Martyr's Day at Namagongo

Thursday, June 3, 2010

June 3 is a national holiday in Uganda, Martyr's Day. It is a huge Christian holiday to honor the lives of the first Christian martyr's in Uganda. The first Christian missionaries came to Uganda in the early/mid 1800's. Before then, the country was primarily Islamic. In the 1880's when King Mwenda became the Kabaka (king), he feared that all of his subjects who were converting to Christianity would start respecting Christ more than the him as the king. In 1886, he marched 25 of his pages 37 miles in chains to Namagongo where they were martyred. He burned them from their feet up so that they could deny Christ before the fire consumed them and their lives would be spared, but they stood strong in the faith. None of them denied Christ. It reminded me of Abinadi and Joseph Smith. Are we willing to stand up for what we believe in no matter what the circumstances are. Even though I'm not a Catholic or Anglican, it was a very spiritual experience to be a part of this holiday. Hundreds of thousands of people walked for miles to get to this site to honor the martyrs who died for Christ. It is a tradition that you "foot" (walk) there no matter how far away you live, so some people walked all the way from Kenya and Tanzania. They consider it a pilgrimage like the Muslim Hajj to Mecca. I was hoping that we would walk at least part of the way there, but our driver decided it would be safer to just drop us off there. I guess that was smart. I have never seen so many people in one place at one time. It was truly inspiring to see so many people together worshiping Christ and their anscestors.