wearing our ridiculously nigerien and conservative attirewell today for nigerien culture and society class we went to our teacher's nephew's wedding. ceremony here isn't at all like it is in the state.. tradition says that the day is all about the groom and not the bride. while probably 150 people were celebrating in niamey, the bride-to-be was out in tillaberi - she was waiting to be picked up by the groom's friends for i guess the evening shebang.
on the way to the ceremony we took a quick visit to some girl's house, said hello, drank some juice, and left.. a strange little pit stop. on the road again and amina's car started squealing like a cat so we had to pull over, luckily right in front of a garage. the garage guys proceeded to give us a ride to the house.. all in a typical day's happenings here, il n'ya pas de problem, we say
so we reached the final destination at last, with all the family members wearing different cuts of the same crazy pagne. a big gathering, and 6 of us anasaras were warmly welcomed.. more Nigeriens in one place than i think i've seen yet, in and around an average sized nigerien home. we wore traditional nigerien clothing, so got some compliments on that, and it probably helped us blend in a little? at least that's what we thought until we were brought into a bedroom, they shut the door, and then we were like.. "they want to hide the awkward white people!" we really just sat around in the bedroom for a while, but an occasional old woman would come and serenade us with singing. then they brought us food - african rice and chicken, traditional style - which entails using your hands - no utensils! it was a big anasara mess. there was rice everywhere, none of us could breathe sitting on the floor in our traditional dresses, and we had officially lost amina, our teacher. after about 2 hours we decided to ask if anyone knew where she went, but by then she came back, and it was time to go.
we left with a member of the wedding party.. dropped us off at the main road and caught a taxi back.
i realize as i write that nothing that i can type can explain how awkward these situations have been, or how fun in retrospect. we have a singing competition and dinner on a boat tonight.. then tomorrow we're going to a posession ceremony, soo hopefully the next post will be a little more interesting!
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