Dowry Ceremony

This is going to seem entirely complicated, mostly because it is but also because I still can’t make much sense of it. So follow allow as I bring you through the inner workings of a dowry ceremony in Rwanda!

After I had moved to Rwanda and got placed in my site my mom told me about a person she met in Maine who said she comes from a town called Kamembe. Surely it’s not the same town a mere hour drive away from me because 1) that would just be too weird of a coincidence and 2) Rwanda has a knack for having multiple places with the same name (there’s supposedly a village somewhere called Kigali, the name of the capital). But lo and behold! it is! So I met with the brother (because the person my mom met now lives in Maine) and planned on starting a friendship but then he moved to Zambia for work and though I’m sure Zambia has  a lot going for it that was a bit too far for my Peace Corps travel allowance to handle. So I let it be. Months went by, children called me muzungu/umunshinwa, I watched movies with my students, I got drunk at teachers meetings, life went on as normal. Then one fateful day I got a call from the sister of the person my mom knows and the brother I met in Kamembe telling me that when my mom and friend come to visit that they and I are invited to a dowry ceremony being held at her house. Now, my avid readers, you may be wondering how she got my number, even more so if you know that I had my phone stolen long ago and got a new number that neither she nor her brother knew, but you would be amiss to think that I would be able to provide you with an answer. Suffice it to say that Rwandan’s are resourceful and know how to stalk without arousing your suspicions. After several moments of weird half English half Kinyarwanda (Kinglish?) I got all the necessary details and we can jump ahead to the day of the dowry…

We were told to arrive at noon so that we could be fitted for the event because they wanted to dress us in traditional Rwandan garb, called umushanana. We casually sauntered in at 1pm with the assumption that we did right in disregarding what they said and came in at our leisure but no, we were duped! The next two hours were spent sitting and talking to random people, taking some pictures, and telling my mom “I told you so” because she tried urwagwa (banana beer) and it was every bit as foul as I promised her it would be. After a little while another white person walked in and my instinctive “What the hell are you doing here? This is my territory!” kicked in because I’ve developed a “better than thou” mentality regarding all other non-PC whites in Rwanda. He was a British guy who taught some of the family members English about 13 years ago and since he works in Congo he came by for the event. Shortly after the collapse of my unjustly founded sense of superiority we headed to location number two to change into our imishanana (plural of umushanana). We ended up being driven by a local friend of mine who bought a van and was being paid to chauffeur us around town and he brought us to the swankiest house I’ve seen in this country. It was absolutely huge, everyone spoke Parisian French and really good English, and they were watching a cheesy Joe Pesci movie on DVD. This was when things really got weird. My mom had on her green sheen umushanana and Eric and I were fitted both with zebra striped sandals, white button-up shirts, shiny blue/grey imishanana, pearl necklaces and the coup de grâce, a cane. I felt like my time had come. I was a Rwandan Jesus goat herder. Nothing I do in life will ever trump this, save maybe Rwandan Jesus goat herder in a banana suit.

Outfits adorned, we made our way back to the house for the ceremony to begin. It was somewhere around here that we were informed that we were to play a more active role in the ceremony than had been previously let on. I was third in line, behind two old men, in front of whom two girls were sprinkling heart and star paper confetti for us to walk on like we do with flower petals in the States. The entire way down the hill (as is traditional in Rwandan topography) I could only think “DO.NOT.TRIP.ON.YOUR.DRESS.” We all made it safe and sound and I got seated in the back corner in a tent, and promptly thanked Vishnu, Buddha, Walker Texas Ranger, and all the other religious icons for putting me in the most inaccessible spot possible because it would help shield me from the threat of having a microphone put in front of my face and made to give a speech. My mom got seated somewhere in the midst of people she didn’t know but Eric and I were together and promptly set up our private little peanut gallery of entertainment. At this point it was every person for him or herself. She was on her own.

Much daydreaming and a single small Primus later, terror struck; I got called to the front. From the opposite sitting area (there were two, like bride and groom seating) an older woman came forth and I was told to give her some hugs and do the head to head touching thing. Much laughter and confusion later I returned to my seat and was told something about how I now had a fiancé. It was also around this time that I was referred to as the younger brother of “Lick Lockwoods” (read: Rick Rockwoods), the groom, who, if you’ve been reading attentively this whole time, I’ve not mentioned. The reason is that neither the bride nor the groom was present at any point of the dowry ceremony because they were in America and had already finished their honeymoon. This whole ceremony was all for posterity and I was the representative for a person and his family I had never met before.

Thinking all was in the clear I sat back down and continued with my daydream about cheese or something, short lived as it was because my mom, Eric, the British guy and I were called up to bring gifts to the bride’s family. Awkward handshakes, head to head touching and countless pictures later, I got seated in the best man’s seat at the head table in the middle of everything. Cue flashing white Christmas lights, champagne (I was one of four people in the whole ceremony to be given this), traditional dancing (of which I had to take part) and standard Rwandan buffet.

In a nutshell, this was my experience with Rwandan dowries. I can check this off my list of things never to do again. It was certainly an interesting experience and I’m happy it happened but in the future I would like a little more warning about being the best man/younger brother/family representative to someone I’ve never met. Maybe I’m old fashioned.