Saturday, 5 July, was the culmination of a fairly long period of days when I did things that are worth blogging about. The week or so since has largely been occupied by research work and other non-exploring projects. I could write a post for every one of those days—there are actually a number of non-time-pegged topics I have been wanting to talk about. Given that I am nine days behind, though, I will probably catch myself up with a summary post.
Anyway, I have not yet posted about that last day, 5 July. It was the wedding of my host-mother’s younger brother. This was not my first Rwandan wedding—a Rwandan-American friend got married while I was here last year (and I wrote about it here and here). I was interested to see another one, though, and see what, if anything, was different.
I had been noticing over the previous few days that my host-mother was in the house a lot less, and on the phone a lot more, in what she explained was a fit of organizing. The amount of work that goes into planning a wedding is mind-boggling to anyone who hasn’t done it (including me), and I think the general scale is similar between Rwandan weddings and the ones I am used to back home.¹
A traditional Rwandan wedding takes place in a number of stages, with a number of different ceremonies. The first few are rather public, at least in the sense that a lot of people are expected to attend, whereas the others are smaller-scale and take place afterward. The previous wedding I went to split the crowd-pleasing events between two Saturdays, both of which were pretty involved affairs. This one was operating on a tighter budget, and therefore fit both into one day (which was actually fine).
The first ceremony is a ceremonial negotiation of dowry and bride-price between the families of the bride and groom. Similar to what I remember from last year, it was a fascinating mixture of intense tradition and unashamed modernity. The fathers of the betrothed engaged in a witty, ad-libbed back-and-forth in which they used all sorts of archaic vocabulary referring to the marriage and the exchange of gifts, which in olden days would often have included cows; what they actually exchanged, at least on the spot, were nice bottles of whiskey, and when they made reference to cows they were backed up by a pre-recorded moo-ing sound played from a speaker.
At one point, the groom and his siblings (or some group that was kind of equivalent to best men) came in, wearing wonderful traditional robes over their button-down shirts, and holding some pretty cool canes (pictured). These quite traditional canes were presented to a few people who might have been uncles of the betrothed—I kind of didn’t know what was going on—along with some very non-traditional-looking plastic cowboy hats! I don’t know what was going on with those, as they looked kind of silly, but I think I remember them from last year too.
These rituals and conversations were interspersed with dance performances, songs and recitations, and food. (It was pretty good food.) Then, the event shifted to a church, for the actual marriage to happen, and then to a small auditorium-like venue, where the couple processed in and then sat on a big platform while friends and family sang their praises and presented them with gifts. (I would have been miserable after about five minutes of it, and even these two looked like they were getting worn down toward the end.) Then there was more discussion between the fathers, this time not negotiation but rather giving advice to the newlyweds and promising continuing friendship between the two families.
Then we went to another place—the home of the groom, maybe—where there was more discussion between the fathers while a dwindling but still substantial group looked on. (They started with a bit more than 200 guests, and by 9:00 p.m. they were down to about 60 or 70.) I didn’t at all get the point of this portion of it, because as far as I could understand, they were saying the same things they had said already, if in slightly different words. (I felt like I could understand about two-thirds of what was happening.)
I should also add at this juncture that we were fed a very fulfilling meal at about 12:30 or 1:00 p.m., and everyone a little muffin at about 5:00 p.m., but that was it as far as food. The ceremonies continued on late into the night, and no one seemed to be complaining, which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that Rwandans have stomachs made of iron.
We had to hang around because my host-mother was so involved in everything, but by popular demand we did skip out at about 10:30 p.m., with the ceremonies still going strong! (I usually don’t like to express an opinion about these things, but I was bored and tired and hungry enough by that point that I was O.K. if they at least knew I was hungry! Also, I didn’t have to do any convincing of my host-mother to leave, as her mother-in-law conveniently stepped in to cover that part.)
A discussion I had a week later with my host-mother shed some light on a few things. First, as she put it, “Rwandan weddings never end.” Those ceremonies were the crowd-pleasers, but there is a laundry-list of subsequent rituals that everyone is invited to but almost know one attends. For example, each set of parents makes a customary visit to the home of the newlyweds, and I think there are visits in the other direction too, and then other things—the consequence of which is that the wedding is still going a month later.
Maybe there’s a nice parallel here, actually: just as the wedding never ends, so you hope that the marriage never will either.
I was also interested to hear about poor people’s weddings: the two I have seen were both quite expensive affairs, with live food, big venues, lots of decorations, lots of food and lots of guests. Though neither of the families at this wedding was really rich, they did have resources by Kigali standards. And economic growth notwithstanding, there are a lot of Rwandans who, by any standards, do not have resources—but nevertheless do get married!
The answer was pretty sensible: They would find ways of cutting costs, by having ceremonies in living rooms or backyards instead of renting venues; making decorations rather than buying; providing cheaper food, if any; not hiring dancers or M.C.’s. What was interesting to know was that the core parts of the ceremonies, that is the really important parts that any wedding really should have, are not that expensive. So even a poor couple would go through the full roster of ceremonies, though the setting would certainly be very different.
The conversation shifted to how weddings had changed in recent years, and how certain traditions were weakening. It’s a familiar narrative of modernization infringing on tradition, and positive development having some unintended, questionable side-effects. The topic got pretty broad pretty quickly and I can’t do it justice here, but I was kind of struck by how similar this story sounded to what Americans say about globalization and modern times loosening our hold on tradition and taking away the magic of childhood and all that. After a day of seeing a completely foreign culture put magnificently on display, it is really interesting to hear that its traditions seem to face many of the same challenges that ours do.
¹ It’s actually kind of funny to say “the ones I am used to,” because I can only think of three weddings I have been to in the U.S.—as compared to two in Rwanda!
No comments:
Post a Comment