Congolese Wedding

Hey everyone,
Last night Bill and I had an awesome experience! We attended a Congolese wedding. One of Bill’s co-workers was getting married, and we were invited! I do have to clarify however. Although this was a Congolese wedding, it was not a traditional Congolese wedding. They usually have 2 weddings: a traditional Congolese wedding and a Christian wedding. Typically, only very close friends and family are invited to the ceremony; everyone else is invited to the reception. And what a reception it was!

The first thing we noticed is that we were literally the only 2 muzungos (swahilli for white people) there! There must have been at least 300-400 people there, and we were the only white people there! We felt a bit like fish in a fish bowl. We had been told that it was appropriate to wear traditional African clothes to the wedding, which Bill and I did (we had had a dress and shirt made). Well, we were the only ones! Everyone else was dressed in suits/ties and nice dresses, so we stuck out more than ever!

The next thing that was interesting about this wedding and I guess about all Congolese weddings, is that although the invitation said 8:00, no one got there until at least 9:00, and the wedding couple/party did not get there until 10:30!!! People told us that sometimes the wedding couple will not show up until midnight!
So now, the wedding party has arrived, but they don’t just walk in; they dance in! There must have been 20-30 people in the wedding party, and they all danced down the aisle by two’s. The men in the party were all carrying bottles of wine! As they all came in, all the guests started whooping. Not sure how to describe it—sort of a cross between a Native American war cry and a turkey call.

Once the wedding party was seated, people started giving toasts, but they were more like 15 minute speeches. Of course, they were all in French, so we understood very little. We were sitting next to one of Bill’s co-workers, and he told us a bit of what was being said, but more or less he told us to just clap when everyone else did. Oh, and speaking of being seated—we were crammed in like sardines! They had 16 people at each table, which really probably should have only seated about 10-12.

After the toasts, the wedding couple had their first dance. While they were dancing, people would go up to them and throw money at them (bills, not coins). Then, those same people would form a circle and dance around them. After that, the dance floor was opened up to the wedding party, and finally to everyone else. Bill and I danced with one of our friends there. It was quite humorous; two muzungos, dressed inappropriately, dancing poorly, in a whole room of Congolese! I’m sure they are all blogging about us today, writing about the 2 dumb muzungos who don’t even know how to dress for a wedding!

Most of the wedding seemed pretty typical to us, until we got to the receiving line/gift giving part. Very few people give cash, and of course there are no gift cards here, so everyone comes walking in with these huge gifts. There is no gift table or anything like that, so everyone just brings their gift to the table they are sitting at. Once all the speeches and dances were done, the receiving line/gift giving commenced. Each table went up, one by one, to the wedding party, handed over their gift, and then kissed everyone in the line (3 times, per Congolese tradition). Okay, so this doesn’t sound too strange yet—a little different, but not too weird. The next part was absolutely hysterical! It was our table’s turn to go up, so we started getting in line. But then one of Bill’s co-workers told us to go outside because all of the TFM (Bill’s company) guests would go up together to give their gifts. Apparently a lot of money had been pooled at the office to buy some nice gifts. So we all had to wait outside until all the other tables had gone up. Then it was our turn. We all walked in, carrying all the gifts. One of the gifts was a deep freeze box freezer. It took 3 men to carry it, but carry it they did—straight inside to the receiving line! The really funny part was that we couldn’t just walk up to the line—no—we had to dance up! So here we were, in this line with all the other TFM people (about 30 other people), dancing up to the line. Even the guys carrying the freezer were dancing! All eyes were on us, and of course, being the only white people, we really stuck out!

Once all the gift giving ended, it was time to eat. It was nearly midnight! It was buffet style food, with a roasted pig on the table. (At Bill’s going away party, they had a whole goat!) Each table was called up to get their food. We didn’t stick around for them to call our table; we were tired. We had been up early that morning to ship our dog back to the US (that’s another story), so we decided to leave before the wedding was over. A friend of ours left too. He said it was okay to leave after midnight. He told us that all the important things had already happened—the speeches, dances, and gift giving, so now it was just going to be eating, drinking, and dancing until about 3:00 AM! We had to drive back to Fungurume early the next morning, so we called it a night! It was definitely a night to remember!


I apologize, but I really have no good pictures to share. My camera was on the wrong setting, so most of the pics came out blurry.


Cheers!
Laurie