Wedding Lamu Style

This month I had the pleasure of attending a Swahili wedding ceremony at the Lamu Fort.  This was a really interesting experience, because the portion of the Swahili wedding tradition that I saw was so different from a U.S.- style wedding. 

Swahili marriages are strongly steeped in tradition and interestingly, very gender-segregated.  In Muslim ceremonies, the woman does not even attend the official “wedding” in the mosque.  Instead, her father or brother represent her and sign the marriage certificate.  The portion that I attended was the biggest party of the whole event, and it is only for ladies. 

Prior to the women’s event, a bride is prepared by (traditionally) staying indoors for several weeks before the wedding.  There she is given many beauty treatments by women in her family, and finally painted all over with intricate henna and piko.  The resulting designs on her arms and legs are beautiful and take hours.  Originally, only the bride would be painted for a ceremony, but now it is custom for anyone attending the wedding to be painted in celebration. 

The wedding was a really interesting and confusing experience for me.  We entered the huge, open air fort in the center of town, and even though we essentially remained outside, there was an air of privacy and intimacy inside.  I was dabbed with perfumed oil and had incense wafted in my direction as I walked in, and the whole place smelled like jasmine and incense.  There was a large mirror by the door where women stopped to remove their black buibuis and reveal the amazing rainbows of chiffon and silk they had hidden underneath.  There were simple dresses and elaborate ones with tons of embellishment and long trains, but they were all very colorful.

 

We all sat on chairs and mats in the huge hall while a young girls’ choir sang saccharine Taarab music while seated on the floor facing a large structure made of jasmine buds.  Sometimes women would join to sing and dance around them while waving folded 1000 shilling notes in one hand.  After the song all the money would be thrown into the jasmine centerpiece.  Women also fashioned hats and neckpieces out of folded cash and placed them on important members of the party seated nearest to the choir.  An elderly woman who must have been the bride’s grandmother was so festooned with money accessories that she must have had the equivalent of about 2000 USD on her person. 

I was a little confused during all of this, because there was no bride.  It was also getting late (around 10 pm) on a Sunday and the bride had not appeared yet, so I was concerned.  How long would this ceremony take?  Finally, everyone turned and faced the back of the hall, and the bride moved slowly down the aisle, severely impaired by her huge dress and the many flowers attached to her.  I was watching her move slowly down the aisle when suddenly everyone moved towards the exits and filed out.  The bride wasn’t even on the stage yet!  Apparently, once the bride appears, the rest of the evening is meant for family only.  Not being family, I returned home and ate the lunch box I had been given.  It was a very interesting event and I hope I am invited to another!