But its Tradition

A couple of months ago I was invited to a wedding. It was so long ago ago that I almost missed it when it last weekend. Two days after the invite, I was invited to the wedding giving party. This consisted of many people in the library drinking Fanta while going down a list of things that needed to be paid for to have the wedding. People pledged to donate anywhere from $5 to $125 for various wedding expenses. As I looked over the list I didn’t know what half the things were. After some questions and answers I agreed to pay $30 for the “wedding spray” which I understood to be champagne. It wasn’t until the wedding that I learned that instead of spending $30 on champagne, I spent $30 on about 6 sparklers which apparently is “wedding spray” in Rwanda. Really in the scheme of things, it’s not that big of a deal to contribute to a wedding but when you have many people who are just scraping by and its pretty much required that you contribute to the wedding it’s tough for me to take.

So let’s move onto a little description of the wedding. If I had to describe it in 3 words it would be: long, extravagant and boring. I know, how culturally insensitive of me. But it’s not only me who shares these sentiments. So first up you have the dowry which is the traditional cow giving ceremony. This starts at 8am and is at the bride’s house about 2 hours away. This part seemed ok as the man expressed how much he loved the wife and proceeded to actually give her a cow. This lasted about 3 hours. Then everyone went back to Nyagatare for the church service. The preacher stole the show and turned their vows into an evangelical opportunity and somewhere inside the yelling they passed rings and made it official with God. Another 3ish hours spent. Next in line was the first reception. This was at a local bar that has a concert hall. This was also where my wedding spray came in. Everyone came in and turned to watch the bride and groom come into the building, this was accompanied by really loud music and a Rwandese style play by play announcer. At this point the bride and groom looked just plain exhausted and ready to sleep. We went through 4 hours of cutting the cake. At this point it was about 10pm. You would think it’s done at this point but nah. Now it was time to go to the groom’s house. Everyone arrives and waits about an hour for the bride and groom to get there. I was hoping that they took a nap. (Did I tell you that power had been out for about 3 hours at this point?) They get there, everyone eats and then it’s time for friends to speak. One by one friend’s from both sides get up and shares their life story related to the bride and groom. I decided to dip out at about 1am and they were still going strong.

All in all it wasn’t so bad. What flustered me the most was the ridiculous extravagance. It wasn’t just me who noticed the overspending either. The topic was approached with some of my Rwandese friends and they felt the same way as I did. They didn’t want to make all their friends pay lots of money for their wedding. I think it’s a fine line. A wedding is supposed to be a nice time being a special rare occasion and people should have fun every once and a while. I just hope people think about their friends in planning their next wedding and maybe not go with the wedding spray.

Change is hard to come by. I think most people know that they aren’t really helping their friends out by making them carry the load for their wedding but this is justified with tradition. That this is the way things are done here. Our conversation spiraled into how hard it is to bring about change and then it hit me, yeah change is hard. It’s bad to screw over your friends and make them pay a healthy portion of their salary for your wedding but it’s another thing if you actions are causing the entire earth to be thrown off balance and threaten the lives of thousands around the world. Boom, you could have guessed. Climate change jab. I ask the question again, what will it take for us to change our actions and reduce our footprint on this earth? Sorry I'm a jerkface but I guess it just shows whats on my mind.