8 am Saturday morning:
Get dressed in your warrior gear included fringed kanga, beaded necklaces and bracelets, headdress (not forgetting the feathers), red ocher painted on hair and face, and panga.
4 pm Saturday afternoon:
Paint and load up the groom's camels with all his possessions and pieces of construction materials to build his new house in the bride's goob. (The new husband will live with the clan of the wife for a period of time until the elders decide the couple should move back to the clan of the husband. For example, in this wedding, a man from Dubsahi moved from Dubsahi to his bride's clan of Salle.)
(A sail boat in the desert.)
4:45 pm Saturday afternoon:
The groom moves out with the camels and his family to begin walking to the bride's goob. The Abbas yell out instructions and tell the women to get moving while the Mommas follow behind singing the wedding chant, all the while with their ceremonial bell belts jingling around their waists.
The rest of Saturday afternoon:
Arrive at the bride's goob, make chai, and hang out with your buddies.
7 pm Saturday evening:
Start getting everyone together to begin the various wedding ceremonies.
8 pm Saturday evening:
The warriors of the groom's clan, only those of the wedding party or relations, gather in a large min in the goob of the bride. They begin chanting a special wedding chant and call the bride and all unmarried girls from her clan into the min in order to paint them with red ocher. Two at a time, beginning with the bride and her relations, the girls come in and have their irtiyyo (large beaded necklaces) painted with the animal fat and red ocher mixture. Say it's gross, but I think this actually smells quite nice.
8:30/9 pm Saturday evening:
The rest of the warriors and the ladies who have already been painted begin dancing. Traditional dances include much head bobbing and circular skipping. One warrior even attaches a small blinking Christmas light to his headdress, which adds to the general merriment of the party.
9:30/10 pm on Saturday evening:
The bride is called to slaughter a sheep at the entrance to her parent's house. This action is meant to symbolize her ability to take care of her husband. Immediately after the slaughter the bride will enter the min with her mother, cook and eat the sheep with the other women of their goob, and not exit the hut until the next day.
The rest of Saturday evening:
Warriors and ladies dance the night away.
6 am Sunday morning:
Chanting by the women of both clans and more sacrifices are supposed to take place, but someone has misplaced the warriors. They fell asleep somewhere after staying up all night, and no one can find them. As a result everyone kind of just sits around waiting for things to get moving.
7:30 am Sunday morning:
The warriors grace us with their presence and the ceremonies can finally begin. The Mommas on the groom's side begin the same chant from the previous day, recounting the virtues of the groom to his soon-to-be-wife.
(Watching the Mommas chant)8 am Sunday morning:
A goat is slaughtered over a hole where the tirrim, "king post," of the couple's new min is to be built. The small bloody well is covered with stones to protect it from being walked over.
8:30 am Sunday morning:
Various other slaughters occur, and for the more wealthy family, even a young camel is killed. The chanting of the Mommas continues. A young goat is also tied behind the min of the bride as a gift for her mother. Once the goat is presented to the mother-of-the-bride, the elders will give the groom and his new M.O.B. new names to address each other by.
(Goat gift.)9 am Sunday morning:
While the elders pray for the new couple (repeating something that sounds like, "Amen" over and over), some men make chai to feed the warriors for the rest of the day, and the Mommas continue to cater to the bride, who is still hiding in her parent's min. There is also more dancing! The style differs from the night before, however, and now the warriors take turns strutting out in front of the others, doing a sort of catwalk dance with hops thrown in.
(Warriors chanting: not actual words but sounds that, according to our students, "make us happy.")
(Line of hopping warriors stretching out to the left of the above group of warriors.)9:30 am Sunday morning:
There are actually 2 weddings going on this morning, so we wander next door to another Saale village to see the marriage of the elder brother of Baicha, one of our Form 2 students. White people are good as wedding photographers, so we get set up for family photos of the Amiyos, which really, I don't mind at all.
(John Baicha on the right with his newly-wed brother.)
(Adding the Best Man in on the left with some sort of traditional skin bag.)10 am Sunday morning:
Even MORE dancing! This time, all the warriors and unmarried girls join in, and massive mosh pit in formed with snaking Conga lines going around and around the center of the goob. Bells clinking, beads and feathers bobbing, feet skipping, and the celebration continues for the rest of the day.
(Jr. High dance: the girls on the left and the boys on the right.)
(Conga Line!)
(Notice the line formation and how the girls hold the hands of the warriors and stand outside of the line.)
(Best Man on the left, me, then John Baicha and his brother - interestingly wearing a white kanga as part of tradition)
I wish America had that much dancing at weddings!
ReplyDeleteWhen does the bride come out of hiding? I'd be interested to know what courtship and proposals are like as well :)
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