We’ll live happily on bread and melon juice

Want to get married in Uganda?

Well, the Catholic Church would rather you had a simple, frugal ceremony.

Expensive weddings, according to archbishop of Kampala Dr Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, are intimidating young people from poor backgrounds from tying the knot, even as their richer compatriots enjoyed marital bliss.

“A wedding need not necessarily be expensive,” said the archbishop last week, adding that in contrast to Ugandan weddings, a marriage he had attended in France was only attended by the bride and groom, and a few witnesses.

At the French reception, Dr Kizito told a bewildered congregation in Kampala, they only had watermelon juice.

-------------

Suffer the little children

Being a child is a very dangerous thing in Kenya today.

According to the country’s gender and children’s ministry, about 6,000 children were sexually assaulted last year, and more than 38,300 others were neglected in one way or another by their parents or guardians.

In the year, close to 3,000 children were completely abandoned and had to receive care from state-run and private children’s homes.

Currently, the ministry said, only 58 per cent of children under 15 live with both parents, with an incredible 2.4 million being orphans. A ticking time bomb, or a lost generation? Time will tell.

-----------------

Absolute power attracts flies and insects?

First, it was a monkey that peed on Zambian President Rupiah Banda.

Then a pesky fly tried to interrupt a live interview with US President Barack Obama.