four weddings and a funeral meets east is east - or my first rwandan wedding

this saturday I attended my first rwandan wedding ceremony - and it was a great experience!

it was supposed to start at 1pm at the kicukiro sector building/office (something like the borough registry office). we got ready and dressed up at home and managed to find a free taxi on time - I told the driver where we were going; he said he knew where this was but it turned out he didn't (which is kind of normal - they will always tell you they know because they want your money). anyway - we got into the right neighbourhood and then started asking around. finally we seemed to have gotten the right directions and that took us down one of the typical dusty and bumpy dirt track roads - a long way... finally he pulled up and went, here we go. a building sporting some sign in kinyarwanda between adobe houses. well - there were a couple of people standing around, looking nicely dressed. we asked - they were here for the same wedding; however, there were no official staff around and it just didn't look like there was a wedding about to happen. so we called our friends and finally found out that we had gone to the wrong sector bureau... so there we were, all dressed up for a wedding standing on a dusty dirt track already late. we started walking in the right direction and half way there a friend picked us up in his car and took us to the right place.

the registry office is a room with benches facing a podium where you have the rwandan flag and the registry official who executes the marriage. there were not that many people there - and we were wondering because the group responsible for organising the wedding were missing; so was the family of the groom.
it got to quarter to two and suddenly this lady appears on the podium and starts the 'ceremony' (very unceremoniously) - she reads the text off some piece of paper (they normally do this in kinyarwanda and so she was reading the english script) - she began by establishing that a marriage is only legal between man and woman; same sex marriages are not permitted - after saying this she looked at the couple and went 'I think we are sure that this is the case here'; after we'd established that this was indeed a heterosexual marriage, she went on to explain that people must be 21 years or older to be able to get married and that in exceptional circumstances the ministry of justice could grant approval to marry before coming of age. at this point she left the script and tried to give examples of when this might occur. she started stuttering and going on about how it was possible if the reason was - errr - how should I say this - err - (people in the audience whispering 'valid') - urgent (everyone immediately thought aha - unwanted pregnancy!) - anyway - as our couple are above legal age, this was not really of any importance, but good to have had it mentioned anyway. she then went on to listing the three types of property arrangements you can choose when you get married, i.e. all property is shared by the spouses, all property acquired after the wedding is shared, everything else separately owned and thirdly all property is separately owned. she also gave statistics of how many couples choose which option - brilliant!
after this she went on to listing all the reasons for which you could get a divorce - very encouraging: you're standing there supposedly committing the most romantic act of your life and someone bangs on for half an hour about all the reasons for which you can get out of this arrangement again... mmmh - apparently a new policy by the government to make sure people know what they're doing - I'm wondering whether this is part of 'universal access to justice' for which I am working ;-))

at some point in all this legal babble about 'you can leave your partner if they get imprisoned for something shameful, such as rape or theft' (so the same category, no?) a phone rang and the typical answering it but with one hand over the mouth and mic of the phone so as to not disturb the rest of the people - however, the guy had a fairly powerful voice and he was shout-whispering; the entire ceremony was slightly irritated. the guy eventually went outside the open door and just started talking at normal volume (same same but different ;-))
anyway - about 10 minutes later a bus turns up with pretty much screeching tyres on the gravel and about 20 people file out and into the ceremony - the registry woman doesn't flinch; I reckon this is probably not unusual - it's the groom's family - they arrive literally just in time to see the couple swear on the flag of rwanda that they want to get married to each other.
then they have to sign the book, and their witnesses have to sign the book - they call out the name of one fo the witnesses; he's not there! (it turns out he always knew he wasn't going to make it, so no one knows why his name was called out)

well - and then we all filed out of the registry building, piled into cars and drove up to the hill where the reception and religious blessing were going to be. as the cakes are at our house, we go past there to pick up the wedding cakes before we go to the reception.
so with three big cakes on our laps we set off and of course the road turns into a track before long - so there we are; four girls and a guy in a bumpy car with cakes on our laps - everytime there's a particularly bumpy bit we go: lift the cakes! we make it there fine and set up the cakes on the cake stands and all is well.
we all sit down and then the family of the groom give a small speech and welcome the bride into the family; then the family of the bride give a small speech and welcome the groom into the family. luckily it is a fairly untraditional wedding in the sense that this is all there is for speeches - I have been told that normally you sit there for hours listening to people thanking each other and welcoming each other into their families.
well, after the speeches the couple proceeded to the exchanging of the rings (we were all still waiting for the religious ceremony, but it didn't seem to happen) - oh well, they exchanged rings and then went over the cakes to do a pretend-picture of cutting the cakes (the cake stands were too wobbly to be able to really cut the cake ;-))

in the meantime the buffet was being set up; eventually we saw that the buffet staff were covering the food trays (which have flames at the bottom for keeping warm and lids too) with a piece of tulle; funnily enough they were only covering the warm food (which was in these trays with lids) whilst the salad was left out to be aired and what not... sometimes the logic behind things is not evident to me ;-))

after the couple had exchanged the rings and 'cut' the cake they proceeded to the buffet and had food; after them everyone else was allowed to go and have food. after the food the reception was coming to an end and we all filed past the couple to congratulate them and give them the presents (I didn't manage to get one... as usual I will be about 6 months late ;-)) and then we all went home for a bit of a break before the party at night.