The wedding of the century.

We had the amazing honor to be part of the most amazing and surprising wedding celebration I have ever been to. A good friend of Fiona and Carrie's got married last week and we were asked to participate in the wedding by driving the bride from her village to her new home. This is actually a part of the ceremony, so it's more special than it sounds to us westerners.

Wanting to honor our friend, Boubou, we all got dressed up in our finest Senegalese clothes and headed the 5 hours south to Keur Soce where the part of the wedding celebration was to take place (weddings last several days here).

Once in Keur Soce we all went to the salon where the bride, Ami, was getting her hair and make up done for the wedding. Appearance is VERY important here and the Senegalese have their own sense of style.

Here the bride has elaborate braids in her hair and the stylist put lines of gold nail polish like stuff decoratively in her hair. Her eyebrows were nearly completely shaved off with a straight razor (please be careful) and then penciled back in with a purple-y burgandy. Shimmery metalic eyeshadow was applied and lipstick matching her eyebrows was the finishing touch.

Another tradition is to decorate the hands and feet with henna.

Once all the hair, make up and clothing was perfectly in place, we ceremonially drove the bride back to her father's house where the wedding was to take place. Interestingly enough, the groom is not present at this part of the wedding, rather he waits for his bride back at their home (which on a side note, is shared with 20 other family members). If Ami looks mad in these pictures it's because she hasn't slept in days getting all the preparations ready for the wedding. The lack of sleep is probably the only similarity between this wedding and western weddings.

Well, that's not entirely true, there were presents and (you ready for this Jim and Casey *wink*) DANCING. The Senegalese dancing is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It more resembles running in place with high knees pointed out to the side and the occasional kick or stomp. Fiona, Carrie and Crystal all danced, Scotty was hiding with the other 10 men that were present.

After the dancing, there was the ceremonial bath by the women in the community. After that Ami got changed into another outfit and then was blessed by the Emum, the Muslim leader of the community. She wore a sheet over her head to keep her safe from evil spirits. She wore this on her head the entire drive back to Dakar.

Just for some timeline:

-we left Dakar at 10 am

-we arrived in Keur Soce at 3pm

-we ate dinner at 9pm

-we packed up Ami and all her belongings and headed to Dakar at 1am (the bride has to be transported during the night to keep the evil spirits from finding her)

-then we arrived in Dakar at 5am

We were greeting with about 20 women sitting outside Boubou's house banging on pots and pans and drums and singing. Again, this is all ceremonial. Then they teasinly, negociated the bride price (it had previously be negociated and paid), then once they came to an agreement Ami had to get transfered from the car to the house, but she cannot touch the ground. So a strong young man ceremonially puts her on his back (like a piggy back ride), she is still covered in her sheet and he has to ram through 20 women ceremonially baracading the door.

Now when I say ceremonially that brings to mind images that the women are just being playful, but this was not the case. These women were taking their jobs seriously and the man had to get up some speed and really ram hard to get through the wall of women. It really looked like Ami was going to be knocked off his back and onto the ground. Thankfully, she was not.

We then unloaded the truck of all the gifts and belongings and then went to our friends house in Dakar where we were all crashing for the night, we arrived "home" at 6am and proceeded to crash hard.

The party got started the next day at 8am, needless to say, we were all still sleeping. We desided tobe fashionally late and showed up at 7pm. Notice how we are all wearing the same thing but Ami is in yet another outfit.

We all sat in lawn chairs in the dirt street out front of Boubou's house under a large tent. It is not a problem that we were completely blocking the street of all traffic, this is a normal occurance. We were served an amazing meal, that is called "Salad", it's goat meat with cooked wedged potatoes in an onion sause with lettuse on the outside and served with bread, so tasty.

We were the only toubaubs at the party and we were a hit, the kids especially love to yell out "toubaub" and poke at our weird skin and hair. These guys all live in Boubou's house (part of the 22 residence) and they were sweeties.

Another part of the ceremony is to have a singer at your wedding. Now this is not your western wedding singer doing Sting covers, this lady was serious with her megaphone and everything. The guests are expected to pay the singer a little bit, which is actually nice because I imagine it helps the couple pay for part of a very expensive event.

The party goes on into the night. However, after such an exhausting day before we excused ourselves to find comfort in some ice cream from our favorite ice cream shop "Nice Cream". After a crazy 2 days these feet were ready for a break.