Boyo Traditional Wedding!

Written mid-April and idk why it took me so long to post.

Last week I had a little cultural adventure.  Leonard and Carine graciously invited me to join them at a traditional wedding ceremony in a village near theirs, in the Northwest.  Given that classes were cancelled for spring break, I agreed to go, and they said we would leave around noon on Wednesday.

            Wednesday morning, Leonard knocked on my door.  “There’s a problem… I’m not sure you can come to the wedding.”  Explanations raced through my head.  Maybe the groom revealed that he actually hates me?  Or the bride insisted she wanted to be the only one in white?  Leonard continued.  “It’s just that we found out the ceremony will be a little ways out of town, and we are thinking of walking there.”  I scoffed.  He thinks because I’m a prissy American, used to the easy life, I can’t walk like the rest of them?  I assured him that I would be fully capable and still looked forward to joining them.  “Okay… because it turns out it’s about 26 kilometers away.”  I did some quick mental math.  26 kilometers??  Wait.  That can’t be right.  That’s like… OVER THIRTEEN MILES.  I told him I’d think about it and went into the house to discuss with Allison, who was visiting.

            We consulted a calculator which revealed the true conversion to be approximately 16 miles.  Each way.  On a road apparently too nasty and bumpy to support cars or motos.  Suddenly I was facing a choice: wimp out because I’m too posh and soft, or walk over 30 miles, perhaps for 10 hours, and probably die.  Fuck it, I said, I’ll take death and my pride over turning it down over something like this.  I decided that this walk would become the symbol representing my entire Peace Corps service: something incredibly long and hard and probably excruciating, but at the end of which, if I survive, I’ll have earned bragging rights for life.  (Is that okay to say out loud?)  I prepared myself mentally, strapped on my best walking shoes, and stuffed fistfuls of snacks into my backpack for sustenance.  Wow, I can feel your eager anticipation from here.  This story must have such a dramatic climax right???

            Leonard, Carine, and I had a reasonably smooth day of traveling from Bafang to Bafoussam, Bafoussam to Bamenda, and finally, Bamenda to Fundong.  By the time we got to Fundong, it was pretty late and so we grabbed a bite (of fu fu and njamma njamma, obviously), greeted some of Leonard’s family, and climbed into bed.  Carine told me that the wedding started at 9, so we should probably wake up at 5:30.  Yeah, I thought, if we want to be two hours late.  We woke up while it was still dark, and I breathed deeply and did some stretches to warm up for our physical challenge.  “I was thinking,” Carine started, “why don’t we get a moto to take us halfway and we can walk the rest?”  I almost felt disappointed, but agreed.  Anyway, long story short, she talked to a moto guy and told me that he could take us the whole way for less money than she expected.  So there’s anticlimax #1.  Suddenly the thought of walking the 16-mile return trip seemed like the worst of both worlds – less bragging rights (16 miles is long, but not really impressive) but still probably miserable.  Oh woe is me.  Third world problems.

            The moto ride was still kind of exciting, although it could have been a lot worse.  It took about half an hour and was very rocky, with steep uphills and downhills.  We passed really beautiful views on the way but I couldn’t look because my eyes were closed from wind and dust and trying not to die.  When we arrived, Carine remarked that the road wasn’t nearly as bad and the moto wasn’t nearly as expensive as she expected.  And we even got there early!

            This village is definitely the most “en brousse” (“in the bush” = remote/far from civilization) that I’ve ever been.  There were no telephone wires in the sky.  For some reason, the only comparison my brain made was that it looked like the setting of a video game – maybe Zelda or Rayman – where it’s unrealistically lush and gorgeous, and fairies could plausibly live there, doling out quests to passers-by.  (Colby just stepped on the keyboard to give his two cents, which was:  dfacccccc)  The houses didn’t have electricity.  They were all made from mud bricks, some with thatched roofs, and they all had indoor fire pits.  They were organized in compounds: clearings of three or four houses that shared a courtyard.  The compound functioned like a house and the houses functioned like rooms, so that they were all open and you would walk from one house to the other for different tasks.  It was still early and the light was beautiful and the weather was perfect.  In this part of the country, you don’t even need a water filter because the natural water from the tap is so clean.  Probably because of fairy magic. (Oh and in contrast, I used two of the most primitive latrines I’ve ever seen in my life.  Ask for more detail.)

            We spent an hour or so wandering from house to house and compound to compound greeting people, many of whom were somehow distantly related to Carine.  Although the Northwest is an Anglophone region, many of the older people I met didn’t speak any English, but only the local language.  Yes, we were truly en brousse.  What this meant for me is that I spent a lot of the day sitting in rooms where the conversation was carried out completely in the local language and I understood nothing.  But it also meant that it had much more of a feeling like the Africa in your head – one of tradition and culture and mud houses and living simply. 

            I met the bride and groom, Loveline and Emmanuel, for the first time, although they are actually Bafang residents.  They were both incredibly nice, as was everyone else, who greeted me warmly and welcomed me in.  At least six or seven people, when they saw me and reached out to shake my hand, said, “Aisha.”  This is a pidgin word that basically means “I’m sorry” or “my condolences.”  Maybe if you see someone carrying something heavy, you would say, “Aisha,” or if they bump their head, or if someone in their family died.  So I was a little confused as to why people kept saying it to me.  I asked Carine, and she said that they can see I’m a foreigner here and a long way from home, and they say “Aisha” because they think maybe that’s hard for me.  And I think that's kind of amazing.  What consideration it shows to see me for the first time and not just think, "she probably has money," or, "she can probably get me a visa to America."  I think most people never think about how hard it is being here, even if I've known them for a while.  I just hope Carine is right and they weren’t actually saying, “aisha, sorry about that haircut,” or something like that.

            Everyone bustled around getting ready for the wedding, by which I mean cooking.  But they were cooking in every room, making cous cous in giant pots and put it in big basins.  After a bit, we slipped out to greet Leonard (who spent the night in his brother’s house, not with us) and his nephew.  We all had a beer (because it was 10 am and we needed to “gather our strength”), talked about how beautiful the views were, and remarked on how that road was not nearly as bad as they expected.

            I can’t tell you exactly when the wedding started because all the discussion was in the local language and I was constantly a little confused about when the goings-on were official events versus just people doing stuff.  But I know there were many guests in their good pagne, and a man who was hired to be there as “jester,” with a painted face and stuffed fake stomach.  He sort of ran the show and would do silly things and make fun of people.  It was always good for a few laughs when he would speak to me in the local language and I would, right on cue, act confused.  Classic.

            At some point we all ceremoniously walked up to the bride’s compound and dropped off pieces of firewood one by one.  I don’t know what this means or symbolizes.  Then some of the women got in a circle and did a traditional song and dance (several seconds of which I captured on video).  Unfortunately, they didn’t get much farther than this when the defining feature of the day made itself known: the rain.  “Wait,” you ask, “I thought we were all marveling about the beautiful weather?  Since when is it raining?” Well, I was similarly taken by surprise.  So the wedding became a game of man vs rain – and the rain always won.  It would start to drizzle, people would point up and make sounds and decide to stick it out.  Then it would start to downpour and everyone would flock inside and wait it out for an hour or two.  Then, as things looked better, we would go back out and resume the ceremony, only to repeat the process twice more. 

Still, I did get to see some good traditional ceremony stuff: the bride took a giant vat of palm oil, which I believe was given to her family as part of her dowry, and scooped some out with her hands.  Then she went outside and women from her family washed it off very ceremoniously.  Then at some point, she and her bridesmaids all emerged from the house, bent over, in a line, and sat down with sad looks on their faces. (Someone once told me that the bride is supposed to look sad for her wedding because she won’t be a virgin anymore.  I guess they keep it in as tradition even when it doesn’t really apply, because Loveline and Emmanuel already have five children together.)  Then the groom and some dudes (groomsmen?) came out and raised their hands and said something and laughed, and then the women raised their hands and the jester was just talking to everyone and frankly I don’t really know what was going on.  I do know that I already felt awkward being the only white person there, and I wasn’t totally invited, so I tried to stay inconspicuous, only to be dragged to the front lines by well-meaning guests who wanted to make sure I got very good pictures.  The jester guy even brought me over a chair when I was standing in a big group of standing people.  Just one of the many moments of being inappropriately treated as a VIP when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.  I do have some good pictures to show for it.

We needed to get going on our ridiculously long walk before dark, so we left before they were finished with the wedding events.  All the returning Bafangers gathered and took exactly one step down the road when it started down pouring again and we had to take refuge inside for another half hour or so.  Needless to say, by the time we actually got going underneath a light drizzle, the entirely dirt road had become entirely mud.  All the rocks which had been dangerous and uncomfortable on the moto ride over became anchors of stability and safety.  I managed to find every possible sinkhole in the mud, plunging my leg in up to the calf repeatedly.  Even while I tried to stay positive, my brain started crafting a blog entry called something along the lines of “The Worst Thing Ever.”  Anyway, it was definitely an adventure: walking steeply uphill (and steeply downhill) in mud as it got dark and the rain sprinkled down on us.  Luckily, as it got darker, the road got less hilly and less muddy and I stopped searching for a contingency plan.  And now what you’ve been waiting for: Anticlimax #2 is that it definitely wasn’t 16 miles.  I didn’t have my pedometer on me, and it was still a good long walk, but maybe closer to 8 (I’ll take 10 if you’re feeling generous) miles, on mixed terrain – nothing to write home about (oops).  We walked for about 3 hours including a brief visit to the compound Leonard grew up in, where one of his father’s wives gave me a bag of cola nuts and the title “Mother of the Child” in their local language.  As we arrived in Fundong, well after dark, it started to rain again and we, again, challenged the rain and again, lost, repeatedly.

So maybe the story of the walk and the wedding wasn’t the one I expected to tell.  But that’s life, isn’t it?  And in a way, my Peace Corps experience, like the epic walk to the wedding, has been anticlimactic.  Because I don’t wake up every day surrounded by the cast of The Lion King, feeling freshly African and cultural and whatnot.  It’s just life.  There’s routine.  It couldn’t possibly be a two-year long climax.  So my metaphor stands. 

Huge thanks to Leonard and Carine for giving me this cultural exposure and my first adventure en brousse!