2 different weddings

     Last Friday night, the night Katherine returned from working on Books For Africa applications at PC HQ, people started showing up at the homestead after dark. Our suspicion that a funeral was in the offing seemed to be confirmed when people stayed up all night, cooking and talking. They seemed merry, so we assumed the deceased was not close. Around 4 a.m., at the faintest hint of dawn, there was laughter and calling, then loud knocking and demands to wake up in the small hut just behind ours where the youngest brother in the family lives much of the time. When Katherine got up a little later (she really could have used a full night's sleep, but is pretty good now at getting by without) she learned that a traditional Swazi wedding, or really an engagement, was in progress in the kraal (the coral where the families cattle are kept) 200 meters away across the maize field .

Katherine dressed quickly and joined the ladies – men are not invited.

     We had heard a little about traditional “weddings” in training. On a night when the “bride” happens to be at the man's homestead, she is awakened early by the women of the homestead, who take her to the kraal, the symbol and center of the family's wealth, where she is told she is to marry the designated man. A song that I know well from the High School “traditional dancers” is sung, about her leaving her own family now and married life being difficult and painful and leading then to death; traditionally the intended would wail and cry. These days we are are told the bride generally has a sense of what is coming up, although she might not know the exact day; this bride knew the very day. Interestingly, the traditional wedding is not terribly common now, and the family of the “groom” said they had never been to a traditional wedding before; the neighbors, who are much more imbued with the tradition, did most of it. A sister of the groom explained that the Swazi Constitution forbids compelling the bride. ( I'm interested how frequently Swazis refer to protections in their Constitution; many of them know it well, but are also aware of some deviations in practice.) No friends or family of the bride were present; this was an event of the neighbors, assisting the groom's family.

       The groom told me that he would also do a “civil” wedding “signing the paper” before a government official, and he said that would have to be done by June. He also needs to negotiate the “lobola” (cows paid to the brides family, essentially dowry). The bride is a “double orphan” (both parents dead; single” and “double” orphan are useful concepts because children who have lost even one parent suffer similar diminution in health, education, and job prospects as with “double orphans.”), so the lobola is paid to the oldest brother; if you think of lobola as compensation for the cost of raising and educating the bride, I'm not sure older brothers are always entitled to much, but the concept is to compensate the bride's family for the transfer to the groom's family.

       The traditional wedding suggests roots in a less orderly past. It is easy to imagine a young woman being seized without her consent and taken to a man's homestead, then being introduced to the women of the homestead the next morning at the kraal, where she would see her new family's wealth, and the bride's family shortly being bought off, literally, with the promise of a payment of cows. The going price, paid even now, for healthy brides, is from 11 to 18 cows, but we understand there is a fixed lobola for a daughter of the king, of 115 cows. Since a young man's desires can often outrun his wallet, it is not unusual for lobola to be paid years, frequently decades, after the engagement, as the man saves up enough to provide the agreed number of cattle.

       This is a very Christian country, but the traditional wedding has nothing religious about it: no prayers, no hymns – that's all for the “white” wedding, which is in a church.

       I learned from the bride that her husband chose the traditional wedding because it costs less than a “white wedding” (in a church). But a traditional wedding allows polygamy. The bride told me she insisted that her husband promise no more wives unless she dies or they are divorced; polygamy would be illegal after a civil wedding. I hope that civil ceremony does occur, but even then, he has not appeared to have difficulty finding girl-friends. The husband has had 3 jobs since we've been here, none for more than a few months. His sisters agree he has a drinking problem. His lifestyle would make it very hard to have avoided HIV. This bride has a sense of her market value and, like a Jane Austin heroine, I guess she negotiated the best deal her circumstances permit; there was no one looking out for her. The 2 are very sweet together, and she is very good with his daughter.

       We like her a lot – she is smart, has pretty good English, is willing to try to be understood, and is fun.; I hope this works out well for her.

       The bride was a domestic worker here from around April to August, but left suddenly. She has 2 children; having one child makes a woman more marketable as a bride, because it shows she is fertile. Having more than one can be a negative.

        The “groom” was living, when we arrived here, with a smart, pretty, strong-minded woman who had a good job as a clerk at the nearby airport construction. Their 2-year-old was also here, but their relationship was already rocky when we arrived, and ended when she reported to the police that he had stolen some of her money, and a police car showed up on the homestead one night. Our Babe ( the father on the homestead, pronounced bäbā,) is a pastor, a member of the local “inner council” (kind of like country commissioners, but the position is either inherited or appointed), and an important member of the community; he must have been deeply embarrassed. The mother visited her 2 year old a few times after she left, but a child always belongs to the father's family, and we soon stopped seeing the mother. Likewise, the two children of today's bride live with her husband's mother who does not allow their mother to see them. The bride told me bringing them here would not work – they would always be blamed and criticized and treated badly.

      The groom had purchased a goat, which was slaughtered.

When you slaughter a goat, the first thing you do after cutting it's throat, letting the wriggling settle down, and hanging the carcass from a limb, is to cut off the penis, scrotum, and testicles, and set them on a limb.

I asked if there was any symbolism to that, because in some cultures those parts of some animals have significance, but it seems not here – it would just be in the way of cleanly slicing out the insides, I guess, and besides, who wants those parts still attached to their goatskin?

     While a meal was prepared the women built a fire on the road from the kraal and had tea.

After a while the women approached the homestead from the kraal.

They started throwing stones at us, because the men then had to go away, perhaps because the bride is still topless; she was very self-conscious about that, all day, until she was ceremonially dressed in married women's clothes: long dress, head scarf and scarf covering her shoulders. Fortunately the older brother on the homestead, with whom I was sitting, knew of traditional expectations, and he and I scurried off to our huts amid much laughter – those neighbor women had good aim! The women presented some symbolic gifts to the groom's family and jesting “negotiations” occurred, along the lines of “Where is the cow?” and “What color cow do you want?” Much laughter and good humor. But you could see the origins in a scared young girl being brought into a new homestead by the women, with the men excluded for that stage. The stories we hear suggest that often little care is taken for the young girl's sensibilities, as she is promptly put to work in all kinds of ways – the groom's family is going to have to pay for her, and want their money's worth!

       Katherine observed that this girl is going from paid domestic worker to unpaid daughter-in-law, but she has gained membership in a family, and my sense is the older generation in this homestead, especially the 2 oldest women, would try to treat her fairly.

        We had seen the final step in a traditional wedding when we first arrived at site and went with the family just across the border into South Africa to see the final lobola payment by the “groom” now in his 50s, the soonest he had accumulated enough to pay what he owed; the grandchildren of that marriage assisted at the wedding. That ceremony is intended to symbolize the joining of the families; the expectation and final accomplishment of that would be a useful step where such important property has been exchanged, perhaps initially somewhat abruptly. See (if you haven't already had quite enough of this) our September 12, 2013 blog..

     In the negotiations at the front door of the main house of the homestead the women of the household gave the new daughter-in-law advice, such as to be patient, and they then painted her forehead with ochre,

(Katherine took this picture – I was still excluded) had her suck the gall bladder of the goat (which tasted as you'd expect, I understood from her later), and symbolically tied around her right wrist the skin from the goat's forehead as a symbolic ring, which was only to be removed when she returned to her own home, which she would do the next day. I sat next to her when we ate, and could smell her “ring”; she was embarrassed by that and said she'd cover it that night, because of the smell.

That's the “ring” on her right wrist.

        After a while we assembled in a small room near the cooking shed and enjoyed the feast, as shown above. It was just the neighbor ladies, Katherine and me (I'm not sure men were to be included then, but they invited me; some rules apply less strictly to outsiders, I suspect. None of the groom's family joined them) I declined an offering from the pot where the goat insides had been cooked. One piece of the “flesh” was pretty good, I think from the back somewhere; I passed off the other piece to the neighbor girl (one of our students) sitting beside me – the piece had too much identifiable skin on it; ignoring my subterfuge I was complimented for cleaning my plate. Katherine was sure everyone wanted to see pictures of our grandson Matthew.

       As it happened, a “white wedding” was also staging from our homestead the same morning, because our Babe was performing this wedding for one of his parishioners at the church at the nearby School for the Deaf. The bride, bridesmaids, and flower girls bathed, dressed, and fidgetted at our homestead . That is our Babe with them, in the dark suit.

And they then drove off in fancy clean decorated cars.

          One lesson this experience keeps teaching me is the futility of prediction. Preparation is important, but then the unexpected invariably intervenes.