Wedding preparation!!

*I’m back in Soroti for a few short days to gear up for the next Karamoja trip. I have a few minutes but am pretty brain dead so I’m just going to copy a few journal entries for now.

1/17 Somehow we successfully managed to get all 14 wedding cakes out to Nakayot today with no casualties.  A few look a little battered and they have another day to sit in my 120 degree truck (we can’t bring them out as there is nowhere rat proof enough to store them except the tents and they are even hotter than my vehicle) but I think we are going to have pulled it off.  Didn’t think it was possible. Val better appreciate that she is going to have some very beautiful and some very tasty cakes in a very remote Ugandan village. (Though not all the cakes are beautiful and not all are tasty. Most are either one or the other but this is Uganda!)   

On the morning of the 16th I was supposed to go pick up the cake before heading up to Karamoja. A Ugandan baker was responsible for 6 of them and he had baked them a week before and left them in the sun to dry out. He was supposed to have them done but he had some decorations to finish and they all needed to be wrapped so I sat and waited while he finished. 

This is his little workshop.  These cakes weigh a ton and are hard as rock. They taste like the are two weeks old with cement for icing. But they look awesome!
Some of the packed cakes waiting in my truck while he finished the rest. 

 

Finally, cakes finished and truck packed for the three hour journey north.  9 people and all of their stuff for living in the bush for 3 days, plus 6 cakes and a keyboard. I was pretty heavily loaded. 

Here is the road to Nakayot that the cakes had to survive. 

Jim, a teammate and pastry chef, followed in his van with his family, more wedding cakes and  supplies to make  more once we reached my home in Kangole.   Their wedding cake deliver adventure  is here. 

1/18 Sitting this morning at the Moroto Airport (seems funny to even write that as it is a tattered windsock next to a dirt stretch that small planes can aim at) waiting to pick up the last few arrivals for the wedding. I know that we still have two hours of driving ahead of us because I did this trip several times yesterday and though the road is “open” it is still far from good. But today is the traditional wedding with the giving of the dowry and tomorrow is wedding day!! I need to get out there are there is still much to do!

Girls helping me decorate the cake stands

The final cake table with 5 of the display cakes. 

American cake and Ugandan cakes together. 

The dust was so bad that for most of the day the wedding the table had to be covered  but it still looked nice!