A Kenyan Wedding

After a long but fun week of visiting VEF-sponsored businesses with the evaluators, I finally had a chance to catch up on some much needed rest on Friday night. The relaxation period, however, didn’t last long. I spent the majority of the day on Saturday attending my first Kenyan wedding! Rowland is friends with either the bride’s or groom’s family – or maybe both (everybody knows everybody around here). The wedding took place at the Eregi Catholic Church. I was planning to just sit quietly in the back and watch, but Rowland called to tell me that the person who was hired to shoot video of the wedding was nowhere to be found. He asked me to take over video duties, so this ended up being both my first Kenyan wedding and my first experience as a wedding videographer! I already stuck out like a sore thumb as the one mzungu in a church full of Kenyans, and I’m sure I seemed even more out of place as the one person in the church with a video camera.

The wedding itself was a true celebration with nonstop dancing and singing and general jubilation. Even in the short church service beforehand, people were singing and dancing in the aisles. After the vows were exchanged the whole place went wild. The attendees danced out of the church and into the street and accompanied the bride and groom and their families as they were driven a short distance to the wedding reception. I would guess that half of the people in the crowd dancing and singing in the street were invited guests, and the others were just community members along for the ride. The idea of “wedding crashing” is non-existent here; weddings are truly community events. At the reception, after a number of toasts and short speeches, the bride and groom were presented with a variety of gifts. The most notable gift was a live sheep that was escorted into the hall to much fanfare! After that, huge pots of ugali, beef, beans, rice, and sukuma wiki (kale) were brought out and the feast started.

The family members and some special guests sat in one part of the room, but it was clear that the food was meant to feed anyone and everyone who wanted to eat. There were lots of kids dressed in tattered clothes in the back of the room, and a number of young mothers present as well. This time of year is very hard in the community because the corn harvest is not until next month. Many people have little or nothing to eat, so you can imagine the allure of a wedding meal that is open to all. As far as I could tell, no one was turned away from the food. As opposed to weddings in the US which tend to be mostly private events, the wedding and subsequent reception were clearly intended as both family and community events. It was sobering to see so many people so desperately in need, but at the same time it was inspiring to see the ways that the community members come together to help each other.