the wedding

Last weekend we got to experience an "African wedding". I put that in parenthesis because noble attempts were made to make it American, but since all the wedding party and guests were African, their culture shone threw. At the last minute, I was cajoled into translating the affair, much to my dismay. But with much prayer, the CEO rescued the day. When I went to the rehearsal, I discovered that a long time friend was officiating. We'd known him for ages, since I first landed in Abilene, and Agent B since before then. He was likewise relieved to discover that he knew the translator. My ardent prayers were answered when he e-mailed me his sermon, the vows... in English to me. I spent all morning making sure I had an idea of how to translate it, looking up words and even calling the African family to confer and select together the appropriate terms.

The funniest part was that they had an American wedding coordinator trying to make things run smoothly. Americans and Africans have differing ideas as to what is smooth. At the official wedding time, there were only about 10 guests in the chapel- Agent B, my kids and some other white American folk who think weddings start on time. The maid-of-honor hadn't even arrived, the bride and flower girl were there, an hour after their expected arrival. 40 minutes late, the chapel is filling with people and the coordinator tries to launch the wedding. She gets the bridesmaids and groomsmen in place and discovers that the maid-of-honor is not dressed or ready. The maid-of-honor's husband says that she has another 5 minutes to start getting ready. The coordinator goes to the brides dad and brings him in to convince the maid-of-honor that it's time to get dressed.

Finally the processional commences while guests continue to arrive. It's total mayhem. The most beautiful and moving part was when the bride came out. The lively African sounding song had this huge crescendo, the bride walked out on her father's arm, everyone stood and started making these incredible frolicking yells of victory. It was so incredible. I was in tears, trying to compose myself knowing that a couple hundred eyes would soon be turned my way.

Everything went well and without too many problems. Since we were so late, the wedding coordinator tells all the guests to go immediately to the reception instead of waiting several hours as was the original plan. We doddle a bit and show up a little before the original time as the coordinator had said and waited for the next couple of hours for people to show up. Everything was horribly "late", people were hungry, dancers came out sporadically, everyone had changed clothes for the reception as well as the bride- the bride's dresses were gorgeous gowns, the guests wore everything from fancy African outfits, to shimmering gowns, to jeans and t-shirts. The bride wore two or three different gowns at the reception and I later found out had another to wear that she didn't because of time. We left at 10pm since our kids were beyond tired. Mbamie told me she was there until 3am cleaning up. It was lively and beautiful, a real African affair!