Mary Gets Married

 

  Peace Corps is all about promoting cross-cultural understanding, getting to really know your village and letting the people in your village really get to know you. Sometimes you get to know someone so well you realize you want to spend the rest of your lives sharing your cultures. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the wedding of Mary and Malik in Jilor. Since they will be having an American wedding when they travel back to the States at the end of Mary's service in a few weeks this was a primarily Senegalese affair, although with a few American touches.

  

Kaolack sub-region volunteers

At 11am about 30 of us dressed up in our Senegalese best and piled into an alham (made to seat 20) for the hour long drive out to Mary's village. Weddings in Senegal are an all day affair, and throughout the day the bride and groom are each occupied with their own wedding obligations. The men get to chew cola nuts and go to the mosque for the "official" marriage ceremony (no women allowed, not even the bride!) and the bride spends the day being primped, prepped and presented to the whole village. After greeting her family the Kaolack crew wiled away the hours in the shade of a large tent chatting and dancing to some good old fashioned Senegalese drumming until it was time for Mary to greet the whole village in her wedding day best. She was gorgeous in her white complete (the color being one of the few American traditions that were blended into the wedding), and I was glad to see that she chose to skip the dreadful drag queen-esque makeup that Senegalese brides wear in favor of a more natural look. A whole procession of people including her American, Senegalese and volunteer families marched here around to all of the compounds in the village in the heat of the day then retired to the shade while the men went to the mosque to pray.

Eat your heart out Michael Jackson

Lunch was served around 8pm (not a typo, meals at weddings and baptisms are always served really late) and then the real dancing began. There was a group of drummers and a guitarist that played traditional Seereer music, but there was also a DJ with a generator and huge speakers to blast the latest hits. Around 10pm the bride and groom shared their first dance, which I think was another custom borrowed from the states since I haven't seen it at any other Senegalese marriages. After that was the presentation of the gifts, at which point us volunteers gave our gift to the happy couple and then performed the Macarena for the crowd. After that it was dancing until dawn, although we stuffed ourselves into an (even smaller) alham for the journey back to Kaolack a little after midnight.

It was a beautiful day and I'm so glad Mary invited us to share it with her and Malik, and I wish them the best of luck in their new life together.