Nze Katie: as told by us

(Our story, as told by us to a group of one hundred teenagers last week.)

Once upon a time, in the glorious year of 1989, two babies were born. A girl…

And a boy…

And they had no idea that the other existed.

Then on September 14, 2013, their paths crossed. That was the day I first arrived in Uganda. Different than the story we heard from the couple last week, we do not remember the day we met.

No, it’s sad.

Actually, that was when the German volunteer, Paul, was also here, and I used to get him and Uncle Christian mixed up for the first week. So I wasn’t even aware of who Christian was at the time.

But then Papa asked us to start Teen Club—do many of you remember that?

Before we had Ascending it was when we met in the hut on Papa’s side and did Bible study and games as a small group. Well, one thing you maybe didn’t know is that Teen Club always ended around 9:30 in the evening and you would all go home, but then Auntie Katie and I would usually stay and talk, sometimes until midnight or later. We were getting to know each other.

We also did some things together while she was here that trip, like go to Kampala or hiking in Mabira Forest. We became pretty good friends, but I never thought of anything more than that because she was going back to America so there was nothing to think about.

The day I left Noah’s Ark in 2013, we had our first hug. It was awful. Have any of you ever been hugged by Uncle Christian? It was half a second long and we barely touched each other and there was a child in between. And we had our first photo together. Lovely, right?

A couple of months after I returned to America, I decided I wanted to come back to Noah’s Ark for a year. I called Papa to ask if it was okay and while we were talking, he said, “I know when you were here you and Christian really… clicked. Are you coming back to date Christian?” I was so shocked I cried. That was not why I wanted to come back. I mean, he’s fine and all, but that’s not why I wanted to come back. But apparently Papa saw something even before we did.

She came back in July 2014 and we started Teen Club again. She moved into the house next to mine so we became neighbors. Have any of you ever seen Auntie Katie early in the morning reading her Bible on her verandah with her oil lamp? Well, she used to do that in the evenings. Lots of evenings I would go to turn on or off my hot water behind my house and then would stop and talk to her over the wall, sometimes for a few minutes… and sometimes for a few hours. We even have a photo of that:

It's dark because it was night.

I knew if he hopped up and sat on the wall then I had him for a long time. But can I be honest? At first I would go out there and it was nice if he stopped by. Then I would go out there hoping he would stop by. And a couple of times—but just a couple—I had already finished devotions and went out specifically so that he would stop by. But that only a happened a couple of times.

Then can I be honest? Sometimes I knew I had already turned my water off but wanted to go out “just to make sure…”

Sometimes I would think of a question for him ahead of time and make it seem spontaneous when he walked by.

Then for Easter of—was it 2015?—we were somehow put in charge of the Easter carols for primary school.

That was a turning point for me. We spent a lot of time together for two or three weeks before carols, practicing music and working with the children, and that was when I realized… I often got butterflies when he walked by. And I liked to look at his face. Apparently I was starting to like him.

I had no idea. I thought she was nice.

We started spending more time together and becoming better friends, but then something bad happened. Auntie Katie was burned in a cooking accident, and her injuries were so bad she decided to go back to America for treatment.

She couldn’t fly by herself, but her insurance paid for someone to escort her. She first asked Auntie Tamar because she is a doctor, but her mother was visiting so she couldn’t go. Then she asked Auntie Stefani, but Auntie Stefani is afraid of flying and when you need help flying, having someone who is scared isn’t such a good choice. So then I got to go! Really, I just wanted to go to America.

Can I tell you something?

Sure.

I never asked Tamar or Stefani if they could go. I just thought those were good reasons for why they couldn’t. You were my first choice.

(aaaaws from the teenagers)

We flew back to America and I spent two days there. I thought once we got there she would be with her family and I would go do my own thing, but they wanted me to be there and wouldn’t let me go anywhere else, so in the emergency room, in the hospital, everywhere I got to spend with her family.

He even took care of me. One morning he fed me pieces of bagel for breakfast because I couldn’t use my arms.

And I got to see her house and where she grew up, her room, her hometown, so that was nice. And then after about two days I left. It was hard and I didn’t like to go, but I had to. But then she got this wonderful thing called WhatsApp! We could talk whenever we wanted, and in the two months we were apart before she came back, can you guess how many messages we sent back and forth?

7,502.

My family made fun of me for talking to him so much.

We talked about everything, but one thing we liked to do was find pickup lines to share with each other. Those are funny or weird things you say to someone as a way of telling them you like them. We shared ones like this:

Also, when I first came back from IHK after my accident, he said he would give me a hug when I was well enough to receive one, so I waited for that, and we talked about it a lot.

On August 11, she came back again and I picked her up from the airport. That hug was not so great. There were too many people around. That night she came over for supper and we picked up where we had left off. For more than a week, we stayed up until one, two, or three in the morning talking. Then one time we held hands. A couple days after that, I asked if I could walk her home, and when we got to her front step—don’t scream too loudly—I said, “Shall I kiss you now?”

(lots of screams)

And he kissed me for the first time.

(more screams)

So that was the beginning of our relationship.

We kept spending more time together and doing things, like leaving nice notes in each other’s houses for the other person to find when they got home. Here is one Auntie Katie left for me around Christmas last year:

It was the end of a ten-part poem and she had hidden all the pieces around my house for me to find and put together. That gave me butterflies.

I knew it was presumptuous to put “your future wife” on the note, but I was having a hard time thinking of something that rhymed and I knew he was coming home soon, so I risked it.

We also went on a few dates. Sometime around our first date, we decided that we would give our relationship four dates and then decide whether to break up or get engaged. I can’t remember why we said that, but we thought it was a joke at the time. It was a weird thing to say. One one date we went to Kampala, one to Jinja, and one to Mabira Forest where we went zip lining, where you get hooked by a rope and a clip to a cable between trees and then slide down the cable really fast to the next one.

Then we had our fourth date. Uncle Christian was planning that one and he kept it a secret. I had no idea what we were going to do. Last Thursday, he called a boda (motorcycle taxi) to meet us at the gate, and we got on… and then stayed on it for over an hour! I don’t even know where we were exactly—

—somewhere past Katosi, on Lake Victoria—

—yeah, there—and he had taken us to a high ropes course. That is a place where they have different obstacles you do up in the air, so they had rope ladders between trees that you had to cross, and more zip lines, and steps that moved and things like that. It was really fun.

After we finished with that part, we had lunch in a hut there. To be honest, I was ready to go home, so when he called the boda driver to pick us up at three (by that time it was only a little after one) I was a bit disappointed. He said he wanted to go down to the beach—they had a very small beach on the lake—and I love beaches, so we walked down and went for a very short walk on the beach.

It looked so nice in a photo I found on the internet, so it was a bit of a disappointment when we got down there and this is what it looked like.

Then he asked if I wanted to remove my sandals because I like to walk barefoot in the sand, so of course I did. And then—this was the crazy part—he did too! Now, Uncle Christian hates sand. Hates it.

I do, I hate it.

So this was a big deal. Then we walked barefoot in the sand back and forth across the beach. I said something like “This has been a really good date” and he quickly asked, “So does that mean the date is over then?” I said no because we hadn’t yet reached home so we were still on the date.

I knew we had said we would decide to break up or get engaged after our fourth date, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted her to say the date was over so I could ask according to the “rules”, but it didn’t matter. I knew I wanted to marry her and there was no point in waiting any longer to ask.

So he got down on one knee, in the sand—

—in the sand!

—and held out a ring and asked me to marry him.