Alright I’m going to try to sum up the wedding(s).
In Cameroon when couples are married, they usually have more than one ceremony. There is one for signing the official legal documents, a more traditional church one, and up to three others – usually repeats for families in distant villages who are closely related to one of the spouses. Matt and I attended the first two mentioned.
The first ceremony was held two weekends ago in a village called Fumban. It is one of the most visited cities in Cameroon because of the scenery and the colourfully clad women. To reach Fumban we took an overnight bus from Douala. Based on my experience in Vietnam and the little time I had already spent in Douala, I could easily predict it would be an interesting experience, and interesting it was. The bus was scheduled to leave at midnight, but for a reason that Olivia couldn’t fully explain, we needed to be at the bus stop a full two hours before departure. We waited with Olivia and her husband’s best friend Boniface, who is very funny and incredibly helpful – ever since the wedding we have seen him very frequently. Quickly after being seated on the bus we were bombarded with locals trying to sell anything and everything to us, only to be promptly chased off the bus by a very angry bus driver. As we took off there was a salesman on the bus that I guess had been given permission to sell to us. He stayed on the bus for about 20 minutes rattling off in French about his two products: hand soap and toothpaste. I was not advanced enough in the language to understand what he was saying but it must have been convincing because he had about 10 people take him up on it.
Through out the bus ride we made around 7 stops. On each stop, locals who make their living off selling food to bus passengers would beeline for our bus screaming the name of the food they were selling. Mangue Mangue Mangue! (mangos) Maize Maize Maize! Bubalo Bubalo Bubalo! (really weird dried and then recooked yams that are strangely addicting). And when someone on the bus wanted something, they would make a sound like they were trying to imitate a rabbit (thats the only way I can think to describe it) and the vendor would come running to sell them their food. It was pretty difficult to sleep with all of these odd exchanges going on. We got off the bus around 6 AM, and we’re greeted with chilly weather, since the city of Fumban has a much higher elevation than Douala. We took a taxi to our hotel, slept for about four hours, and then met up with Olivia and Boniface who took us on a tour of Fumban. We went to the palace of the Sultan (the town has had a Sultan for centuries and the 19th sultan is currently in power) and went through the markets. The town did not disappoint. The town roads are made of beautiful red soil, there are tons of food markets that add much color to the town, and about 80% of the inhabitants are Muslim, which results in incredibly colourful ankle length dresses and matching headwraps. Sub-Saharan Africa’s interpretation of Islam is incredibly vibrant and beautiful.
Later that day we dressed up for the wedding (I wore a dress with traditional African fabric that Olivia and Boniface were very excited about) and we watched with about 50 other guests as a minister gave a short speech before having each of them sign their documents. Afterwards we had a few drinks and ate from a buffet that the family had prepared and talked with the guests. All in all it was an interesting, relaxing experience that we both enjoyed.
The following weekend we attended the second church ceremony of the couple. If you forgot, the groom is the brother of my host father, Jo (full name Joelle) so Olivia and Jo were very involved in the entire process, especially this second ceremony because it was held in Douala. Being closely related to the couple meant hosting many relatives in town for the wedding. This meant that the room that Matt and I share had to be used for Jo’s father and the living room for Jo’s FOUR sisters (the living room is tiny). Olivia arranged for Matt and I to stay at an empty apartment across the street from our usual residence for the four days that the family was in town. The wedding was held at Saturday at four, and I was expected to go the hairdresser with Olivia and her four sister-in-law’s in order to get my hair and nails done for the big event. I assumed we would go to the salon around noon or so, which would be plenty of time for me to have my hair done and get ready for the wedding, but we had to go at 8am, and that was after the women had already spent the whole day before in the hair salon too.
The experience was definitely a first for me, because I have never really seen the process that black women go through to style and tame their hair. All of the women that went with me had spent the previous day de-weaving and then having various conditioning treatments put in their hair. This day I watched as their hair was cornrowed, weaved and styled, a process that took hours and hours and hoursss. During this time I had my nails done and my hair blowdryed straight, which not surprisingly, they were very good at. While I may have wanted to spend a few less hours at the hair dresser, I have a new found respect for the lengths these women go to control their hair, and I will never complain about having to straighten my hair again!
We finally headed home, got dressed and headed to the wedding. The ceremony was about an hour total, with some lively songs and a part at the end where the bride and groom each held a basket and received people at the ceremony as they put money in the baskets (the money went to the church, not the couple). I of course messed this process up, and instead of taking money in both hands and using those two hands to put the money in ONE basket, I confused the instructions and put one hand in each basket, earning confused looks from onlookers.
After the ceremony we took a picture with just us and the bride and groom, which every single person in attendance did as well – the line was very long (we got to cut because of our connections). These pictures are developed within an hour and are given to you for a price of 1000 CFAs (about $2.50). Because of some difficulties in communicating, and Olivia’s tendency to only give us about half of the information we need, we had no idea that there was a reception after the wedding. We turned a corner and encountered a huge outdoor reception set-up, complete with white tents and beautiful centrepieces. The wedding really was like any other you’d find in the states, except that the guests were using their napkins to dab sweat off their faces and that we were the only white people in attendance. The choir from the church came outside to provide the music, and our very own Olivia ended up emceeing the entire party.
Matt and I spent most of the time eating and playing with the children at the wedding, including a little three old girl who spoke the most ridiculous franglais brought on by her desperation to speak English with us. Her french counterparts could not understand a thing she was saying, and neither could Matt or I, except for the random ‘gimme’ that would pop up. They loved my camera and had me take a million pictures with them, even posing to sit on our laps, kiss our cheeks and throw their arms around our necks in a dramatic embrace. At the end of the wedding I found myself playing an intricate hand game with one of the younger boys there for atleast a half hour.
Weddings in Cameroon are usually paid for by the couple, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen are in charge of cleaning up after the wedding, while the couple retires at around 10pm or so. After helping to clean, we headed to a nightclub, which looked EXACTLY like the nightclub in the movie Carlito’s Way with Al Pacino, if you’ve seen the movie. It had really high AC and Jo and Boniface bought bottle service for us, it turned out to be a very fun night.
I think next time I’ll talk more about Olivia and Jo, and some negative (though still interesting) encounters I’ve had over the past week.
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