Danielle and Michael Kyaligonza (pronounced cha-lee-gonza) really know the meaning of long-distance relationships – emphasis on the distance. Dani and Michael first laid eyes on each other in Feb 2020 and have been madly in love ever since. From Jinja, Uganda to Cheshire, England, the pair have navigated endless hiccups, barriers and big fat holes in the road to their happily ever after. With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, I sat down with them for a cuppa to talk about first dates, visas and how much distance a relationship really can take.
Come on then, how did it all start?
DK: Well, it depends on whose version. I first saw him at a café I used to go to for lunch all the time. He was queuing for the toilet and he smiled at me and – it’s so cringe but I was a goner.
MK: It’s different for me because it wasn’t the first time I’d seen her. I think I’d seen her maybe twenty times before that.
DK: Stalker.
MK: No! It was just that Dani used the same route that I did for my daily cycles around Jinja.
DK: Doesn’t it sound stalkerish? If I was dead now, this would be a different story.
MK: I used to go there in the evenings and that was the time she used to leave work. I realised it was the same lady that had lunch every day in the café where I had my shop.
DK: I was in my work uniform, dusty, sweaty and greasy – you know, the one. He followed the charity’s Instagram page and I did the socials for that charity so I followed him back and that’s how we got talking.
Who slid into whose DMs?
DK: We’ve actually had to prove it - the visa needed us to prove the relationship - so I went back through the messages to send to them, and I have proof that he slid into mine. And that was it!
Dani and Michael went out for dinner – not before Dani went to see him play with his band…
DK: We went to a band night for my friend’s birthday and didn’t know that he was in the band…he was awful!
MK: She didn’t tell me she was coming! I was so nervous, I wasn’t prepared. I forgot the lyrics and I went flat, I thought I’d messed everything up. So, I gave it one last attempt and asked her to come and sit with me after.
DK: He text me.
MK: You were with FIVE other people!
The two of them went on their first date – Dani playfully taunts him for his choice of outfit and Michael explains that he’d never been on a first date before so he didn’t know what to wear. It was the 15th Feb 2020 and they spent every day together until…you know what’s coming.
DK: We had been together for four weeks when I lost my job because of Covid. I had two weeks to decide whether I would stay in Uganda or move home. I would have come back, had no job, lived with my mum and step-dad (they’re lovely but I didn’t want to do that) and my relationship would be over, Uganda done. So, I stayed. We figured – like everyone did – it was just a few months. Michael supported me financially and we’d only been together a couple of months.
MK: I could still work so I went to my studio every day because I was working alone.
DK: Once I could, I retrained as a teacher and taught out there for a while but we decided that, if I was going to be a teacher long-term, I needed to get my PGCE back in the UK. It was a really tough decision and when I got my place to study, we went out to celebrate but it was also a really sad night because it meant I was leaving for a year.
By the time Dani left in June 2021, the couple had been together for a year and a half. They had no idea just how difficult the next few years were going to be.
DK: We applied for a tourist visa for Michael to come and visit in the UK and it was the hardest thing we’ve ever done. We needed 86 pieces of evidence. We had to prove that the ties in Uganda were strong enough and that Michael wouldn’t abscond when he was here and stay in the UK illegally. It’s an incredibly intrusive process – they wanted to verify our relationship so we had to send photos, letters from Michael’s landlord, church and band, and affidavits from people to say that they knew us both and that our relationship was genuine. We were collating this evidence thousands of miles apart and there was no guarantee that he would get it, either. It took us about six weeks to get everything together. It was so stressful. Yes, we needed 86 pieces of evidence, but we could only upload five documents and each one couldn’t exceed a certain size.
MK: I took my passport to the embassy and just had to wait. We got an email to say it was taking longer to process because of Covid and then we got an email to say it was in South Africa but otherwise we heard nothing.
DK: I started to think the chances of him being here for Christmas were depleting. We’d heard horror stories of people not getting them and the information you get just isn’t helpful. We were lucky because we knew people who’d been through and asked them for help.
How do you keep your relationship alive during something like that?
MK: I was struggling. I had gone from being single to a long-distance relationship – I had never done that before. I was very bad at communication, but we did speak every day.
DK: It was tough because the time difference made it so that when I was getting home from work, Michael was going to bed. We did video call at least once a day. I don’t remember it being that hard. I remember there were days when I really missed you and it was very frustrating but more because we didn’t know whenwe’d see each other.
Dani was now locked into her teacher training year and would be in the UK for at least 12 months. A course that is somewhat renown for being a difficult and stressful year.
MK: I got an email to say the passport was ready for collection. I just had to turn up and see if there was a visa sticker in it or not. I was so nervous on the way to pick it up.
DK: I hadn’t slept and felt so sick that morning. I think I was in work by 7am because I couldn’t focus on anything else. Everyone at work knew what was going on. Thankfully he was going first thing in the morning.
MK: We knew that it wouldn’t be the end of us. We had prepared ourselves for there being no visa and we would have just tried again. The only thing that made me think I might have it was that a lady in front of me didn’t and she was told that she should have had an email to explain why – I didn’t have that email.
I went outside to open it and there it was.
DK: He text me and said he had it and that was it! He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t answer my calls – I didn’t know if he meant he just had the passport or if he had the visa. When he finally called me back, I just said ‘SHOW ME’ – I needed to see it. Once I’d seen it, I just cried…and then I had form time!
I shared what was going on with my form group. I’ve always been really open at work and it’s not something I could have hidden anyway but also, I thought it was a great learning opportunity for my students because how many of them would know about that? And all they hear is the dangerous rhetoric about these people that come here etc. but it’s actually really hard to come here.
Hypothetically then, you could have been applying with your sister and you got it, but she didn’t?
MK: Yeah, it’s so subjective and a lot comes down to luck – if the person issuing the visa is having a bad day, then you might not get it. I have friends that were applying for visas to study in Germany and one got it but the other one didn’t. I prayed a lot, too.
DK: I felt like it was a sign, you know? Michael getting that visa told me that it really was meant to be.
Christmas 2021 was the first time Michael had been to the UK. It was the first time he’d met Dani’s friends and family, and it was also the time he proposed. There were challenges along the way for that, too. Michael struggled to get time alone with Dani’s family to ask for their blessing and for her Great Aunt’s ring that Dani had managed to persuade her mum to give them. Michael wanted this all to be a surprise for Dani and put a lot of thought into it whilst trying to keep it a secret – making the whole thing 100x harder. After a hushed conversation one morning, he had the ring and proposed in Edinburgh in the same restaurant Dani’s mum had gotten engaged in. Dani calls it ‘a series of unfortunate events’ that led up to the proposal, making it not quite the blissful story most people tell, but Michael says he wouldn’t change a thing. They both hold the thoughtfulness and sentiment of it very dear but if they were to do it again, Dani might have a few tweaks she’d make…
So, engaged Christmas 2021. When did you see each other next?
MK: My visa was luckily a multiple-entry visa, so I was able to come back quite easily at Easter.
DK: This was much more relaxed, but we did have to do a lot of wedding planning. We got the suits, the dress, the bridesmaid dresses, and the rings. Originally, we were going to get married in December 2022, but we decided that summer would be better time wise – I’d be able to spend longer in Uganda and there was more chance that my family and friends would be able to come. We didn’t want to wait until Summer 2023, so we moved it forward to summer 2022.
But it wasn’t just one wedding, was it?
DK: Ha! Nope. We had three. For people who want to get married more than once, I say don’t do it.
MK: Well, they might want to, we just have warnings for them.
DK: The first one was the legal wedding in the town hall in Jijna – that was pretty easy. Our second wedding was our proper wedding and that was in Uganda. We planned that apart – Michael actually did most of the work while I was in the UK. I’d always wanted a traditional English wedding but that wasn’t going to happen, so I wasn’t really fussed on themes or visions – I think that made it harder.
Michael, were your family upset that it wasn’t a traditional Ugandan wedding?
MK: Not really. Western weddings are much more common now. And let me tell you, a Ugandan wedding would have been way more stressful and way more expensive.
DK: We still had 250 people.
MK: That’s a small wedding!
DK: Then our third wedding was in the UK last year, 2023. It would have been lovely but came at a bad time our family. It was really stressful and borderline traumatic – I still haven’t posted any pictures - I’m still processing a lot of it. It’s a shame because it would have been really lovely to celebrate with UK family and friends and some Ugandan family and friends that had made it across – so many people made an effort to make it special and it felt a bit more like a wedding, for me, because of the church.
Unfortunately, my granddad passed away two days later which was really tough. We’d spent the whole week in hospital leading up to it and then spent the following two days in hospital, saying our goodbyes.
So, between your engagement and your wedding, you saw each other for a month?
DK: Yep! I guess actually, in two years of our relationship from June ’21 to April ‘23, we only spent four months together. We only spent one week together after the wedding before I had to leave. And we still haven’t had a honeymoon!
How do you navigate that? Just four months together in two years.
DK: It’s intense. You have to be sure. So much time, energy and money go into it. A normal relationship after two years wouldn’t be making these decisions necessarily. Planning a wedding is incredibly stressful so that alone was challenging. Add in the distance, the visas, teacher training and family bereavements…it’s been hard.
Dani and Michael had to then start their marriage visa application which took another two months to come through – after waiting the initial six month to hit the income threshold. Michael finally landed in the UK in April 2023 to start their new life together.
What’s next for you two?
MK: My current visa is two years nine months, then the next one will be two years six months and then after five years I can apply for leave to remain and then for residency.
DK: We’re looking at five years here at least before we can go back. It’s hard but the dual citizenship will make future travel so much easier. We’re going to Belgium soon and we’ve got a wallet full of paperwork for Michael’s visa. The flights were £35 but the visa has cost £120 so far!
We’re still navigating two people who have lived on their own for so long now living together in a country that they don’t necessarily want to be in. Michael has obviously moved his entire life over here. We just want to have a year of fun stuff. We’re trying to do 30 countries before we turn 30 which is later this year. We’ve got six to go and three of those already booked in – Belgium, Kenya and Ireland so fingers crossed!
Micheal is a designer by trade and hopes to expand his Ugandan business to the UK. Follow his company here @akiikiafrica
The final three on Tea with G
A Teacher who has inspired you:
DK – I have two. Mr Hogg – I’m a teacher now and a lot of that is down to him. He was our Head of Year and he was a bit of a father figure to us all. Dr Kay was our RE teacher and he organised our south Africa trip. If it wasn’t for that trip my life would have taken a whole different trajectory – I certainly wouldn’t be married to a man from Uganda.
MK: Most of the time when I talk about this person, it’s about what he did wrong. He was the headteacher (he suspended me for a month for eating food from the staffroom). He was the one person that believed in me. I recorded some songs for the college at the time and he paid for it all. He endorsed me to be a prefect at school. When I passed my exams – third best in the year for A Levels – it came as a surprise to some of them but to him it didn’t. He should have expelled me, but he fought for me.
A book that you love:
DK: Great Gatsby – cliché as I’m an English teacher and it’s a book that needs to be studied. The film is a good piece of cinematography, but the book is so much better. Sapiens changed me – I’ve never been into non-fiction but every five seconds I was like omg Michael did you know this, did you know this?!
MK: I wouldn’t say I have a favourite book the way Dani says about her books. We grew up with spoken story telling not books. For me, there is one book I was forced to read and has made an impact on my life and it is the only book I have ever owned and probably will ever own. It’s the bible. I got the bible when I was six and read about creation and had so many questions – I still have so many questions.
We’re taught to accept this book but I try to open up my mind and some of it doesn’t make sense to me but there are some really helpful scriptures that would help someone’s life and have really helped me.
Your favourite song:
MK: I love music but if I listen to a song today, I will listen to it on repeat for as long as I can until I don’t want to listen to it anymore. Apart from horses in the sky. It’s by my friend Maurice Kirya.
DK: You’re still the one by Shania Twain - it’s our wedding song. He sang it with the band when we first started dating and the lyrics mean a lot to us.
Whilst this is a successful – albeit stressful – story for Dani and Michael, there are so many others for whom this story is much worse. New requirements, rules and thresholds mean that it could be so much harder for others, especially families with children.
On 4th December 2023, James Cleverly announced his ‘five-point plan’ to reduce immigration into the UK, including new thresholds for income to support your family and surcharges for things like healthcare.
You can read more about it here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9920/
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