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At the groom's house
with his niece and nephew i believe That's the first thing someone told me yesterday when I said I would be going to a Muslim wedding. And did I ever.
We hopped back in the car this morning, where I feel like I'm spending all my time, to head down to the town where Sharon's sister who would be taking me to the wedding lives. The country has a pretty good public transport system...but nobody has given me a chance to figure out how to use it, so instead I'm just toted around everywhere. Oh well.
They had called the bride the night before to okay me tagging along, but apparantly that was mostly just formality since they have enough food for everyone they've ever met to come. I guess it would just be a little hard for me to blend in. We started at the groom's house, where the porch was elaborately decorated and Indian music was playing so loud it was overwhelming. Khadir, the groom, was really nice and told me to take as many pictures as I wanted, and at random times during the ceremony would motion for me to get closer to get a better picture. The woman who brought me also
One of the guests
I felt pretty underdressed compared to some of the gorgeous things the women were wearing kept pushing me and telling me I had to be aggressive to get good pictures. I don't think the small Indian woman who I crushed her foot while trying to be aggressive agreed though.
So after sitting for a good while at the groom's, we got a little good back of snacks and then drumming started. The groom walked out with his mom and dad and they prayed before leaving.
So we jumped back into the cars to drive to the bride's house where the ceremony would be held. A car with a huge loudspeaker on top lead the way so that nobody within 50 miles would be mistaken that we were having a wedding. At the bride's there was more drumming and then the ceremony began. The groom's father just so happened to be the imam, the prayer leader of the mosque who was performing the ceremony. Since a good part of the crowd wasn't Muslim he was really good about explaining everything...although at times I couldn't tell if he was speaking Arabic or English. The bride was in her 'chambers' and three witnesses had to go ask if she was sure she wanted still wanted to
marry, to make sure she hadn't changed her mind. When they came back, everyone started chanting "Bad news, Bad news!" and had a good laugh at the cost of the nervous groom. I think the oddest part of the entire wedding was the fact that they went from playing nothing but Indian music to Shania Twain. She walked down the stairs of the house to From This Moment, and that was also the first song they danced to.
The basic idea of the ceremony itself was not too different from many Christian ceremonies I've been to, and both the bride and the groom wore the non-traditional tux and white gown. They read the marriage responsibilities and duties, exchanged rings and each had to drink half a cup of something I've yet to identify...the woman I was with who had never been to a Muslim wedding either, guessed it was probably just soda, since Muslims generally don't drink alcohol.
The wedding kind of just trailed off, people would leave to go eat in the middle of it. So they when they started dancing I went to eat my share of goat. There was just one big table that everyone
The drummers
they kept drumming throughout the entire ceremony... came and ate whenever they wanted. I have no clue what I ate, but I was so hungry that I ate every bit of it. There were no utensils, so I ate with my right hand, quite the challenge since I was wearing a white skirt. There was some chicken, and of course the goat...man is it hard to come by good goat these days, and lots of sauces and curry and other unidentifiable items. We got another bag of goodies at this wedding and were on our way. I got the groom's cell phone number so I could get in touch with them later to get more details about why certain things were done, and perhaps figure out what I ate.
When I got home we still had no power...the power was out when I woke up that morning. Apparently they were changing transformers, but the workers drag the process out so they can get overtime pay. Lucky for me I had my trusty headlamp which got quite a few laughs. I'm off to Tobago this morning to spend a week or so with Heidi, her sister Colleen and Kerry who are all here to visit! I'm looking
forward to a week of lazing on the beach and hopefully avoiding the inevitable sunburn. So I may or may not have internet until sometime next week, but no worries, you'll hear about all of our fun then.
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Ryan
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Shania Rules
The Shania Twain cracked me up!