Kenya wedding
Trip Start
Jul 23, 2007
1
12
13
Trip End
Sep 28, 2007
Kisumu, Kenya
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Yesterday we attended our first Kenyan wedding, and it wasn't anything like a wedding back home.....ok there were some similarities: the bride wore a white dress (but she also wore a tiara that had flashing lights...hehe). You don't have to be invited to attend the wedding so many of the guests consisted of neighborhood kids who came for the food. And when it comes to dress, anything goes.
In true Kenyan style, the ceremony started over 2 hours late, just after 12 noon. It took the bridle party over an hour to march down the aisle, and by march I mean dance. The bride had 11 bridesmaids and 6 flower girls, all of them had choreographed dances, it was quite the sight. There was lots of preaching, praying etc. By the time the ceremony was over it was after 4 o'clock and we were starving (we'd had nothing since breakfast that morning). The only problem was that during the ceremony a bunch of people had snook into the kitchen and stolen some of the food. While we did get to eat some food, it wasn't much.
We left at around 5, by that time the speeches hadn't even started, and we didn't want to be traveling back in the dark. We also had plans to go out for a few drinks in the evening with some Kenyan friends.
It is an election year in Kenya and last night they voted for the leader of the ODM party. We were warned to be carefull as one of the candidates was from the town we were staying in, and if he didn't win people would be upset. We were in a local bar with some Kenyan friends when he ended up winning and it was really amazing seeing the whole bar celebrating.
Kenyans get quite passionate about politics, and unfortunately so many politicians are corrupt, and the voting process is rarely fair. Visitors are warned to avoid Kenya during major elections, which will be in December this year so I'll be long gone by then.
That's all for now! I'll be home in 4 weeks, it amazing how fast my trip is going!
Love
Leana
