Martyrs Day

Yesterday was martyrs day, a national holiday here in Uganda. The holiday was made to commemorate 25 Christian pages who were martyred because they refused to renounce their faith. Christianity was a new faith in Uganda at the time and the King was threatened by it. He was worried that the Christians would revere their God more than they revered him and so he decided the religion needed to be eradicated all together. The young men who were martyred were forced to walk 18 miles with their ankles and necks in shackles until they arrived at the place where the king regularly performed executions. There they were beaten nearly to death over the course of a week. After all that they were rolled up and bound in dry leaves and papyrus and layed in a circle (kind of like the way you lay down logs when you are going to start a bon fire. They started them on fire from the feet up in hopes that the pain would cause them to renounce their faith before it killed them. Instead of rescinding their faith however; the young man laid there singing praises to their Lord until their last breath.



On Martyrs day (and in the weeks leading up to it) Christians walk from all over Uganda as well as Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda to Namugongo, the place where the martyrs where killed. Lucky for us the village is just a couple of hours drive from where we are staying. We all thought it would be really neat to travel with the pilgrims and see what the experience was all about. When we arrived at the site we were surrounded by millions and millions of people who had come to pay their respects. I'm not going to lie, it was kind of crazy but at the same time it was a very spiritual experience. They have two memorials set up for the dead. One is a huge church where the Catholics go and the other is where the men where actually burned and burried. That one is run by the protestant religions. Both groups believe that the men who were killed died for their specific religion.

It was very sobering to see what early Christians went through to establish their faith here in Uganda. Now it is the most popular religion in the country.