The Wedding

So yesterday, I attended my first Senegalese wedding. After numerous baptisms, I have to admit, I was prepared for the worst. Senegalese parties are strange -- everyone talks about them for weeks and weeks and I can't help but get caught up in the excitement! People have special outfits made and travel in from all parts of the country for the event -- but then, every single time, the "party" ends up being people just sitting, in plastic chairs, for hours. Literally. Hours and hours and hours. Much like the baptisms where I sat in a corner holding a baby for hours and hours. I mean, it's cool, it's just not the parties I grew up on. At American parties, we at least do things like snacks, so you have to get up and go refill your plate from time to time. We also sometimes do things like bacci ball or fireworks. In Senegal, you sit.

So even though all of my Senegalese family was super excited about the wedding, I was trying to hold back a little bit. I packed a book.

(my host sister and her husband and kids... she is wearing my favorite dress in all of Senegal. It might not be apparent here, but her dress is covered in amazing peacock fabric cutout feathers. Also, her children are adorable, and the little girl, Bigue, had a dress that reminded me of Snow White)

But once we got to Dakar, I was pleasantly surprised to find a different kind of party in the city -- the seven people from my car joined the eight people living in the house for some cheese, bread, and coffee for breakfast, and then everyone just kind of hung out around the house. I eventually found myself in a fancy living room, in a fancy leather chair, watching dubbed Bruce Lee movies with a bunch of 9 year olds. As the party picked up, the laid-back vibe continued. I even got some henna done on my hand, along with my host sisters, which, cheesy at is, made me feel all integrated.

Then again, at 5pm, the actual ceremony started and the house descended into Senegalese madness. Crazy crowds, crazy sitting, me not knowing what was going on at all.

You may be wondering, what exactly is a Senegalese marriage ceremony? Well, from what I can gather, both through observation and explanations in broken Wolof, all of the men, including the groom, go to the mosque and pray. The women, including the bride, stay home and cook a giant dinner. When the men come back, the couple is married. When I asked numerous people whether it is forbidden for the women to go pray at the mosque, I always got the same answer: no, it's not forbidden, silly! There just isn't enough room at the mosque!

... Like a lot of things in Senegal, these kinds of answers must be taken with a grain of salt... the Senegalese, like a lot of cultures, sometimes give interesting explanations for things. For instance, they never say anything is bad, even if it is food that made 20 people sick. They also insist that children chasing me with rocks and calling me "red ears" is cute, not even a little impolite or racist. So yes, maybe there isn't a lot of room at the mosque. Or maybe women just never go. And maybe I will never know the truth.

The wedding was also a great opportunity for people to sack me continuously with my least favorite question: Are you married? Here in Senegal, this question is just as common as "What is your job?" or "Where are you from?" Actually, it's usually asked before either of those questions, and then my negative answer dominates the conversation for the next 20 minutes. I'm not the first single, American girl to complain about the Senegalese obsession with marriage, and I won't be the last. I also know that if I continue to be pissed off every time I have to fight my way through a "Why aren't you married?" conversation -- which, after three months, I realize has no acceptable answer for the Senegalese except for "You know, you're right! I want to get married and I want to get married NOW!" -- I am going to have a long two years here. But I can't help it. The little feminist in me gets all riled up, and I start sputtering in French-Wolof-English about all the traveling I want to do and how I'm never in one place and I have a lot of life to live and maybe I'll get married some day and these are all stupid reasons to them, and in America, even the most cynical person will usually give me some sort of begrudging, "yeah girl."

But it is interesting because a lot of reasons that my friends, and I guess Americans in general, have for waiting to get married are kind of ridiculous here. I mean, people I know don't want to get married now because we are constantly uprooting our lives, moving around -- our futures seem so indefinite that it seems silly to add another person to the mix. Distance seems to do a lot of couples in, or else it becomes the biggest determining factor and obstacle in their relationship: WE ARE A LONG-DISTANCE COUPLE! But in Senegal... husbands go work in other countries for years and years at a time. Spouses work all week in different cities and regions, seeing each other on the occasional weekend or few times a month. Distance is the norm here. To the Senegalese, the fact that I left America for two years is completely unrelated to my ability to be in a relationship. It's the most important thing to them -- why would I even want to work or do anything without a family, a husband first? In that sense, I get it.

But yeah, there's also the whole idea of "waiting to meet someone you want to marry." They talk about marriage as something that just happens at a certain point in time. "When are you getting married if you're not married? Next year? The year after?" I say, "I don't know, I want to find someone I like." And they just laugh and say, "Okay, so when will you get married?" Logic as I know it is irrelevant. Add this to the list of arguments that I will never win.

So yeah, MARRIAGE! I didn't get a chance to have a heart-to-heart with the bride at this wedding, though I wanted to. She was 25. I have no idea about the circumstances of her marriage. I did notice she was crying a lot, and when I asked my host sister why, she simply said, "THE EMOTIONS." So I guess that's universal.

(Me and my host sister, Nene Mariama... again, with the amazing dress)