A Wedding Story

Some people say that “most unique” is an illogical phrase, because uniqueness can’t be quantified. I respectfully disagree. I think that if you’ve done something that very few people have done, like climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro or been eaten by a shark, then you’ve achieved a higher level than someone whose uniqueness comes from having cross eyed or using words like “serendipitous”.

I think my unique-ity shot up about 4000% this weekend, because I attended every minute of a traditional Gambian wedding. How many people have done that?

Throughout the proceedings, I was mostly thinking about how to accurately contain all of the cultural anomalies in one blog post. I carried a notebook and wrote down anything that my previous All-American self would be shocked at. It came to a mighty list, which I will try to categorize and organize in a logical way.

Background: A friend of mine in village, Mariama, is getting married. She has been promised to this man for a while, but he lives in Switzerland and has just returned. Lamin, Mariama’s now husband, lives in a village about a 45 minute drive away from where Mariama’s family lives in Nyakoi.

Marriage in the Gambia, as in many Muslim countries, is a status symbol. A man also gets married so that his wife can take care of his mother – cook and clean and wash for her and the rest of the compound – and to have children - so those children will eventually cook and clean and wash for his compound when he’s old.

SO – even though he lives in Switzerland and has two wives already, Lamin called on Mariama to marry him, to move away from her family and friends, and to work and live in his mother’s compound in Jah Kunda.

You probably don’t need me to, but let’s put this in an American context: Bill, from Philadelphia, wants to marry Sharon, from Denver. God knows Bill doesn’t want to stay and live in Philadelphia, where he grew up, so he moves to sunny Orlando, Florida. Sharon has no choice but to agree to marry Bill, and moves into a house with his mother in Philadelphia, despite never wanting to leave Denver. She sees Bill once every five years or so.

Night 1:

So lungtangoes (strangers) start arriving on Wednesday evening, because the events start on Wednesday night. There’s no time schedule for anything, so everybody pretty much just sits around and waits for someone to tell them to go somewhere, do something, or eat. I’m sitting talking with a few students who speak English, and they’re asking me questions about America.

We’ve already established that I don’t know Michael Jackson or Rambo. One girl asks, “Do you know chalk?” I asked her to repeat, and then said, yes, we have chalk in America. I went and got a piece and she said, “No, CHALK”. It took a while, but I finally got it when she said, “Chalk Noss”. I told her, unfortunately I have not yet had the opportunity to meet the man who caused Waldo to hide, the man who holds air hostage instead of breathing, the man who can win Connect Four in three moves: Chuck Norris.

My Gambian friends were very disappointed when I laughed for an hour, and divulged that I didn’t know Chalk. They were also shocked that I hadn’t met Van Damme, Komando (who, from what I gather, is a character played by Van Damme), or Alex (who is Komando’s twin, apparently).

For the weekend, I have chosen an English-speaking grade nine student named Maimuna who is to lead me around and tell me exactly what to do for the entire weekend. She is to tell me what to eat, when to stand, where to sleep, and what to say. I make her overly aware that if she leaves me to fend for myself, I will only sit in one location and wait for her to come and guide me.

So, we’re sitting around waiting, when finally a ghostly figure crosses in front of the compound, and everybody gets excited and runs to follow. Here comes the bride, dressed in tight pink pants, a frilly pink shirt, but who’s wrapped in a white cloth that covers her entire head.

Maimuna grabs my hand and runs to catch up. We follow and enter Mariama’s bedroom, with about 30 other girls. The bed is disassembled, which I thought was weird for a second, but then was distracted because of the white silhouette of the bride lying on her mattress on the floor, her face entirely hidden.

I had heard that night one was the night of wailing, but didn’t really know what that meant. I assumed it would be a solemn and sad affair. So I entered the room, stood in the corner, and watched people come in. I was a little offended when people were laughing and joking with Mariama lying hidden on her mattress, but didn’t think much of it.

A few minutes later, a horde of younger kids try to enter. Maimuna is flung into the role of body guard. She stands at the door, all of her weight against it, as preadolescents throw themselves at the door. Suddenly, they overpower Maimuna, and dozens of them rush into the room. I am immediately pushed up against a wall, wide eyed, afraid, and looking for guidance from Maimuna. She’s pretty busy trying to quell the flood of kids.

Now there is an uncomfortable number of people in the room, Mariama is still lying unmoving on the ground, the door has been forced closed and locked, and people are quietly looking at her.

The relative silence is SHATTERED when a woman outside the room yells something and then beats a drum three times. Every girl in that room starts screaming. And this isn’t like, “I saw a spider!” screaming… it’s like “I’m a thirteen year old girl, I’m flying down the highest drop on a roller coaster, AND Justin Beiber is performing next to me, and OH MY GOD, HE JUST TOUCHED ME!” That kind of scream. At the same time as the screams erupted, everybody started jumping flinging flailing. It was EXACTLY like the most brutal mosh pit you’ve ever been in. I found out later the bed had been disassembled because so many beds have been broken by over enthusiastic wedding attendants.

The sounds waves flattened me even further against the wall of the room – I held my ears, which left my middle unprotected. As my midsection was bashed mercilessly, I closed my eyes and tried to wake up from this nightmare. Then, I hear a new sound over the cacophony of wails. It’s the unmistakable sound of a Gambian using an object to beat another human.

I open my eyes and two of Mariama’s closest friends are wielding a wooden piece of the deconstructed bed and a sturdy piece of plastic. They have a fiery rage in their eyes, and they are BEATING these girls to get them out. Maimuna opens the door, and suddenly those being beaten are trying to flee, and I continue to be flattened to the wall.

Eventually, those that are supposed to be there are there, and those that aren’t supposed to be there are broken, bleeding and their voices are hoarse from the screaming. With the hooligans gone, the solemnity that I was expecting arrives. The older women of Mariama’s life gather around her, her friends sit near her on the bed. For some reason, I’m given a spot of honor, sitting right next to Mariama on the floor, when all I really want is to lean against a wall and observe.

Women start singing songs. I don’t know what they mean, but hear later that they’re talking about the history of Mariama’s family, and the members of her family in Nyakoi that will miss her. This starts Mariama wailing. It’s like crying, but in between each sob, there’s this high pitched note. It’s kind of how babies cry, except in an adult. So once Mariama starts, everybody is wailing. It’s not nearly as loud as the recently-finished wailing session, much more heart-wrenching, and although I’m not, in general, a wailer, I started getting a little teary eyed about how unfair it is she has to move and marry a man she doesn’t like and leave her family.

There are long silences where I just sit and stare at nothing. The atmosphere was so depressing and down, many times I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, but chickened out before I could start the first verse of “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

Eventually, the old women are like, ok. That’s enough. Let’s go party. So they all leave to go a program of dancing and singing, and Mariama and her friends continue to sit around and cry.

And that’s how night one ends.

Night 2:

Night two is when we all leave to go to Jah Kunda. But before that, it’s the most important part. It’s the actual wedding. I was excited to see what a legitimate Gambian ceremony would be like. I kept wandering from compound to compound, wondering when Lamin, the husband would arrive. I kept saying “Lamin lee? Lamin lee? A man naa foloo?” or “Where’s Lamin? Where’s Lamin? He didn’t come yet?” Finally, someone made me understand that he would not be coming. I thought my Mandinka translation was just exceptionally poor, and that of course he’d be coming for his own wedding, but I soon found that the wedding doesn’t require the man to be present.

A troupe of girls took Mariama, hidden by a veil of old cloth with palm trees on it, and walked about 0.03 mph through the village. Mariama’s mother, aunts, grandmother; none of them came. We took a long way, and I thought that surely there must be a destination, a purpose to this walking. As we’re walking, we’re singing. We finally stop at a random point and Maimuna informs me that this is the place.

It’s just dirt. There’s nothing here. But she says that this is it.

Then we continue to walk. We walk in a circle three times, and then turn and go home. I asked Maimuna why we did that, and she said, “Now she’s married.” So, for those bachelors and bachelorettes, NEVER walk in a circle three times near Gambians – you could get married. I have a loop that I jog when I go running… I wonder how many Gambians I’ve married…

On the way back, I see a whole huge group of people, STARING at me. This is like staring like I would stare at Aaron Rodgers. They have creepy smiles, and they whisper to each other, they turn so they can always keep me in their peripheral vision, like if they take their eyes off of me I might disappear. I feel very, very, very uncomfortable, and I ask Maimuna who these staring grown people are. She says they’re from Niger, and they probably had never seen a white person before. They’re gaping at me wide eyed, their kids are cowering behind legs, but never lose sight of me. Their mouths are wide open, shocked and awed, and I can see exactly what’s running through their minds and mouths, even though it’s in French or some tribal language I don’t speak – “They do exist.”

We return to Mariama’s compound. The whole trip would have taken someone strolling about ten minutes, someone running about two minutes. It took us over two hours.

Throughout the day, people bring over wedding gifts and present them to Mariama’s mother. I was trying to explain to some Gambians about American weddings, and the concept of a gift registry. If I were to make a gift registry for Mariama, here’s what it would look like.

- forty spoons
- fifty cheap plastic cups
- 15 gaudy plastic platters that have “Made in China” printed prominently over the ugly flowers
- 10 brooms
- 10 sifters
- 4 cooking pots big enough to cook a fourth grader in
- 4 cooking pots big enough to cook a baby in
- A spoon big enough to serve that cooked baby with
- 4 Spoons and stirrers over 3 feet long
- BOWLS

There were an insane number of bowls. If I had a penny for every bowl that Mariama was given, I would have almost $2. If bowls were assigned a value based on the number of pennies that they could hold, I’d probably have thousands of dollars. I was sitting there writing in my notebook about my incredulity at the number of bowls, and a ton of people gathered around – I guess it’s kind of a novelty to see people writing, especially the quick messy notes of a person trying to write down funny things before they forget. I looked up and like fifteen Gambians were watching me… I had to say something so I said, “Bolo siata!!” which means, “Lots of bowls!” Someone asked me if, when I get married, won’t I have this many bowls. I said no. Then someone asked, on that note, where is your husband. I said, “M kewo be bolobaa kono!” which means “My husband is in the big bowl!” (I think). They laughed for like an hour, so either I really messed it up, or they thought that was hilarious.

There were some more ceremonial type things. All the interested parties (except the husband) went to the alkalo’s (village leader’s) house, and the wife got advice from the alkalo and the men and women of the village. Most of the messages amounted to “Submit to your husband.” I’m no feminist, and I understand there are cultural differences, but by the end, I was pretty finished with hearing their domestic advice.

The advice was over when the car came. When I say car, I mean that it had an engine and held passengers. The thing that makes this car different is that its normal passengers are cattle, rams, sheep, or other varieties of livestock. People grab all their stuff, and start piling into the back of this cattle truck. When the car is about ¾ filled, the people in charge realize there’s no way we’re all going to fit. I’ve seen Gambian fights before, and it’s epic, so I timed the exact moments that the following events occurred.

10:14:28 – The man who seems to be in charge of the people of Jah Kunda who came for the festivities, says, hey. Guys. We can’t all fit. Everybody get out, and the people of Jah Kunda should get in. People who don’t fit can figure out their own way. The people of Nyakoi, especially the ones already on the car say, hell no. No one moves. Fighting ensues.

This man is saying, in effect, Nyakoinkolu (people of Nyakoi): Everybody move to the back of the bus. Rosa Parks, anyone? He runs around in circles, stopping at anyone who is willing to argue with him.

10:37:16 – The bride has had enough. Her family takes her to her home until this can be sorted out. Fighting continues. I stick around hoping a fist fight will break out. I also make a deal with myself. If this car has not left by midnight, I’m sleeping in my bed and will ride my bike to Jah Kunda tomorrow morning.

10:54:10 – I haven’t eaten any dinner and go eat a Clif Bar to delay death by starvation.

11:07:49 – Apparently, the people of Nyakoi won the battle, so the people of Jah Kunda get off the cattle truck, Nyakoinkolu get on. I have no idea where Jah Kunda nkolu will stay, but in Muslim communities, you are bound by Allah to take in strangers. They’ll be fine.

So, it’s time to go. I think, YES. Finally something truly exciting, and I start to climb into the back of the cattle truck, but my host mom and the bride say NO! The back of the cattle truck is no place for a toubab. Get in the cab with the bride. I cannot describe my disappointment.

11:26:31 – We leave Nyakoi.

12:06:08 – Arrive in Jah Kunda.

Because according to Allah, we have to be taken in by strangers, we sleep in a strange bed as hard as a rock. The only reason I can sleep is that my fearless guide, Maimuna, is sleeping next to me, and she’d never lead me into harm.

Day 3:

We sit around most of the day. The bride lies in her bed in her new home ALL day. Other people cook food, slaughter animals, and unload the millions of bowls and obscenely huge spoons. I lay on the bride’s bed, take pictures, and read 200 pages of my book. I try to pretend that I don’t see the rats that scurry around the compound.

Since NOTHING happened that day, this is a good time to talk about the treatment of toubabs at Gambian weddings. I’ve been thinking since the end of the wedding about a good analogy for it.

At first, I thought, it’s kind of like inviting a really really attractive person to your wedding – they’re bound to take some of the attention off of you. But that sounded too vain.

Then I thought, it’s a little like inviting a famous actor to your wedding, but that doesn’t capture the fear that some children have of me.

So, it’s kind of like inviting an alien to your wedding. But a not scary looking alien. Just different. Some people keep their distance, because they’ve never interacted with an alien before. Some people greet the alien endlessly, because, oh my god! It’s an alien! And it can speak a little bit of our language! Some children are afraid of the alien and cry when it comes near. Some folks wonder how they can get a visa to visit the alien’s home land. Some people, especially the caretakers of said alien, worry endlessly about the well being of the alien. She can’t drink our water, she doesn’t like our food, she doesn’t like eating with her hands, OH MY GOD, WHERE WILL SHE BATHE! The alien is given a spot of honor in all pictures and meals, normally right next to the bride, because you want as much documentation and face time to prove that you ACTUALLY met an alien. A chair is always vacated if she is standing, and she is given a first serving of all attaya, juice, milk, tea, or bread with mayonnaise. Because this alien came from far away, she could go back home if she wanted, but she is choosing to be here with us.

So, literally, we sit around all day. Occasional dance parties break out, which makes me a little uncomfortable since the bride is laying in bed and crying morning, noon, and night.

Finally we sleep. This night I sleep on a wooden pallet in a room with bags and bags of rice and other foodstuffs. I assume the rats will hang out in those edible things before they mess with me. Plus, my trusty sidekick Maimuna wouldn’t let a rat gnaw on me.

Day 4:

We wake, eat breakfast. Around 11, the car comes, and the wailing starts again, because now everyone the bride knows is going home, and she will be left alone in her new village.

It was truly heartbreaking. I know it’s their culture, but I couldn’t stop thinking how much this aspect of it sucks. She seemed miserable.

So, we all left in a kind of depressed mood. My mood immediately lifted when I saw the cattle truck again! And this time I would not take no for an answer. I rode in the back, flew up and down when we drove through giant ditches, ducked under trees, and waved at farming Gambians.

I have never been happier to see my hut than I was when we returned after this trek.

Am I glad I went? Yeah. I learned a lot about the traditions, I got to hang out with my friend in a really hard couple of days in her life, and I have some crazy stories to tell.

Would I ever attend another one again? Never.