Today was our last day in Kigali after our amazing ten day stretch here, as we’re busing back to Kibungo tomorrow. The last saturday of every month is also called Umuganda, it’s like a community development day. Everything is closed until noon (enforced by law) so that people can work on cleaning things up, gardening, some kind of productive work. It’s something like a holiday. All that it meant for me was I was sleeping in, which was fine with me since I had been up until 5 am. I still got up around 10:30, and at 12 Kara and I went to Bourbon.
After breakfast Kara was getting done up for the wedding and I was just hanging out. I decided to nap until it was time to leave because I was still really tired and I had nothing better to do. We made our way there around 3:30 even though it was supposed to start at 2. Even then, I think it took at least another hour to begin.
The wedding was pretty cool. Fortunately for us, it wasn’t a typical Rwandan ceremony. The woman getting married was Elizabeth, who is a board member for BBR back in Vancouver. She met a Canadian man named Paul and they were married already in Canada. So the ceremony we were at wasn’t the official wedding. But, it included the introduction, which is essentially the engagement that normally doesn’t take place at the wedding itself. How it works is that the groom will send a delegate, usually a very eloquent speaker from the community, to go on his behalf to the bride’s house and negotiate the marriage. They will bring a gift, and they exchange witty banter and goof around trying to agree on a settlement and extend it so that they can drink together and have a lot of fun. It’s obviously very funny, because everyone who understood Kinyarwanda was laughing a great deal. Lama would translate it when he could and I could see how it was enjoyable. Apparently I was getting made fun of by the bride’s side (I was sitting on the groom’s), because when we were first seated we had great seats in the middle front row, but then we were moved and I was put RIGHT behind this bush so I couldn’t see a thing. The bride’s speaker was making fun that I was being hidden behind the bush because I was Canadian and can’t be trusted.
The bartering for the marriage lasted over an hour for sure, and finally everyone cheered when the deal was made and the marriage would go through. Phew. Even though I couldn’t understand what was going on, I could really feel the suspense and was worried the wedding wouldn’t happen, regardless of if they were already married or not. I had asked Freddy one time about the process here and if a delegate ever was turned down and a marriage didn’t go through. He said it was extremely rare, and it only happened if the groom-to-be was a giant asshole and everyone knew it. Paul seemed really nice.
There was a really awesome procession including traditional dress and dance, but I don’t think there was much of a ceremony to speak of. The wedding party just sat inside this hut while there was singing and dancing. Then everyone ate together and that was the end of the wedding. It was neat but I wish I spoke Kinyarwanda because the bulk of it was speaking. So in my case daydreaming. We have at least two more weddings to go to while we’re here too, so it will give me time to brush up on my Kinyarwanda. One sweet product of the wedding was that I was dressed up in the clothes I bought at the market yesterday, and people kept complimenting me on them all day. Rwandan guys would give me thumbs up and point to my clothes and say nice. The clerk at the hotel asked me if I bought the shirt. When I said yes he said, “It is amazing. It is an amazing shirt.” Haha. The look on his face was so sincere like we were talking about something so much more profound than a shirt. Either way, I’m really glad he liked it.
After the wedding was over, we walked back to our hotel. Lama and Kara were beat but I still had energy. They decided they were calling it a night so I talked to Taylor and we agreed to meet at a restaurant since he was hungry and I was craving coffee and dessert. The restaurant we met at was called Papyrus and it was super nice yet still in my league. It was cozy and casual. There was a fantastic deck with candles on the tables and white lights strung all over the roof. It was a warm Kigali evening so it was just wonderful to be out on the patio.
I had a typical Rwandan hang up of ordering dessert, and then thirty minutes later having my waiter return to say there was no Tiramisu. So I said I’ll just have ice cream. Nope. I’ll take whatever you have. We have no desserts. Well then. Taylor said he’d be right back, he was going to check it out, and he came back with two little sweet cake/loaf things from a bakery next door. So I had coffee and cake and Taylor had dinner. Our conversation was interesting because we don’t know each other that well, but the more and more we talked the more and more uncanny it was becoming in how similar we are. We took turns telling stories from our lives or ideas we had or experiences we’ve been through and the other would have had an identical one to match. To me, Taylor seemed to be a future version of myself, or at least a version I would hope to be. Every story from his college days are exactly what I am thinking and experiencing now, and the projects he is working on post college are the exact type I would love to see myself engaged in. I wouldn’t describe the connection I felt scary, because it was far from it, but it was also too many coincidences to be a coincidence. It was just remarkable, that’s all, and the entire night I had a really great time.
At around midnight we decided it would be a good time to call it a night. I told him I would drop him a line when we come back to Kigali in a month for another weekend stay. I really hope to see him again before I leave Rwanda. After our farewell there was nothing left to do except moto through the warm evening air back to my hotel.
