JUNE (subtitle: 4 ways to be married)

ok, i'm probably going to have to do this in installments cuz it's been FOREVER since i've posted. i know. i'm sorry. i suck. ok...

in JUNE i helped run a training of about 45 new peer educators for quelimane. it was run by 3 of the newly trained trainers from way back in my last post, one of whom is one of my favorite peer educators, and i was really impressed with how well it went. there were some snags of course, because the 3 trainers had never run any sort of training before, let alone with the specific material, so at times it was frustrating to think "this could be going better," but they got through all the material, no catastrophes, and i think in the long run that was much more important than it going "perfectly," because the whole point was to make the program more sustainable and not need icap or other ngos or ex-pats to run a training, and all that icap really did was the logistical stuff (materials, food, etc), none of the training. so it was pretty cool. i had to do a lot less work so even tho i was busy every day, it was a lot less stressful than some previous trainings i've mentioned!

towards the end of june i took my first real vacation here (i know i travel quite a bit, but if you look back every other travel experience has been work related, either icap or peace corps)! my pcv friend luke is dating a mozambican woman named dinha. they work together, and several of us zambezia pcvs have become friends with her (she's awesome) and she invited us to go to her brother's wedding in inhambane (city, capital of the province of the same name, south). so her family rented a chapa (just as uncomfortable on your butt as any chapa, but at least way less crowded, and full of friendly faces) and we drove down. it took about 18 hours. yeah, exhausting. but i got see even more of mozambique (i crossed the Zambezi river!), and got to have some hilarious times with my friends and dinha's aunts drinking whisky and singing and joking basically the whole car ride down. when we FINALLY got to inhambane, we all stayed at the house of the the groom's "padrinhos" or god-parents. it's the same word as god-parent in a baptism, but in the case of a wedding they are people who almost stand in for your parents, have to make vows (legal and religious) to help the couple, and help out financially with the actual wedding. so i spent 5 days surrounded by a CRAZY conglomeration of various family members and almost 24-7 food production, and had basically a 5-day slumber party with several of my best friends. as for the actual wedding stuff, it was pretty complicated. i've only been to one wedding in the states and it was VERY low-key (just my style) so the only US weddings i have to compare this to are the ones in movies. there is a lot of variety in weddings in the us, to be sure, but to me the most common usually involves a legal contract along with some sort of ceremony. well, as i discovered, in mozambique there are 4 different ways to be married.

so...the day before the wedding was the lobolo, a traditional ceremony usually translated as "bride price." everyone from the groom's side of the family (except the parents) goes to the bride's house with a car laden full of stuff to give to the bride's family. we got there about 1 minute late, and in punishment the bride's family made the groom's family dance and sing outside the gate to the courtyard and they had to pay a fee (everyone emptied small change from their pockets) in order to be let in. when we finally got in, the padrinhos of the groom went and had a long pow-wow with the bride's family in another room, while most of us sat around in the living room and waited. at one point we got shushed, cuz the bride's family said they'd charge another "fine" if we made too much noise! after awhile the groom showed up, and he was greeted at the gate by all the old women in the bride's family, and the tiniest (and one of the oldest) grandmas picked him up and carried him into the house on her back! i never got the significance of that explained to me, but it was hilarious. a little while later we all got invited out to the courtyard where the bride's family was. the two families sat on opposite sides of the space, and they were very specific that men had to sit in chairs and women had to sit on the esteiras (straw mats). there were 2 exceptions: the bride and groom were both in chairs, and in the middle of the circle the oldest male representative from each family sat on the esteira facing each other. (one of my favorite observations of the day was that the grandfather on the groom's side looked very sharp in a suit, but if you looked closely you realized his shoes were brown, his pants were grey, and his jacket was navy blue. but they both took their shoes off (custom when sitting on the esteira) and the other grandfather, also dressed nicely, had on holey socks with giraffes on them.)

what followed was a LONG ceremony, mostly conducted in dialect so i couldn't follow everything (and it wasn't an appropriate space to ask someone to translate for me) but it was clear that there were very set rules for every action. there was a pre-made list of items that the bride's family had asked for, and representatives from each family had a copy. they went through one by one, with the grandfather from the bride's family asking for a thing, and the grandfather from the groom's family presenting it carefully, then the bride's grandfather verified that it was the right thing, or good quality, or whatever, and then everyone clapped and they went on. there was a large sum of money handed over, painstakingly counted out bill by bill. there were capulanas and kerchiefs for many of the older aunts in the bride's family. there were a lot of food items, enough for a feast for the entire wedding party: rice, oil, vegetables, some other stuff, and a live chicken and live goat (who had ridden all the way down with us from zambezia, poor thing)! towards the end of the ceremony the groom's padrinhos presented a full new outfit to each of the bride's parents. and my friend dinha, as the sister of the groom, took the bride out of the room and dressed her up in a new outfit and brought her back, and then had to place a ring, earrings, and necklace on her, each symbolizing her being handed over from her own family to the new family, and to encourage her to be a good wife. when the ceremony was over, everyone got up and sang and danced (even the goat!).

seeing the lobolo was really interesting. it's a "traditional" ceremony, so it's easy to think of it as something that perhaps more modern/educated families (as both of these are) wouldn't do. traditionally, the lobolo is the most important part of a wedding. if the groom's family doesn't pay up, or the bride's doesn't accept what they offer, that can cancel the whole thing right there. i asked around, and everyone sort of said "no, it's not that serious, it's just tradition....but it's VERY important." i'm not sure anyone was ever really concerned that the wedding wouldn't happen, but everyone was VERY concerned that every little detail happen right. after the lobolo we ate (for some reason the families were separated again for this part), and then there was a sermon, which i wasn't a fan of because the preacher kept on repeating and repeating that a woman's job was to obey her husband in EVERYTHING, and that she shouldn't have opinions of her own but should have her husband's opinions. apparently the bride's family is significantly more religious than the groom's, because dinha had just as hard a time listening to the sermon as i did! so after that night, the couple was already married traditionally (way to be married #1), and i guess in a lot of cases that would be the end of it. but not for these families.

the next day was "the big day" of the "official" wedding, which had two more parts. first thing in the morning everyone went to some government office (mayor's office, town hall, what have you) to sign the legal contracts. hearing about it i figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal, just signing contracts, right? but the whole wedding party and all the guests went, everyone was decked out in their finest, bride and groom already in white gown and tux, there was singing and festivising. the official gave a short speech about legal obligations, and then the couple and their padrinhos had to swear to abide by these obligations, and all had to sign a register book. then the wedding party filed outside and all the guests greeted them/congratulated them in a receiving line. and now they were legally married (way to be married #2).

after that we piled into a parade of cars and wound around town to the church (methodist), which to my surprise was a small church in an outer neighborhood of the city, where apparently the bride's family used to live. it was a small, simple church, with wide open doors, plain wooden benches, and the only decorations were paper chains. there didn't seem to be any ceremony about where people sat, so we all just piled in. the padrinhos sat up front, and the bride and groom both walked in, down 2 separate isles. there was a relatively brief sermon (thankfully without a reprise of the "women are inferior" theme), the bride and groom said vows pretty similar to the vows we've all heard 1000 times in movies, and the padrinhos had to promise again to help out the couple. then they all had to sign the church book to prove they were married, and there was a special song for the signing, as one by one they danced across the room waving a bic pen in the air. and now they were religiously married (way to be married #3).

after the church wedding the entire party returned to their vehicles for a parade around town, which stopped in places of the bride and groom's choosing (a park, along the waterfront, etc.) for them to take pretty pictures. when that was all over everyone went to a big banquet hall for the reception, which was about what you'd expect. lots of food, festive atmosphere, a ceremonial giving of gifts (but not from the immediate family, we had a separate gift-giving party the next day), dancing. at the end of the evening the bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw one of his socks (yeah, ew?). the next day, as i said, the groom's family gathered at the house we were at and we gave our presents. we ate some yummy zambezian food (i'd been missing it for several days!), and late that night we headed back north. the groom came with us, they didn't even have time for a honeymoon.

and way to be married #4? that would be just living together and having children. obviously this is a living option for couples in the us, but i don't know of people who cohabitate but refer to each other as husband and wife. and especially having children "out of wedlock" is still at least something to comment on. but here it's totally common. as you can imagine, those other 3 weddings cost quite a bit of money, and not everyone can afford that, and who wants to wait to have children? so, for instance, my friend and neighbor gina, who lives with her husband and 4 children and is building a second house, has informed me that she and her husband are hoping to be able to get married next year.

ok, i don't think i have the energy to write more right now....until later!