The Wedding

Hello Everyone,

So, this past weekend, one of my host-brothers, who doesn't actually live with us because he is older got married. I was able to go to this wedding, and will have much pictures and video to share with you when I get back... but until then, I will just tell you a bit about it.

Needless to say, weddings in Africa are just totally different from any American wedding. The wedding was supposed to start at 1PM, so we left the house at 12PM knowing that we wouldn't get there on time. No worries, weddings never start on time here, along with every other function. We have learned about time being centered around the event in Africa, and this was definitely a prime example. Basically the bride and groom just show up whenever they want to for the wedding, more the bride than the groom. I honestly don't understand why anyone would want to be late to their own wedding, but here that doesn't seem to matter...

Sooo... when we got to the wedding at 2PM because the traffic was bad, we were totally OK... nothing had started yet, the choir was just busy entertaining everyone.. and the sound man was busy trying to destroy all of our hearing(side note the only thing sound men know here is loud and louder, quality of the sound doesn't matter, just as long as it's loud, seriously... ) So, we sat and listened to the choir for a while until the Bride finally decided to show up at 3PM.... 2 hours after the supposed start time... The pastor was a bit peeved, which was a bit surprising, as he was hoping to be already heading to the reception by that time. The wedding finally started and parts of it were very similar to an American wedding, with the vows and such... it was just that they had so many of them. It seemed that they said the same thing 3 times, but again, repetition is the spice of life here. So, finally they were married, and we all had to go and congratulate them, and then they walked out of the church... very slowly, and took pictures... During this time we took off for the reception to wait for them. I had told our drive that we had that we would probably be done 6:30, however we didn't get to the reception till 6PM, so that was out the window.

Anyways... we waited for a while at the reception, they brought us Pop to drink, and the DJ's came and set up way too many large speakers for a small room. It is very interesting how they set up the reception. The wedding party is in the middle then on opposite sides they put the families of both the bride and the groom, kind of like a face-off of sorts... The direct families of the bride and the groom get to sit at a table on either side, so since I'm part of the family, I was there. They also have someone videotaping the entire wedding and taking pictures, so because I was at the front, I feel like I am going to be in a lot of photos and video of this wedding reception... hope they don't mind :) They videotaped us doing pretty much everything, sitting, drinking, eating, talking, pretty much everything.

Finally, the bride and groom showed up, and we all had to get up and get excited for them even though we were all super tired. My dad told me it would probably take them 5 minutes to walk from the door to the table.... and he was right. Everything that happens at the reception is done through dancing or super slow walking, there is nothing that is done with just plain walking... Once everything got started, there were like 8 different speakers they had planned to give words of encouragement to the bride and groom, which also took forever. My dad had to speak, which he wasn't even ready for, so he just made some stuff up and didn't talk very long, which was good. The emcee kept asking the DJ for "a very good number" and the DJ kept failing, which brought some humor to the night, but I feel like I was the only one who was laughing... at one point the emcee said "DJ, I have no idea what you are doing, I want a good number..."

They eventually served us food..and a lot of it.. .which was good, because we were hungry... Interestingly, they served the cake first, and the bride and groom go around and give a small piece to everyone at the reception, so you can imagine how long that took... The cake had 12 different parts, but we only ate a few of them... the rest were handed out as gifts to families and special guests....

Eventually, it was like 9PM, when we had planned to leave at 6:30 and we finally left. I was really tired, and slept part of the way home, but the traffic was thick and all the diesel smell made it hard to breathe, but somehow I slept... unintentionally.

One thing that I was particularly confused by was the seeming lack of excitement by family about the wedding... In the U.S. a family would not even think about missing a wedding, but half of my family couldn't even go because of transportation issues, and it didn't seem to bother them that much... Plus, at the wedding my family didn't seem all that excited, which I was also confused by, but maybe they just hide it well. All-in-all, it was an interesting experience and I definitely learned a lot, just not sure how to understand it all right now...

Well, I guess it's time for me to go home...
Hope all is well...

Justin