A Rwandan Wedding, Part 2.

At a medium sized church in a rural sector of Kigali, a preacher poured forth words in his Bantu language, and much like all the other church services I have been to in Rwanda, I left oblivious to his message. One of the few words that was familiar to my ears was “akaramata,” which means forever in the local language of Kinyarwanda.

In my mind there were many things he could have been describing with this word; the time it took to finish the service, the length of a man’s suit coat that went down to his knees, or the title of one of Rwanda’s current radio hits. In reality, he was talking about the wedding of my friend Rodrigue and his fiancé Aimee.

The day started off in the same way it did with the civil ceremony last week--spending a few hours trying to meet up with groom. Apparently, in Kinyarwanda, 7:30 means 9:30 or 10:00. The delay was due in part to his getting a haircut during our intended meeting time, but also my lateness, and mostly my ignorance of where his new but temporary wedding home was. Often times in Rwanda, the groom will rent a house with electricity to better welcome the many visitors who come the week and even months following the wedding. It is somewhat of a honeymoon location.

Upon my arrival at this house, being one of three groomsmen, I was placed in and at times locked into a small hot, room with the groom. During this time I heard a few wedding traditions I will probably never speak of, reviewed my duties for the day, and just waited as people hurried in and out and made sure all the plans were in place and we had everything we needed. And that was mostly my duty--sticking with the groom.

Around noon we ate lunch, then went back to the tiny room to change. For a moment I was concerned there would not be space, but that was until I was informed I could stand on the bed, which hoarded about three fourths of the room. We dawned our all white suits and shoes with red ties, and entered into two small SUV’s adorned with red ribbons and bows.

Bumping over roads and praying our way up slippery hills, we came to a house where we picked up the bride and her maids. First, however, the bride and groom drank milk together, representing that the dowry of cows was given to the bride’s family, and it brought good milk (Rodrigue and Aimee did not seem to think this, for it was hard to tell if the milk even went past their lips). Then, the caravan of cars continued, and it was time for the church ceremony to commence.

The protocol for this part of a day was not much different from an American wedding. But the seizure like dancing of the wedding singer, the amount we perspired in our suits, the hooping of the audience and conversely the serious, funeral like expressions made by the bride and groom were far from what an American would expect (this is typical, it was not a sad wedding).

Pictures followed and then the reception, where it seemed like every person present gave a speech.
There was cake, and it was cut by the bride and groom, who each served it to each other’s family. The groomsmen and bride’s maids repeated this action, only this time distributing it to the audience.

Around 7 oclock, there was one more event left at the groom’s house, which I only partially attended, because my taxi driver needed to go, and public transportation after dark in a place I did not know well was not a good option. Departure was the most confusing part of the day for me, going from people telling me I am hungry and need to eat dinner, to the taxi needs to go now, to I need to change clothes to I don’t have time to change, back to I need to have dinner, with me asking if I can say goodbye to the bride and groom between every plan change, and all this within a span of 10 minutes.

The day will never pass from my mind, akaramata.