Wedding Day

Francis and Atsabina asked the committee members to arrive promptly at 9:30 AM for their 10 AM wedding. We knew it was quite dubious that this event would start on time but we can sympathize with the sentiment since we got married 15 months ago.

We arrived at 9:30 AM sharp with our nicely printed programs all ready to go. We were, of course, the only car in the place. Two people from M’s lab are here this week so the 4 of us sat in the shade while we waited since it was already boiling hot outside.

Arlene, Indu, and Max, patiently waiting:



At about 10, other committee members and the choir rolled in and began sitting under the tree as well. We sat until about 11 when the bride and groom arrived. The bride was unwilling to exit the car with all of us sitting under the baobab tree and insisted that the guests be seated before she got out.

M, Indu, and Arlene were seated and I stood by the door to usher people into their seats and hand out programs. People were moving pretty slowly from the heat so the wedding didn’t start until 11:30 AM with the bridal procession. Now people don’t just walk down the aisle in Kenya, they dance and it seems the preferred approach is to dance 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. This makes for a long procession but it was sort of nice that they didn’t just rush down the aisle and start the service.



One of the little girls in my class, Sharon, was a flowergirl and the bride and groom’s son, Leroy, was the ring bearer. They were really adorable:

Leroy and Sharon:



Me, Sharon, and Mama Sharon:



You’ll notice that Leroy isn’t wearing a suit but a fancy shirt and dark trousers. This was a miniature of his father’s outfit and is popular on the coast for weddings. Most men at the wedding were dressed this way while the women wore dresses or traditional attire. We had been pre-warned that a suit would be fine but it would be better for M to wear a “coastarian” shirt if at all possible. “Coastarian” (pronounced “coast-arian”) is what the people in coast province call themselves. M gamely went into Ukunda to find a fundi (expert in Swahili) to make him a shirt. I wasn’t able to go with him but he informed me upon his return that he had selected a blue fabric with some silver trim. Now, what he received fit well but the fundi made the executive decision that his shirt should include a pocket so he looked like he was wearing fancy medical scrubs. In fact, the shirt actually resembled a dressy version women’s nursing scrubs since the doctor’s are usually confined to hospital issue scrubs. Behold:



He hated it but I made him wear it on the premise that very few people were going to think he was wearing hospital scrubs and that it was better to look like you made a culturally appropriate attempt than to sweat to death in a suit.

I wore the only dress I have purchased since arriving in Kenya. It is only sold in one shop here in Diani and I was saving it for a special occasion since I don’t want to hand wash it here. Thus, I was only going to get one wearing out of it and a wedding seemed like a good reason.

Ok, enough on clothes, back to the wedding. The bridal party eventually made it down the aisle and the ceremony began. Much of it was in Swahili and it was a Catholic service so the call and responses weren’t very familiar to us but the choir was beautiful and we were enjoying ourselves. Two ladies came forward to do the Bible readings for the ceremony and I noticed they were holding our program. At that point I looked at M to see if he had noticed and we both had to suppress laughing as they read the verses from our wedding from the back of the program. We put those there as placeholders and here there were heavily featured in the ceremony. The priest went on to preach on the verses and quote them several times during his liturgy. We were highly amused that the programs came in so handy!

The wedding wrapped up in about an hour and 45 minutes and then we headed down the road to the reception. The reception was open seating but as gift-table guards, we got to sit with the presents. To be honest, I was slightly relieved that we didn’t have to make extensive conversation for 6 hours.

Vigilant present table guarding:



People ambled into the reception over the next hour, and our pile of presents to guard grew higher and higher. Soon, the buffet line opened up, and people returned to their tables with the most massive plates of food that you’ve ever seen. From big men to little old mamas, no one was shy. Not that Americans eat like birds, but at events where there’s food served in Kenya, it’s every man, women, and child for themselves.

We got food in shifts, so not to cause a lapse in present security. It was good, pretty typical Kenyan fare: rice, stewed chicken, stewed beef, sukuma (kale), and ugali (dry, tasteless polenta…that might be redundant). There was also some sort of bean and sweet potato mash that was pretty tasty, but we didn’t catch the name.

Leroy lost his pants at the wedding (Lapham would be proud):



As lunch wrapped up, so began the speeches. I’m not sure if we’ve written anything about it yet, but Kenyans LOVE microphones. It seems like stage fright doesn’t exist here. So, the bride’s family got to speak first. The MC asked that only one person from each side speak, so about eight or ten gave speeches. Most were in Swahili, so we could only get the gist. Next, the groom’s family, then the bride’s work colleagues, then, the groom’s. And so on. After about 2.5 hours of this, they then asked the wedding committee to come to the front. We got someone trustworthy to watch over the gifts, and headed to the front of the room. The mic was passed and we all had to introduce ourselves, say how we’re related to the couple, and anything else we wanted. Fortunately, those in front of us set an example of brevity, so we didn’t say a whole lot, but we did say it in Swahili, which was nerve-wracking, but it felt good when we were done.

Finally, after about 3.5 hours of speeches, the reception was over, but our work was not! M pulled the truck up to the reception hall and we loaded all of the presents into the truck to then take to our apartment, as the groom wanted to store them somewhere safe. Apparently in his own home with his family members was not suitably safe so we are storing them here. After the sweatiness of moving a few hundred gifts, we had to drive the “cooker” directly to their house. The “cooker” aka stove is the traditional gift from the bride’s parents at a wedding. So despite the fact that Francis and Atsabina have lived together for 4 years, the bride’s parents hauled the cooker on a 18 hour bus ride from Kakamega. We couldn’t carry the cooker up our 3 flights of stairs so we drove it to Francis and Atsabina’s where we were again made to swear that we would be attending the extension party in a few hours.

We headed home for a 90-minute respite to stop sweating and sit down for a few minutes and then headed to the extension party. What greeted us was the Kenyan version of a backyard BBQ. Boiled and fried goat meat on the bone, rock hard potatoes, and some sort of potato mash was served along with cold Tuskers. We gamely took a plate and went to sit with M’s lab colleagues. Now, mbuzi (goat) is eaten in Kenya with gusto using your hands so we attempted to join in although I’m sure we looked very unskilled at this. It’s basically impossible to extract any meat without copious gnawing at the same spot for several minutes so this occupied our time for a good 30 minutes. At that point, having eaten 3 bites and hands covered in grease, I resorted to just drinking my Tusker and quitting the food altogether.

Francis, Atsabina, and Leroy showed up and it was nice to speak with them since we hadn’t spoken to them all day. They really enjoyed the wedding and said they were thrilled with how the day went which we were happy to hear. The party stretched into the night with dancing and a lot of drinking but we slipped out after about 2 hours.



I’d say our first foray into Kenyan wedding planning was a success and it was certainly an interesting experience. We were happy our program was so helpful, maybe we’ll become Kenyan wedding consultants if the whole med school/biotech consulting thing doesn’t work out for us.