angry; he understood the nature of people: when one achieves something out of reach for them, they feel better about their own failures by painting another person’s achievement a failure. Granted, the first parts of the function were forgettable, but at the end of the function, when he saw the genuine smile and heartfelt thanks to the team that attended, he figured that was all that mattered and for that, the day was worth it for everyone involved. Maybe a good function wasn’t one where everything went well, but one where the main people being celebrated, the bride and groom, were happy that they found each other and made it known to their friends and family.
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Written by
Okurut Wyclef, the dynamic Ugandan writer born in 1996, crafts captivating stories that blend African heritage with modern dreams.
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