My host sister’s wedding
In a small village of 500 people, entertainment can be hard to come by. There are no dance clubs, bars or establishments open past dusk. By 10pm on an average night, all but teenage boys are generally in their compounds or in their houses. There is little to be found in the way of excitement. Nevertheless, there are a few events guaranteed to bring the party to a village like mine. One of these events is a wedding, and I had the fortune or being able to attend the wedding of my sister during this past home stay.
On the day of the wedding, my family was stirring with preparation by dawn. My sister, who had gotten her feet elaborately painted with the jaba (henna) that is favored for weddings, was the only one who was not doing anything–she was not supposed to, being the bride. By the afternoon, I was meeting a whole host of relatives just arrived from the big market town nearby, Bamako, or other distant, exotic locales. The women were all meticulously dressed in regal-looking fabric; many shared the same light skin and mouth tattoo that Fula women are noted for. Though it was difficult to determine the exact family relationship of all these women, they ranged from young women around my age, to very old ladies with faces wizened by years in the village. I and the other trainees brought 5 kilos of sugar to present to my host father, as is custom for wedding guests. The festivities began around 4 with dancing and drumming; the women gathered in a circle and became a blur of brightly-colored fabric and bodies sashaying to the constantly changing beat.
In all this, Awa was nowhere to be found. This is because, as is dictated by Malian tradition, the bride is “hidden away” from the wedding festivities until it is time to go meet her husband. She sat surrounded by other women in her mother’s hut, and when I went to go sit by her got a glimpse of the white linen skirt and top , complete with headpiece, that she was wearing. With her caramel skin and intricately braided hair, the effect was quite stunning. Even so, I couldn’t help but muse that Americans would find the somber atmosphere in the hut quite odd, while all of the bride’s guests were outside jamming and having a ball.
Anyway, she sat there for at least an hour, probably longer, until the groom’s friend’s arrived to take her to her husband’s house. Rather than a ceremony or elaborate exchange of commitments, weddings here can involve a dramatic show whereby the groom’s friends show up, usually in one of the rare vehicles that exists in the village, and make a display of bestowing the bride’s family with gifts until they are finally obliged to allow her to leave and be taken to her new husband’s family’s home. When this moment happened, the whole crowd standing around my host mom’s hut parted to catch a glimpse of my sister, fabric draped over all but her eyes, emerge from the house and get into the car. This parting glimpse was the last I saw of Awa that night–she would spend the rest of the time at her husband’s family’s home. She would not join in on the raucous party that ensued in the village center, where xylophones played songs amplified throughout the village until well past 3am, where women and men joined their respective separate lines to do the wildly popular “baloni don” (xylophone dance), and where smartly-dressed relatives from Bamako reconnected and mingled with their brethren still in the village. It was like a raucous American wedding reception without the bride, groom or alcohol .
In the US, we tend to see marriage as very couple-centered, an explicit and (ideally) carefully-considered choice made by two people to be together. In my village, and in Mali, a marriage is much more a union of families and of communities. It’s not about the dress and the exchange of rings, but about what one family gives up–their daughter–for another family’s gain. Girls might know from the time they are 14 or 15 who they are expected to marry, and any romantic tint to the actual wedding is not really apparent from the outside. The whole village came out to celebrate an occasion that neither the bride nor groom was really present for. That alone might be perceived in the American context as completely missing the point, but here, where all of life is communal and everything is shared, it makes sense that the union becomes a reason for all to celebrate.
I feel lucky to have had this experience so early in my time here, since weddings are such an important aspect of social life and are just a great excuse for a party in general. I’m sure I’ll witness many more of these, but it was especially interesting to be so up close with a sister so close in age to me getting married. While marriages here are so far removed from many of the highly romantic notions Americans are accustomed to, they are yet another aspect of Malian culture I’m eager to learn more about.
