Robert took all our group as well as Maggie and some family members to his parents’ home in Tubur for their Introduction (traditional marriage ceremony), arriving at about 10.30. We were met by women waving flags, dancing and ululating who then processed us slowly to our seats – a grand entry!

Preparations were still being made all around the compound, including cooking a meal for perhaps 200 and setting everything out. As you would expect in Uganda, people (mostly Robert’s extended family and neighbours) arrived slowly in twos and threes over the next few hours and sat under trees or one of the two tents set up, while family members were busy moving up and down. A soda and bottle of water each kept us going. Maggie was secreted away in the house with her attendants where she stayed for perhaps seven hours. It must have been unbearably hot under an iron sheet roof – we found it hot outside! After seeing to various things, Robert also went into another room. Maggie’s family arrived and were similarly greeted and escorted with dancing to their seats next to ours.

Time passed, with no sign of Maggie and Robert appearing. The crowd of guests, by now very large, was given a very nice meal. Both Robert’s and Maggie’s clan leaders disappeared for a meeting to negotiate the final dowry settlement, with a messenger popping back to Robert in the house for feedback. Finally, after about two hours, they inspected the cows and goats Robert had already brought, as the first instalment, and the ceremony was allowed to proceed.

Just as the sun was close to setting, the moment we had all been waiting for arrived: Robert and Maggie, looking so relaxed, handsome and beautiful, emerged from the house with their escorts and danced slowly round the seated crowd, through the large archway and along the red carpet towards us. The crowd started to get up and dance around them. They had such lovely smiles as they were escorted to the special set for formal photos before taking their seats.

The MC (a clan elder and one of Robert’s older brothers) introduced and welcomed people, a pastor was asked to preach with someone else reading Bible passages and then, to my surprise, I was introduced as the Guest of Honour and asked to speak (without any preparation)! I was told much later that people had been very moved, some to tears. To my embarrassment, all of Robert’s extended family and friends processed and danced up to me bringing gifts for me – including a goat, two chickens and money. (You can guess what I did with them all the next day, passing them on to the rightful recipients!)

As it got dark, all the family chickens came home to roost – up in a tree in the middle of the compound.

But they couldn’t have got any sleep, with the amplified music and everyone dancing: the dust rose up into the darkness as scores of feet pounded the ground. The darkness was ideal for hiding my inability to dance, enabling me to enjoy joining in instead of being embarrassed! Eventually, feeling our age, Felicity and I left the younger people to continue dancing while we sat with Arakit, Ilemu and a few other girls clustered around us, talking and asking questions, while the owners of the tents, tables, chairs and decorations dismantled everything, ready to be collected at midnight.

About 12 hours after we’d arrived, Robert and Denis (his youngest brother) took the five of us (me, Felicity, Inna, Kerstin and Patrick) a few miles to Tubur trading centre to stay in a guest house for the night. Robert’s original intention had been that the Introduction should take place in his own home in Apapai (in Kalaki district, close to where Maggie, who is Kumam, comes from), which would have meant staying there for two nights. This would have given us all of Sunday at his home, to walk around his land and see how much he and his children have achieved since he bought the land, which was covered in bush, just four years ago.

On Sunday morning, Robert and Denis collected us from the guest house and took us back to the family home for breakfast – and for lunch much later, as everyone was still busy tidying up.

We spent the morning being entertained by the younger girls who were playing a demanding version of hopscotch with much hilarity. One of them (with some ‘help’ from less proficient younger girls) made little plaits all over Felicity’s head – no mean feat with “slippery” European hair! Felicity’s patience and endurance was exemplary while some of us slept in the minibus! We weren’t able to leave for Apapai until after we’d been fed again – this time, lunch.

We eventually got to Robert and Maggie’s village home in Apapai in time to quickly settle in to our little but immaculate grass-thatched houses which had been so lovingly prepared for us before going for a guided walk around some of Robert’s land and down to the edge of the swamp. Robert loves his new home, the environment, the peace and all the birds. He talked of his various plans.

It was quiet and peaceful eating supper on Sunday evening round the fire with Robert, Maggie, the children, a cat and a dog (the goats were already asleep in their little shelter and the cattle in their kraal), before going to bed – sadly, but appropriately, our last night in Teso.