My first Kenyan wedding
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 05/Dec/2009 20:51, 34 days ago
Last weekend my colleague was married in a rural area near Kisii town in Nyanza province and I served my fourth official bridesmaid duty. I travelled on Saturday afternoon with two of my colleagues for the 4-5 hour journey to Kisii. Kisii is a lush and very fertile land and the roadsides are lined with women selling bananas, sugar cane and avocados– so much so that a friend in Nairobi told me that it’s nearly impossible to sell these items to locals as they are so plentiful that you can just pick them off of the trees.The traditional wedding (dowry negotiations) had taken place months before, however the Christian wedding was a very important even to this couple and their families. It was to start at 11 am on Sunday morning and I have to admit that when the bride was more than 3 hours late, I really started to wonder whether she had changed her mind. I learned, however, that lateness isn’t uncommon for rural weddings in Kenya and the bride and her entourage arrived tooting their horns loudly just before 2:30 pm.Dressed in my Indian-style blue and yellow sari, I managed to do my job of lighting the candles without setting the church on fire, so I was pleased. ;-) The ceremony wasn’t dissimilar to a Christian wedding at home, with the exception of the procession into the church (which took more than 20 minutes – relative to the others it looked like I sprinted down the aisle) and the fact that there was such a big storm and torrential rains during the ceremony that the power went out 3 and I thought we might be swept off to the land of Oz! Throughout the ceremony, various choirs sang, Bible verses were read by pastors, presentations were made by close family and friends and wedding vows were exchanged. The bride and groom, as well as their families, were glowing asthis was a union of the children of very close family friends.By the time the church ceremony was over it was nearing 5 pm and we had to return to Nairobi that evening, so unfortunately I missed the reception. Despite our lateness, we still managed to stop about 6 times along the road for bananas, pineapples, sugar cane and avocados to bring back to people in Nairobi and must have passed through a dozen police check-points along the road before we safely reached Nairobi at about 12:30 am.