Desire’s Wedding- The religious ceremony

28 Mar

Following the dowry ceremony, we drove to a church near the center of Gitarama. When we arrived at the church, I was surprised to see that is was half built. Concrete had not yet been poured for the floor, there was no glass in the windows, and there were bricks piled in corners. Even the benches we used were taken from a nearby school- some people were actually sitting in school desks during the ceremony. This is not normal for Rwandan weddings, and I’m still not really sure why that church was chosen.

The religious service follows the format of a normal church service here, with a choir singing and some sermons read by the pastor. After that, the bride and groom say their vows, and then they are joined in prayer, meaning they kneel down on a mat and are blessed by the pastors.

After the religious ceremony, there is typically a reception at a local community center. The reception for this wedding was at a local women’s computer education center (paid for by the good people of Japan, according to the sign outside.) The reception is in some ways a modernization of an old ceremony that was traditionally held a few weeks after the wedding. This ceremony was a way for the family of the bride to check in with their daughter and see how life is in the new couple’s home. Traditionally, the representatives of each family would discuss how things have been going and try to right any problems that may have arisen between the newlyweds in the first days of their marriage. The new wife would traditionally cook a meal to prove that she was capable of running a good household.

Today, these activities are recreated ceremonially. Each family shares some fanta, and ask the other family some questions to be sure that everything is okay (despite the fact that the wedding probably finished little over an hour before that.) A great big sparkler is put into a wedding cake to represent the smoke and fire of the kitchen, and everyone has a piece of cake. After this, the guests present their gifts to the new couple and make toasts.

The whole process of the wedding took all day. We left Kitabi at 7 am, and by the end of the reception we had been in various ceremonies from 10 am to 6 pm. Despite this being a very long day, I enjoyed the wedding a lot, because I spent the day with my colleagues and some of my friends from the village, especially Mama Rukundo and Mama Teta, who are my neighbors from across the street. It would have been better if it hadn’t been a Protestant wedding (meaning there was no beer… sigh) but it was still a very nice day.

Desire’s Wedding- The dowry ceremony

27 Mar

A few weeks after the civil ceremony, we had the official wedding day. Because Bibiane’s family is from the far west of the country, and Desire’s is from the far east, the wedding was held where in Gitarama, where the couple’s new house is as well. On the day of the wedding there were three separate ceremonies- the dowry ceremony, the religious service, and the reception.

As I mentioned in the last post, a bride price is still given in Rwanda. This comes from Rwandan tradition, in which a bride leaves her family and becomes a part of the family of the groom after the wedding. In fact, in the past a bride was supposed to cry and be sad on her wedding day, since she was leaving behind the life and family she had always known. The bride price is like a repayment of the investment of the bride’s family- the price was traditionally one or more cows, but today is often given in money instead. The amount paid normally corresponds with the wealth of the girls family and her level of education, with girls from wealthier families and higher educational backgrounds receiving higher bride prices.

The dowry ceremony is normally held at the house of the bride’s family, and it begins with the entrance of the groom’s family. The two families sit opposite and facing one another, and men normally wear suits and women wear dress in traditional Rwandan clothes, often a cloth draped over one shoulder and an undershirt. Normally the groom sits among his wedding party, and the bride stays inside the house with her bride’s maids until later in the ceremony.

Each family has one representative chosen to speak for the family, and these representatives spend most of the ceremony bantering back and forth about the bride and groom to be married. Normally this will start with the groom’s representative saying something like, “a boy from our family wants to marry a girl from your family,” and the bride’s representative intentionally misunderstanding. He will normally respond something like, “well, that is excellent, but our daughter is still in primary school. Your son will have to wait a few years before he can marry her.” This banter continues until the families agree on which boy and girl from their families will be married, at which point the bride and groom are each presented to the other’s family.

The ceremony includes the exchange of small gifts, formerly local beer and honey, now normally fanta and coca-cola, as well as other things like carved walking sticks for the patriarchs. After exchanging gifts, the bride and groom sit at chairs placed in between the two families, and all the guests share a meal. After the meal, the bride and groom change into different clothes and the guests all walk or are transported to the church for the religious ceremony.

Desire’s Wedding- The civil ceremony

26 Mar

This post is the first in a series of posts about my house mate Desire’s wedding.

Weddings in Rwanda are complicated ordeals, usually consisting of around 5 different ceremonies. The first ceremony is a meeting between a representative of the groom’s family with the bride’s family. This one is usually attended only by a small group of family members and close friends, and is a time when the two families begin discussing the logistics of the wedding, including the bride price. (More about the bride price later.) I did not attend this ceremony, but I did go to the second ceremony, the civil ceremony, which was held in Kitabi.

The civil ceremony consists of a brief ceremony and discussion between the couple and local government officials, followed by swearing an oath while holding the Rwandan flag in one hand. After the oath, the bride and groom sign their name in the wedding registry at the government office, as do their witnesses. It is very much like civil wedding might be in the USA. Because the ceremony was held here in Kitabi, the school agreed to give Desire use of the bus for the afternoon and drove all of us down to the ceremony. After the ceremony, we came back to the school for a photo shoot and then hosted a party at our house in the evening. There was food and beer and dancing, and it was a good time. However, because this was in the middle of my crazy teaching schedule, I had to go to sleep before the end of the party. I have never been gladder that I brought a good pair of earplugs with me from the states. IF YOU ARE THINKING OF JOINING THE PEACE CORPS: buy earplugs.

 

The Basic Module

13 Mar

For the last two months, my life has been entirely consumed by the Basic Module. What is the basic module.

I am teaching at a conservation college that offers a two-year program in Wildlife Management. This program is divided into 13 modules, each with roughly four course units. Because the diploma program is multidisciplinary, these course units cover a wide range of subjects, from leadership skills and community conservation to entrepreneurship and wildlife diseases. All of these courses are taught (ostensibly) in English.

So at the beginning of these two years, we offer the Basic Module. This is a refresher course in English, communication, and computer skills for our students, many of whom are coming from years working in the field and out of the classroom.

As the resident English teacher, it has fallen to me to give a 7-week crash course in English for my new students. This means I have had 22.5 hours of class time per week with the same 20 students, which means I have been more or less constantly engaged in one of the following activities: planning lessons, teaching lessons, marking assignments, eating, or sleeping. I have been systematically designing and executing this course as I go, and I hope to compile all of the lesson plans and teaching resources I’ve developed into a comprehensive English program for the college.

Basically what I’m saying is, I’ve been busy. A lot of things have fallen by the wayside, including my work on the Mobile Library, my free time, and the health of my herb garden (RIP cilantro, good thing I saved some extra seeds,) and of course, this blog.

But I PROMISE that I will get back to updating regularly. I would even go so far as to say my entries will improve substantially, since it is now easy for me to supplement them with pictures (praise be to high-speed internet!)

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Photos from Zanzibar

29 Jan

In celebration of my school’s long awaited connection to the HIGH SPEED FIBER OPTIC INTERNET CABLE (!!!!!) I bring you a selection of pictures from our Zanzibar trip. Enjoy!

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