Swahili Wedding

Swahili weddings are a fascinating mixture of Islamic tradition and Western style. While the brides must be virgins (complete with virginity testing), they are allowed to wear spaghetti strap white wedding dresses straight out of American pop culture. Because there are no men at the all-night disco, women come scantily clad in their best dresses sans bui bui, despite the fact that the entire male population of the town voyeuristically watches from behind 4-foot tall potato sack fences. The entire wedding—disco, lunch, and ceremony—is divided by gender. Not only do the bride and groom not spend the wedding together, they actually don’t partake in any of the festivities, only the ceremony. On the day of the wedding, the guests gather for dancing (an interesting mix of traditional Swahili music and Shakira, Akon, and Beyonce (pronounced with a silent “e”)), lunch (communal plates of dead animals), and hours of sitting and waiting for the bride (or in this case, brides) to show up. Meanwhile, the groom goes to the mosque to get married, while the bride waits at home. Once they are officially married (the groom agrees to the marriage at the mosque), the bride shows up to the party, where she stands on a dais decorated for valentine’s day and waits for her husband to come fetch her for the wedding night.

There are very few things about western culture that I find outright superior, but I have two words: honeymoon suite.

It’s one thing to sit through an hour long cultural discussion about traditional wedding practices and entirely another to share a wall with the awkward-and-uncomfortable couple on their wedding night. It’s funny how sex is so taboo, but having witnesses to the virginity testing is entirely acceptable.