marriage

The other day the man next door got married and in the evening the well-dressed guests arrived and seated themselves on white plastic chairs under a white tent in his garden, for post wedding party with taped music, amplified comments, and eventually, food. After that, I don’t know because I put in earplugs and went to sleep, but I do know that this party at the couple’s new home is the culmination of an important, ritualized and expensive process of coming together.

Marriage is something of a weekend sport; all over the city one sees banana leaves stuck into the ground and open gates where introductions (the visit by the grooms family to the bride’s home to request her hand in marriage) are being hosted. Marriage is for love, sure, but it has been frequently described to me as an arrangement, an agreement, and a necessary step towards reproduction. A pregnant bride is not shameful; her fertility is already assured.

Marriage is a social necessity, yet is it is impossible without money. A beautiful single girl in her late twenties says, of course, love, but it is not possible to marry only for love. There has to be a financial plan. This leaves few options for a man with bare pockets, even if he is rich in heart. These two cannot come together. The girl is not callous; rather she is compassionate and generous in both speech and action, and although these two people, two friends of ours, come from different backgrounds that is not what would keep them apart. Rather, it is the lack of money. The fear of poverty and hunger is not far away, still vivid for those who have moved upwards. To marry a man without enough money to feed himself properly would be disastrous, especially if you have relatives for whom you are also responsible.

The financial concern is not just the future; it’s the ability and resources to have a good wedding. If the wedding is not seen as a success, regret and stigma can be carried through life, and so the resulting stress is significant. All the steps to settling down together cost money. First, the man must find a suitable house to which he can bring his wife and he needs to settle in and furnish it. Second, the wedding introduction, hosted by the bride’s family. This might require renting a place if your home is not capable of hosting large numbers of people, renting decorations, tents, chairs and a dance troupe, and if you want to go all out and impress, bringing some live cows. The cows are part of the negotiations (which also involve various gifts, drinks and so on) and inspected by representatives of the groom’s family, and pronounced good. If the cows are impossible, the representatives wander out somewhere while cows moo over the sound system.

The negotiations between the male representatives of the two families are marked with wit and quickness with words, a value here, and the representatives jest and repartee to the enjoyment of the guests, before the bride is finally agreed to be given. Traditionally the men would be the male patriarchs, but in the broken and missing families of post-genocide Rwanda, friends fill in for family. Finally the bride and groom, in traditional dress, come before the families and sit together, with their attendants, also in traditional dress, and the dancers dance joyfully.

And then the formal church ceremony with a reception hosted by the groom. The Christian wedding is white western wedding dress and formal suits; the reception is speeches, gifts, dancing. This also is not cheap: another hall, more dancers, refreshments, and perhaps then feeding everyone at your house afterwards. If the introduction has been a success, the reception has to be a bigger success. One guy told me that his wedding cost $10,000 – a tremendous burden in a country where even a middle-class salary is far below a western one, while living is not cheap. And in a country with a young demographic pressured to create and re-create family, the numerous weddings are also a burden to guests, who are asked regularly to contribute to gifts. “This wedding culture is wearing us down,” sighed one man.

Yet a simpler, alternative type of marriage is not a consideration; individuality in such matters is not encouraged. Form, protocol, is important in Rwanda, and so the weddings, a creative adaptation and integration of both traditional and colonial legacies, continue. It is part of the nation renewing itself, a symbol of possibility. For those who lost family in war and genocide, it is a victory of life, a moving beyond survival. “When I lost my family as a child,” said one man, “ I never imagined that so many people would come to my wedding, that so many people would support me.” I am happy to be invited to share these celebrations.

Here are a few photographs from the most recent wedding introduction I attended.