Going to the Chapel

looking back to September 2016:

A.'s visits to my town are cause for much celebration amongst my colleagues, who are thrilled to hear the American woman who speaks such good Damara-Nama!  (Damara-Nama is a Khoisan language, which includes clicking and popping sounds as well as the consonant and vowel sounds we use in English.  It is often considered quite difficult to master.  A. would be quick to tell you she hasn't mastered it, but she can get along well in basic conversation.)  So when Ester invited me to her daughter Yolanda's wedding, she made sure to include "that one of Khorixas" in the invitation.  (Proper names just aren't a big thing for a lot of people here.)

That one.

Serendipitously, the wedding fell on the day after my birthday, so A. could get two events for a single hike.  I'm pretty sure the wedding was the bigger draw.  To clarify:  the actual ceremony was quite early on Saturday, when we were still in Swakop, recovering from cold, driving winds and a multi-course birthday dinner with good wine.  So we skipped that part, held at the Roman Catholic church.  We were all in for the reception, though, which began in the town hall at 17:00.

There's no standard format for a wedding reception in Namibia, although food and drink and music are common elements..  This is just about the one I attended.

We put on dresses and gussied up a bit, and headed to the Town Hall at about 18:00.  (In my New England childhood, town hall was the building where the business of the town was conducted.  Here, that's usually called the municipality building, or the town council office, while the town hall is an exhibit hall or entertainment space, usually with a stage at one end.)  I'd held my winter trainings in the Hall, a bare and drafty space, but it was transformed for the reception.  The caterer had decked it out in banquet tables, covered chairs, and white and light blue draperies and decorations of various kinds.  These elaborate decors, usually just two-toned, are the norm in all the caterers' brochures and wedding reception preparations I've seen.

Fancy!

One hour after the stated start time, the band was warming up, and we were the first guests, although there were a few gathered outside.  We poked around, checked out the cakes, gazed awestruck at the bride-and-groom thrones, and around 18:30 joined a few of my colleagues at a banquet table toward the back of the hall.  Conversation was jolly and mixed, in subject and language.  The mother of the bride stopped by to exchange congratulations and stresses.  A. gathered a few new fans who hadn't yet been exposed to the marvel that is an auslander speaking Damara-Nama.

Cake!  They looked like suitcases.  I don't know why.

The bridal party arrived!  It was wonderful!  Parents and other relatives were in their best, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen and a bunch of little kids were all color-coordinated and cute or beautiful or handsome as they preferred, and dancing.  They danced through the caterer's fancy arch to the flash of many bulbs, and up to the stage.

A musician and family member in typical Nama dress.

Aunts, probably.

Yolanda and Eric

Everyone so happy!

There were lots of speeches, mostly  in Afrikaans, that I think were largely about the value of family and the blessings of God.  The band played.  The Yolanda and Eric danced together beautifully.  A. said they danced like a couple that would last, and I agreed.  Ester stopped by again and collected everyone's cash gifts.  A man named Stephanus joined our table, and proved to be the best wedding-table partner ever.  Food came; plates full of the standard stewed and braaied meats, potato salad and macaroni.  Here's where it gets weird.

Good marriage ahead, right?

I have heard many stories of Namibian wedding guests, and funeral guests, and other-kinds-of-banquets guests, eating large quantities of food, and packing larger quantities into containers they've brought with them specifically to carry food away.  At this wedding, at my table at least, people picked at the food, piled leftovers onto two or three common plates, and handed it off to a crew of little kids who'd gathered at the hall, presumably in search of something like this.  So.  That's my experience.

Note vegetable matter, upper right

Informal guests

After the food was disposed of, the dancing began.  The band had packed up at some point and been replaced with recorded music.  I love to dance; I think most people at this reception did not even stand and shimmy a bit.  But Stephanus danced.  Oh, yes.

At some point the drink came out.  First it was sparkling wine, which allowed for a couple of toasts.  Then the servers came around with six packs of beer and cider (the alcoholic kind), and bottles of brandy, vodka, whisky, maybe other hard stuff - beer and cider were capped, but the tops were off the big bottles.  That's so you can't take them home, A. and I speculated.  However... earlier, we'd gotten small bottles of water.

My colleagues and table-mates

Stephanus took charge of liquor distribution; he could also open one beer bottle with another.

The bride and groom left around this time; A. and I did not meet them.  They didn't do that walk-around common at weddings I've attended in the U.S. and Ireland to say hello to each guest.  At my table, people were drinking, but also pouring the hard liquor into emptied water bottles, and capping those to take away.  And some more dancing.  And Stephanus flitting about, flirting in a gregarious and entirely un-aggressive and reasonably charming way, and dancing vigorously and creatively.  Guests started mingling a bit more, and fairly suddenly, and before midnight, people started leaving.  A. and I declined all offers of escorts and rides home, so I cannot report on what happened at after-parties.

I tried to persuade A. into the bouquet-toss, but she declined with vigor.
Good thing, too; it got a bit scrum-y.

That's DANCING!

So's that.

Do you know where that thing has been?

Mine came straight off the table.

Silas, my best bud at work.

A. and me

Maybe I should put all the Stephanus pictures.

I saw Ester a few days later back at the office, and she and I were both still elated by the party, though she maybe a bit wrung out still.  She told me that many of their guests were very impressed that she'd scored two whites as guests.  This is something A. encounters a lot in her town -- the idea that whites are inherently superior to blacks -- but I almost never hear.  We talked a bit more, and I hope that our value was more in our foreign-ness (I've gotten shout-outs at Irish weddings for coming all the way from the USA) than our skin color.  And Yolanda and Eric did look truly, peacefully happy together as they danced.