One Wedding and a Scorpion
Trip Start
Jul 05, 2009
1
6
20
Trip End
Dec 23, 2009
Watamu, Kenya
Friday, August 28, 2009
Mambo all, hope you're well - we've had a busy few weeks in old Kwale town. Sorry for lack of updates, we're not having much luck with computers at the moment.
In the last blog we mentioned we were off to a wedding, here's how it went.
Rise at 6am for cold showers, Mandaazi and chai for breakfast before walking over to the groom's house at 7.30 for breakfast number two of mandaazi and chai.
A lot of preperations taking place, mostly centered around preparing the house for the bride's arrival. Then we took up our offical positions of wedding photographer and videographer, perks of which saw us getting a lift in car 2 of the procession and priority placement throughout the day.
The wedding procession (including two matatus full of loud, singing women in bright and colourful kangha dress) continued at 10mph though Kwale, beeping horns and with hazards on, to the bride's house where we were greeted by more loud, singing women in bright and colourful kangha dress.
The men all sat sombrely in white under a tented area and the women sat loudly and colourfully outside whilst the speeches and formalities were agreed between Tony, the groom, and the bride's family.
After about half an hour Tony was bustled into a small hot room (as were your humble photographer and videographer) with at least 30 other people to meet the bride who was sat hidden in a veil being fanned. The veil was lifted and a 15 minute ceremony took place in which they fed each other to symbolise providing for each other in the future.
We then went outside for a 3rd breakfast (This was about 11am) of pilau rice and mandaazi and to listen to more singing from the women - the song was apparently referring to how the women were bored and the groom should hurry up and take his bride home!
Back at Tony's house the bride and groom posed for photos (unfortunatley the one with us didn't come out) and we had our first lunch of Pilau rice.
By half one it was all finished and we went back to our house for a second lunch and a quiet afternoon, the only thing of note was Ant eating 3 chapatis for tea. It was a good day.
Aside from that we have also visited more schools and have nearly finished building a traditional Digo house. This is proving to be a lot of fun (lots of climbing in the rafters doing the makuti roof and getting chafu-sana doing the mud walls) and we are learning some good techniques to use when we go home. Anyone need a new garden shed?
Two Fridays ago we went to San Siro - the local Kwale Music Hall and met lots of people who were amazed that their Mzungu friends could dance. We should mention that we have been baptised with Digo names. 'Baraka' (Ant) and 'Amina' (Lucy) - meaning 'blessing' and 'amen' - by Ali the Shifoga chairman.
It now seems that after San Siro the whole town knows our names and we can't go anywhere without hearing "Baraka’ or 'Amina’ being yelled across the marketplace. Ho hum.
Last weekend we went up the coast to Gedi and Watamu. Gedi has some excellent ruins of a 15th century village which were really cool to look around. We hired a couple of bikes for the day and also cycled round the Aruboko-Sokoke forest. Future note – it’s quite hot in Africa and bikes are hard work! We also saw a golden-rumped elephant shrew hopping away in the forest – it is a strange beast.
Oh yes, and the other day Lucy was stung (twice!) by a scorpion - no biggie.
Wish you were here and hope you haven't all got swine flu,
Baraka & Amina
Comments
amina
Hey hun, Amina is such a pretty name... think you should permanently adopt it as a middle one...
You know Amen means 'believe' or as an affirmation of a statement (as used in a prayer). Essentially you bring belief, you affirm existence - wow you're so cool!