The last weekend of December, Emma and I went to ‘The Sending’ of one of his friend’s bride outside of Moshi, Tanzania. In Maasae culture and tradition, the week before the wedding, the bride to-be participates in a ceremony where she is metaphorically ‘sent’ from her father’s home, and received into the home of her future husband.
There is an MC present, who coordinates the various stages of the ceremony and keeps the process moving along. It seems as if he or she is also usually responsible for providing speakers and getting a DJ. Every entrance of someone is marked by the intro of a different track. If someone is not speaking, then there is music being pumped through the sound system.
The bride starts dressed up in a modern fancy gown. Towards the end of the ceremony, she exits stage right and changes into traditional Maasae dress. At the beginning of this whole shebang there is a mini-church service; family members from both sides of the family are introduced, a minister says a few words, and the lady of the hour is blessed.
From there, a few of the highlights from the second half of the ceremonies included a toasting, where the right half of the seated, invited guests, the VIPs if you will, got up and made their way around a smaller select group of important persons and clinked glasses with them. Another enjoyable portion of the evening included a rotating ’laying of kangas’ (thin cuts of cloth – can be used and worn as a wrap for ladies or as a blanket/shoulder wrap for men) portion of the festivities that was fun.
I was given a kanga to drape over an old gentleman due to coming as Emma’s plus one, and Emma being the ‘Man of Honor’ for this particular ceremony. SO being Emma’s guest, I was able to have one special, singular role and participate in the evening a little there. Note: The man of honor for the sending is not also the man of honor for the wedding ceremony day. Strange. I’m not sure why that is.
Finally, the time came for food. They had butchered a large goat and roasted it to perfection. The spread was large, as it had to feed a cool two hundred people. Generally, I’ve noticed that these large, special celebrations & occasions are punctuated with a meal at-the end. I think the way these wedding ceremonies are made possible is by crowd-sourcing funds (every gives a little to pull these events off, and in-return, the company returns the favor when ‘your’ time comes). What I’ve inferred is that part of the deal for donating and coming includes a delicious meal at the end. These events are also multi hour long shenanigans, so the meal time comes and goes; people are hungry.
The travel to Moshi was intense. In-total, we had a three to four-hour drive there, and the same thing coming back. Tough. The home stretch up to the family home where the send-off was being held saw us taken up a road that a car had absolutely no business going up. I have seen personal automobiles taken up and down some insanely poorly kept, pot marked, hard-packed dirt roads; using the word road very loosely. It is wild the places a four-wheel vehicle will go/has to go upon necessity. The drives weren’t a whole lot of fun. I experienced a good bit of discomfort in the knee areas. All the running I’ve done over the years; the negative consequences have already started to present themselves in sensitive knees and a ginger back at the age of 24. Tough. So it goes.
On the way back, our sideview mirror got taken off as someone passed too close on our right. We had to pull over on the shoulder, and the man who was acting as our chauffeur had to cut the last few cords off completely off that were holding the mirror on by a thread. Tough for the owner of the car. He took the ‘news’ i.e. the hit and run, rather well, all things considered. He got back in the driver’s seat and we continued on our way, having made very little fuse in the process.
We got back into Arusha, specifically Il Boru, where Elisante’s family home is at midnight.We stayed there for the night. It was a long day of travel that began with a bodaboda shuttle into Arusha at 7:45 AM. Always a bit tough to start the day with an action-packed, super squeezed, no personal space, ride into Arusha town. Overall, it was a cool experience. It was my first wedding send-off. Peace and blessings on Elisante and his bride, who got married that next weekend.
Tanzanian Times 