Tanzanian Wedding/Send-Off - April 27, 2007

Moshi Wedding Send-Off

Living in a foreign country is never complete without attending a wedding. Christian and I were invited to a “Send-Off” party for the bride, Bahati (means “lucky”), a colleague of Christian’s at KCMC. At first we weren’t sure what this meant. Was she leaving for a long vacation? Was she changing jobs? Was she moving? And then I read the quote from the book of Genesis at the top of the invitation about Rebecca being asked if she wanted to “go with this man.” It was a wedding! But, then we later discovered, it wasn’t the real wedding. This is like the pre-wedding, almost an engagement party, thrown by the bride’s parents in honor of their daughter in the hometown before the real wedding was to take place in Dar Es Salaam. In Tanzania the groom’s family pays for everything, including a “bride price” – sort of like a dowry but the other way around. Don’t get me started on that concept. This party allowed for those who are not invited to the wedding in Dar to celebrate locally with the bride and her family.

Anyhow, we decided to go as a group of us from KCMC to represent the international side. We knew we couldn’t arrive on time or early, and the invitation said 6:30 pm, so when we arrived at 7:05 and were greeted by a large brass band, we knew we were right on time. Now, when I say brass band, that’s exactly what I mean. Think high school football games, and you’ll get a sense of what was happening when the guests were welcomed into the reception room. The band wasn’t playing “Louie Louie” but something quite close. Guests were dressed very nicely – from formal Tanzanian dress (brightly colored material and prints in long dresses and head wraps) to formal dresses we might wear to cocktail parties, or more likely prom. Our invitations were checked at the door, and as we entered the room, I really could not believe my eyes. The room was very decorated, somewhat like a mix between high school prom, church on Easter Sunday, a funeral, a birthday party, and a wedding with long white sheets running along the ceiling from the front of the large reception hall (at the YMCA in town) to the back of the hall. Inside the white material strands (sort of like streamers) were tiny white lights. At the front of the room there were two water fountains with white material made to look like bubbles coming out of them, hundreds of white roses, and green and white balloons everywhere, including an arch as you entered the room (thus, the prom similarity). A large screen was projecting videos of people dancing, traditional African pop music was playing, and a man with a very bright light was walking around with a video camera filming guests sitting at very small tables (each with rose center pieces) drinking bottled beer and sodas. For two hours we sat at these small tables watching people come in and out, listening to the music. Every once in a while the MC would speak very quickly in Swahili to the guests, and of course we had to ask our neighbors (who work at KCMC, too) to translate. About one and a half hours into the event, during which nothing had yet happened, we discovered the reason for the delay – the groom had gotten into a small car accident on the way to the party and was at the hospital with a “fracture.” That’s all we learned. Well, by the time we finally left at 10 pm, without having eaten dinner yet, the groom had still not arrived. While we waited, our friend Meghan took photos of us looking bored. We thought it was really funny, but I’m sure the people next to us thought we were crazy. (Later we found out that most of the Tanzanians at the party were frustrated that they just did not serve us dinner as we waited for the groom, so at least we weren’t the only ones).

Around 9:30 pm, events began to get going. There was a procession with the bride in the front of the line, looking very unhappy. She and her maid of honor were seated in the front of the room underneath a very large, huge really, rose wreath, in big chairs. Then, the introductions began. I think they were just introducing family, but that consisted of nearly half of the room (about 300 guests). After the introductions, blankets were presented to many family members and guests of honor. Various people were wrapped in blankets and pieces of material. I think the groom was supposed to present the large blanket to the parents of the bride, but since he wasn’t there, somebody else did it. Throughout all of this activity, there was a lot of clapping and cheering. The funniest part of it was that the band continued to play small snippets of music – still reminding me of my pep band days in high school where we would get in a few stanzas before the commentator called the next play – and they also played clap tracks to make it sound as if there were a thousand people in the audience clapping. It was hysterical, and it was all we wazungu could do to keep our laughter to a minimum.

After the blanket presentations and the introductions, the “cake” arrived. According to deeply held traditions of the Chagga tribe, the most prevalent here in the Moshi area, the wedding cake is not a sweet, frosting covered cake, but it is called a keki (pronounced CAKEE with a long e sound at the end of the word). It is actually an entire roasted goat (head, hooves, hair, tail, male genitalia, etc.) covered in carrots and other roasted vegetables with a bunch of green vegetation stuffed inside its mouth. With far more gusto than even the brass band, a platoon of well-dressed chefs escorted the keki down the aisle, dancingly wildly, taunting guests along the way with the poor roasted goat, on their way to present it to the bride and her parents. The chef’s corps were costumed in starched white uniforms accented impeccably with sage green scarves and towels in keeping with the overall green and white wedding theme. Like a well-coordinated boy band they gyrated about behind this bizarre goat-led conga line. I was so mesmerized by the scene that I don’t remember what crazy music was playing, just that it was loud and threatening. The group snaked their way through the main aisle as if following a giant dragon head in a Chinese New Year parade. The goat’s eyes were somehow still open (maybe they were grapes?) and some of the fur was still intact, so only its body must have been roasted. It was really one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the dancing roasted goat. As if our night out a couple of months ago eating the Chagga delicacy of nyama choma or whole roasted goat wasn’t enough—I’ll never look at a goat the same way again. Traditionally, the bride and groom feed each other with this cake and then feed their guests of honor, but since the groom wasn’t there, the bride’s parents fed each other.

At this point, it was 10 pm, and the likelihood of eating in the next hour did not seem possible. Plus, the food in the buffet lines had been sitting out for about four hours, so we all decided to skip eating and save our stomachs from undue sickness. Diego was getting restless, and we were all exhausted from waiting there forever. So, we decided to “sneak” out as best as we could, but being the only white people there, sneaking out was nearly impossible to do! It was raining and the car we can in was blocked by another truck, which eventually got moved, and we made it home safely to eat sandwiches for dinner.

This past weekend we made another trip to the big city (ha!) of Arusha. We enjoyed another fabulous meal at the Dutch restaurant, Le Jacaranda, and as close to a real hamburger and milkshake as you can get in Africa at McMoody’s. We also did a bit of shopping, buying some hand carved pieces for our home and for gifts. Saturday morning we learned that our house finally closed escrow, which means that we are now officially homeless, but thankfully have loads of family and friends who have so generously offered their homes to us until we get settled in Seattle, WA sometime this summer. The contents of our house arrived safely to their destination – a public storage unit in Seattle, and other than a missing mop and one crushed lamp shade, we think it was a successful cross-country move. Thank you to Tracey and Kim and Leslie and my mother who helped make this sell-move-store process happen! No thanks to our neighbor, whose tree fell on our house, but at least the damage wasn’t too bad and while we may lose our home insurance policy, all in all we were quite lucky given the potential circumstances. On Sunday, we lazed about next to the pool and then enjoyed a lively dinner at our local Moshi favorite – El Rancho, savoring the spicy Indian flavors of Chicken Tikka Masala and Curry Chicken.

This next week will be a fairly typical one – grocery shopping, swimming, Christian working, Lauren and Diego hanging out with Luke and Janine, and Diego’s first and only African hair cut (it’s so long I just can’t stand it any longer!).

Less than three weeks to go before we say Kwa Heri to Moshi!