Friday, October 19, 2012

GLOW/Weddings Galore/Last Term/Site Visit…ye baba we!

It’s been a while, yeah? Last time I was at my Close of Service (COS) conference.  And now it’s October, wow!  Lots of stuff to cover here, so it’s going to be a doozy of a post, with pictures and words and and and lots of good things!

So, first things first.  After my COS conference, I’m pretty sure I hung out in my village for 3 weeks.  However, it being a long time ago and my mind is currently in “OH MY GOD YOU LEAVE RWANDA REALLY REALLY SOON” mode, I couldn’t really say for sure what I was doing most of the month of August.  However, the one big event I do remember in those 3 weeks, the beginning of my month of weddings!  So first, we’ll hear about my crazy month with 3 weddings, then we’ll back track a little bit to hear about GLOW camp, fast forward again to the last school term I will EVER teach in Rwanda and finish up with the site visit for my replacement volunteer.

Weddings Galore

Okay, so, from August 12th-September 15th (a span of a month people) I was at/in/part of/partaking in 3, count it 3 Rwandan style weddings.  First up, Sylvain’s brother’s wedding.

Wedding I: Sylvain’s Brothers Wedding

Who is this Sylvain character?  Sylvain is my counterpart up at school. He’s the person I go to when I’ve got any questions/issues/am confused/etc. He’s also currently in University studying Biochemistry so we always have something sciencey to talk about.  Overall, Sylvain is an awesome guy, very down to earth and I am able to talk candidly to him.  That’s a HUGE deal, being that he’s a Host Country National (HCN) and that can sometimes be difficult to do.  So Sylvain’s my man, my buddy, my pal.  We usually play games in staff meetings…we are model teachers.

ANYWAYS, his brother was getting married.  And I got invited to the wedding!  Cue wedding day, Sunday, August 12th.  Aka, longest day of my life.  Step 1) Wake up at 5 am. Step 2) Get a wake up call from Sylvain at 5:30am to make sure I’m actually awake. Step 3) Go meet Sylvain at Bihembe (Adventist church) at 7:30am to walk to the dowry ceremony. Step 4) Walk like 2ish hours to the village of the bride, leave Ruhango district, go into Nyanza district and see Nyamagabe district in the near distance.  Step 5) Dowry ceremony: the cow runs away, we sing songs, we sit and begin to drink fanta, we are rushed in drinking our fanta and then the dowry ceremony is finished. Step 6) Turn around and walk BACK to Bihembe church (another 2ish hours). Step 7) Wait for the pastor who ends up being an hour late. (side note, during this wait time, I determined I was very dehydrated from walking all day and only drinking Fanta and almost passed out at the church. Smooooooth Caroline, smooth.  Lesson: learned) Step 8) Religious wedding is a go!  And, done in record Rwandan time, one hour only! Step 9) Walk to Rwe Sero where the reception is being help…oh right, that’s another like hour walk Step 10) Tell Sylvain I’m going to die unless we find me some food and water (he laughs and ends up pulling through finding a meal of beans/cassava root and water.  it’ll do, it’ll do). Step 11) Reception, I was busy eating so I missed it.  Step 12) Go home with Ephron and Aloysie, my bodyguards (kind of?) back to Muremera.

All in all, this whole thing was 12 hours. and I think a solid half of it was walking.  Needless to say, I was hurting the next few days.  However, I brought my camera and once the camera man ran out of film (yeah, they use film here!) my camera became the official wedding camera.  So then I had like 300 photos on my memory card from this wedding.  Want to see? Yeah you do, here’s a few of those wedding photos:

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Dowry Ceremony: Bride meets Groom

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Religious Ceremony: Bride and Groom

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Me and the girls

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Fifi, me, Vincent (so angry!) and Slyvain

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Wedding II: Fanny’s Wedding

So then the next wedding came on September 1st, right after GLOW camp (which we’ll back track to in a bit). This was the wedding of my Language Cross-Culture Facilitator during training.  Fanny and I have continued to keep in touch and she made sure that I was going to be in attendance at her wedding…little did I know I was going to be IN the wedding…well, the dowry at least. And so, on August 30th, I made my way to the deep deep south of Rwanda to Cyahinda, Fanny’s hometown.  Unfortunately, I was just coming off of GLOW camp so I was kind of a pre-wedding day all night party pooper.  Meaning, everyone else partied and was happy and excited and me, well, I went to bed.  Better than me being a grumpy gills.  And then in the morning Fanny goes “Are you better now?” sign of a good friend right there.

September 1st: Early in the morning because we all wake up when the sun comes up (no electricity, remember?).  Everybody’s put to work doing something to prepare for the dowry ceremony. I get the simple and wonderful job of cleaning plastic chairs.  Hey, I was just happy to be useful. After finishing cleaning chairs and the whole dowry stage is set up, it’s just basically everyone running around bathing/getting ready/eating/running around doing nothing/sitting doing nothing.  And, lo and behold, true to Rwandan fashion this time, we end up running 2 hours late.  Originally we were supposed to start at 9am, but we didn’t really start until 11am.  But, everyone got all dressed up, since I was part of the dowry ceremony I was wearing an imishanana (traditional Rwandan dress) and carried the gift for Fanny’s mother-in-law.  Overall, the dowry was a whole lot of fun. I caused quite the ruckus being 1) a white person and 2) in the ceremony…whoa, what’s going on?!  Fanny looked absolutely gorgeous, I got to be her makeup artist which was loads of fun and then finally at about 12:30pm the dowry finished.  And then at 1pm we all piled into a twegerane (taxi bus) and took the 2hr ride into Butare for the religious ceremony (Catholic this time).  Unfortunately, because we were running 2hrs late, we didn’t get to Butare until about 2:45 and school was starting that Monday.  I made the decision to not go to the religious ceremony and instead went halfway home to Jed’s site where me, Gelsey and Jed spent and entertaining but exhausted overnight.  More on that later.

How bout some pics from Fanny’s wedding? Yeah? Yeah:

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Getting Fanny (the bride) ready

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Dowry Wedding Party- Where’s Waldo??

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In the midst of the ceremony

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Fanny meeting her Husband

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Lots of people in attendance

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A short milk drinking thing before heading off to the church

Wedding III: Francoise’s Wedding

And last, but certainly not least, there was Francoise’s wedding on September 15th.  Now, Francoise is one of my best girlfriends in the village.  She previously lived about a 20min walk away in the neighboring village of Kabuga, but now (after the wedding) she’s lives a whole like 20feet from me!  Talk about awesome.  Anyways, I had been so busy during the break I had missed both her civil ceremony and dowry ceremony.  I was not going to miss her religious ceremony.  And nor was she going to let me miss it either.

So for this wedding, I was not an “official” part of the wedding party, but Francoise decided I needed to wear traditional Rwandan dress (imishanana) and then somehow was adopted into the wedding party.  This whole ordeal, the religious ceremony and reception, took about 12hrs as well.  It was another long day but it was loads of fun because it was Francoise and she’s awesome!

Francoise married an Adventist man so her wedding was Adventist…a little different from Catholic.  Not that weddings in Rwanda are anything like weddings in America.  They are a whole different sort of breed.  But this Adventist wedding was the second one I had attended, the first being Sylvain’s brother’s.  A long day, lots of pictures, lots of fun, lots of cake and in the end, Francoise got married off!  Woohoo!  Here’s some photographic evidence:

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Getting the bride ready (that’s Francoise)

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Church setup

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Groom and Bride

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Me forcing people to smile

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Intore dancing (traditional dancing) at the reception

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Lots of people at the reception

And that’s my crazy month of weddings.  I’m going to take a break here for a couple reasons: 1) My head hurts. 2) I need to go pack my stuff and go back to site. So, to be continued…