Our local Ch community has 3 weddings this month, and my blogging buddy Deborah has posted several nice photos here. I am often struck me how ‘different’ weddings here. Indeed, the first Hausa wedding I attended in 2008 left me feeling overwhelmed at the cultural differences and the gap between me and the world of the people around me.
I remember being struck by the custom (which I don’t think I will ever get used to), of cash-giving. During a particularly good choir performance at a wedding (as in many public events), audience members who are ‘blessed’ by the song will dance forward, and stick cash bills on the forehead of the choir director (or on the bride) as they dance. The money is part of the wedding gift to the new couple, and is meant to show public support for the couple in their new ventures.
I remember being turned off by this method of giving, and then seeing the father of the bride very solemnly and gracefully glide forward. He was a leader in our hospital, a pillar of our Christian community, who even in those early weeks of my time here, I had come to love and to respect. As I watched him tenderly place a large bill on his daughter’s forehead, my eyes welled with tears as I thought about the transcultural beauty of a good father saying ‘fare thee well’ to a daughter he has nurtured through the years.
The wedding ceremony held in a church is actually more like a combination of our formal ceremony and our reception/dance party afterwards. The church ceremony will last 2-3 hours, and once the groom, bride, and bridal party dance in (and I mean literally, dance in), the crowd will mill in and out to take in different performances, and sometimes quite literally to ‘get their groove on.’ It’s different. It can be very hot with only ceiling fans and such a long ceremony.
The Ch. ceremony here imports a number of cultural and religious elements from our context, right down to the traditional white bride’s dress. Mus. weddings do not typically have the white dress, vows, ceremony, etc… its mostly a day of feasting with a formal ‘taking of the bride to the groom’s house.’ But the Chr. ceremony is more like an especially festive church service, complete with marital vows that are pretty much direct translations into Hausa of the English… right down to a “I pledge thee my troth.” My parents encouraged us to use more or less traditional vows at our wedding, and I am glad we did… it’s neat to be reminded of your vows, even at a cross-cultural wedding ceremony.
They have kept the traditional, ‘If anyone has an objection…” though surprisingly, the pastor had to scold the crowd at one wedding because people blurted out unserious ‘yes.’ But there are also unfamiliar elements. Gathering enough for the bride price is really challenging for young single Hausa men... but the bride’s father signs in the ceremony that the groom has ‘paid in full.’ There’s also a Hausa court jester sorta-figure, who blurts out sayings like, “She’s chosen him above all men,” at various points in the ceremony. And one ceremony this month was unusual in that it ended with a 4 minute, very vigorously pronounced, curse on any who would work against the new marriage.
But the cross-cultural truths shine through. On Saturday, I found myself crying as the youth group sang a song that I had never heard before. With verses talking about the ‘two becoming one,’ and the inviolability of marriage (and to the Chr. community here’s credit… divorces are very rare among them) the recurring refrain was “Alkawali shi ne aure, tsakanin ango da amarya” – “Marriage is a covenant between a groom and a bride.” Amen.
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