A Rwandan Wedding

As I mentioned a few posts back, last Sunday my homestay family and I went to a wedding. One of my “sisters” here, Julie, is actually my host mom's niece, and her brother was the groom. He's older than Julie, and I'm told that he lived here while he was in college.

We were late to the wedding. My host mom told me that we had to leave at 1pm. At 1:05, we sat down for lunch. When we got to the church the bride and groom were already at the altar, but I don't think we were very late. The entire service was in Kinyarwanda, so I couldn't understand anything, I just guessed as to what was going on. It seems that the ceremony starts with a small sermon. The pastor talked for at least half an hour, and the bride and groom had chairs that they could sit in at the altar so that they didn't have to stand the whole time. The service seemed relatively western; the bride wore a big, poofy white dress and the groom wore a tux, and there were bridesmaids and groomsmen who were also dressed in western clothes. The guests wore a mix of traditional and western clothes. Since everything was in Kinyarwanda I wasn't certain what was going on, but it seemed pretty similar to a western wedding ceremony. The only differences I noticed was that when the bride and groom exchanged rings they held their hands high in the air so that everyone could see, and there was no kiss at the end. The bride and groom did not kiss at all throughout the entire ceremony and reception, which seemed rather sad to me, but they have different standards of pda here.

After the ceremony we went to the reception, which was nothing like an American wedding reception. In America, the reception is like a party, with dinner and cake and dancing and general celebration. The only similarity was that there was cake. Here, the dinner is a whole separate part of the wedding that happens after the reception. The reception consists of about three hours of ceremonial dialogues. All in Kinyarwanda. I am glad that I had the opportunity to see a Rwandan wedding, but it was really, really boring. The only interesting part was the troupe of traditional Rwandan dancers that performed periodically between the dialogue. Traditional Rwandan dance is really cool. It consists of a lot of foot and arm movement, with lots of stomping and jumping and turning, and the dancers wear thick cuffs of bells on their ankles that amply the beat of the drum they dance to. It was amazing, and provided a wonderful break in the monotony of speeches by old men I couldn't understand. I'm grateful that we decided not to go to the dinner because my mom was tired and Eddy and I both had to get up so early in the morning. I'm sure if I was Rwandan I would feel differently, but I prefer American weddings, with the fun and few speeches and the language I can actually understand.