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!