A weekend of weddings part 2: The girls

Here in part 2 I will share some of the photo's from our neighbours wedding (or at least from the women's part of it. The men and women are separate for the majority of the wedding until the groom comes to collect his bride).

We were told to arrive at 10 am, so we headed over just after 11 (we've been here a year and a half now, we're not falling for that one any more!!). When we arrived there were many women sitting around on mats talking and doing what women do :) This was how we spent the majority of our time - sitting and waiting.

Then a group of guys started to chant/sing and bang around on drums. In some of the songs there was a kind of call and response thing going on, but there's no way we were able to join in. For one thing we had no idea when to respond and for another it was mostly done in Arabic. Then there was a time for the women to get up and dance or, in this case, bob from foot to foot in time with the beat.

While all the women are outside, the bride is in a bedroom inside the house, where she remains for the entire time. She appears to have no part in the ceremony (other than getting dressed and waiting for her groom) but she does have a major photo session with every female friend and relative sitting next to her on the bed. Here is the bride with her mother.

Although, in general, most people scowl for their wedding photo's here, this bride seemed pretty smiley and was even persuaded to pose for the camera!
After the chanting and singing ended, there was a bit more sitting around and waiting while the groom's party arrived and then we all got to eat pilau from big shared platters with our right hands. This is actually quite an art but I have yet to master it and most of the women at our platter were laughing at my incompetence and how much I dropped. The idea is to take some and squish it in your hand so that it sticks together in a lump and you can put it in your mouth. It was pretty hot though so after attempting to squish it a bit and burning my hands I would try and tip it in my mouth dropping half of it into my skirt... oh well.

We all then headed home to pumzika kidogo (rest a little) and change into our party clothes for the evening event - the disco! More dancing, but this time real hip swinging and arm waving kind of dancing (you know, the kind that most wazungu are just incapable of!).

All in all, it was great fun and a brilliant opportunity to hang out with our neighbours and figure out who's who.

The whole shebang was completed with chai (tea) on the Sunday evening. It is perhaps the one event we have been to that starts on time and everyone was actually there for. We were very surprised until we saw what happened next. We all went in and sat down next to a BIG plate of food which was laid out on sheets of newspaper with bottles of water, juice and cups for the chai. We waited a short time for the bwana na bibi harusi (groom and bride of the wedding) to come and take their places. Once they had done so, everyone started to empty their plates (at some speed I must say) until the bibi harusi decided she had had enough and then we were all told to stop eating. At this point everyone took the newspaper out from under their plates, wrapped up their plates with the leftover food and headed off home again! This is why everyone was on time; If you get there late, you totally miss all the goodies!

A weekend of weddings part 1: The boys

At the end of March, we found ourselves invited to two weddings on the same day. One was for the daughter of a neighbour that I have been getting to know, and the other was for one of the workers who has been building our vocational training centre and workshop.

In order to try and keep everyone happy we decided to divide and conquer, so Rich went to the workers wedding and I went to our neighbours wedding. Here are some of the photo's from Rich's day.

Rich and Hans ended up being part of the official wedding party, which involved arriving early and sitting and waiting for several hours for something to happen. They got to wear their new Kanzu's (long white-ish gowns) and Kofia's (hat) though!

It also meant that Hans got to wear a funny jacket thing and have a tea towel wrapped around his kofia.

There's always dancing to celebrate the wedding and it happens throughout the day - they don't just save it for the barn dance at the end!! I love that the old guy with the walking stick is still able to strutt his stuff right in the middle of all the women!
Here the groom's party have arrived at the brides house where the ceremony took place. This will often happen at the Mosque, but we are learning that there are many ways of doing things here and no two weddings that we have been to have been the same. Apparently at this point there was a formal agreement between the groom and the father of the bride about dowry and other such matters.

The guy in the front of the picture with the clipboard is writing out the marriage certificate and we think is some kind of official. Again it's sometimes difficult to know who is doing what and what exactly is going on! We try to ask and we are learning new things all the time but as I said, each occasion is different and it's hard for us wazungu (white folks) to figure it out all the time!
Look out for part 2: The girls, coming soon!

It's a hard life (for Rich)

Nurse Rich

All medical professional's look away now.

Yesterday our team leader became ill and when we turned up for our regular Friday morning team meeting he was sitting on a chair with a drip following what appeared to be a nasty case of D&V.

At the end of the meeting as I was preparing to leave, it transpired that our team leader had asked (yes asked) Rich, under his guidance to put him on another drip. To my horror this is what then proceeded to happen. Here are the pictures of the event as I thought it would be one of those times you remember as being 'Only In Africa!'

Be afraid!!!

Rich's latest achievement

On a recent trip to the mainland we visited a 'wet 'n' wild' water park. In many respects it looked much like any other water park, anywhere else in the world, but in a few crucial ways it was very different. For example, our friends noticed an electric power cable draped across one of the children's slides so that any child would slide neck first in to the cable.

Also, and more to Rich's approval, was the complete lack of any kind of rules or safety procedure. Any one could go down (and in some cases up) any slide regardless of age or height so it seemed, and when going down the slides, one was able to be quite creative as the video clip shows.

A bee in my bonnet.

I have a bee in my bonnet. When we learnt that elections at home had finally been announced we, as responsible British citizens, started to look into getting our overseas vote sorted. Sounds easy enough.

We need to down load a certain form, fill it out and post it off. We will then receive our postal vote form which we can then return. Like I said, it all sounds simple enough until you begin to factor in the amount of time post takes between this little island and the slightly larger one we call home. The minimum time this process is likely to take is three weeks assuming that all received post is acted on and responded to immediately.

Having been away earlier in the month, just after the announcement of the elections, my task for the day was to get to grips with the process and get our forms in the post the same day. Sadly, due to the need for our signature to be on the forms it is not possible to e-mail the forms which would speed the whole process up hugely.

First problem, we have no printer here. I was about to e-mail our team leader, who does have a printer, but he is on holiday with his family. Thankfully our American team mates have a printer and happily printed out the form and we went round to collect it and head down to the posta (post office) to get them straight in the mail.

Second problem, the voter registration form requires a witness to confirm that we are who we say we are. We can't vouch for each other, but the witness must be a British citizen which leads us to the third problem. We don't know any other British citizens here. Lots of German's, italians, some Americans and Tanzanian's but no British. So what next?

Perhaps, if we were being really responsible, we should have organised this months ago or as soon as we left the UK. To be honest we thought that someone from an embassy or something would contact us as we had to inform them where we were and we were used to being tracked down when at home in the UK. But now we are running out of time and although I suspect we have done more already than most in the UK with respect to our vote, it is looking like we won't get to participate in next months general election.

Rich tells me I have a bee in my bonnet about this, but it does feel like the sort of thing we come across in our current place of residence rather than the sort of thing we expect from the democratic process in our home country! I have not given up however and will persevere!

Crazy Wazungu.

A small crowd gathered opposite our school on an evening a week or so ago to see what the crazy wazungu were up to this time...

Rich and Jason set up a data projector on the roof of the school in order to project and then trace our school's funky logo and slightly less funky, but very practical, name.

A couple of days later, when there was a break in the rain, Rich returned to paint the logo before the rain completely washed away the out line (getting sunstroke in the process). We all agree that it looks fab and are excited about the months ahead as we gradually get up and running with classes and working on cars.