Ghanaian Muslim wedding after party

[Once again, photo link at the end of the entry, if you're lazy.]

Well, it seems as if these Ghanaian celebrations -- and the invitations to them for this obruni -- just don't ever end. The evening after I attended the funeral drumming celebration, I was invited back to Latebiokorshie for part two of the drumming rites. There would be dancing, drumming, and singing once again, and this time a collections basket would also be passed around the village to raise funds for the funeral expenses. In Ghana, funerals are elaborate affairs and whole villages are invited. Many families go bankrupt in the process of buying the coffin, food, and attire. There was a pretty interesting piece written on Ghanaian funerals in a March edition of the Economist this year. Check it out here for more info.

As it turned out, the drumming got postponed because the state shut the power off in Latebiokorshie that evening. Everything was pitch black, and I made plans to return the following evening for the ceremony.

The trip to Latebiokorshie, a bourough on the western most edge of Accra, takes anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours from where I am staying in Labone, a pretty affluent district in the city right next to Osu. A round trip via taxi costs ten cedis, a little more than ten US dollars -- way more than this poor journalism student can afford. So on Saturday, I decided to make the first leg of my trip to Latebiokorshie using a tro-tro, the independently owned buses that are everyhere here in Accra. Everyone crams into those rickety vans, which often have the randomest slogans pastered across the doors and windows. Jesus Power. Fear God. Shut Up. Etc. A driver operates the tro-tro, of course, and a tro-tro mate tags along, someone who opens the door and yells out the destination at every stop. There's also a separate person who goes around collecting the fare.

We were told at the beginning of the trip never to get on a tro-tro. Ever. And tro-tro rides at night? A sure fire recipe for death, the orientation leaders told us. But I got on one anyway, at night, and guess what? Nothing happened. I'm still alive.

And the whole thing cost me the equivalent of 15 cents.

I took a taxi the rest of the way to Latebiokorshie, and when I arrived, I learned that there was also a wedding party happening the same time the funeral rites were being held. I ended up ditching the funeral drumming party to go to the wedding instead.

There was only a slight problem. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, and the dress code was strictly white. I was able to borrow Gladys' traditional two-piece outfit however, which happened to be exactly my size, although maybe a bit too long for me and I didn't own enough boob to quite fill it out. She also had shoes in my size too. Decked out in the stiff, lacy white thing, trying to balance myself on these super high platform shoes -- well, the whole affair was vaguely reminiscent of my Punahou high school grauation, when we were forced to wear white marshmallow dresses and shoes that ought to have surgeon's general warnings printed on their soles. Seriously. I'm not particularly good at this whole dress thing.

But I managed, and when I got to the party, which was outdoors, near the neighborhood gym, everyone was milling around drinking and laughing and talking. The Ghanaian men were friendly, and offered me sips from their drinks. I've had my share of Star beer here in Ghana, and I've developed something of a fondness for it. But this root wine was something else entirely. It tasted like rubbing alcohol mixed with toothpaste and menthol. Needless to say, I remained sober that night.

The wedding was Muslim, and the groom even converted from Christianity and changed his name to a traditional Muslim name in order to be accepted by his Muslim wife. That's pretty hardcore, but I guess if a woman did it, no one would even give that kind of dedication a second thought. There were a lot of guests dressed in traditional Islamic garb, sort of like a loose fitting tunic worn over loose slacks. Really descriptive, huh? The music, however, was hardly traditional. Shakira and Akon and other artists I don't even know the names of filled the whole street.

I mingled and chatted and danced for a bit with the men. The women, for the most part, gave me the cold shoulder, which has pretty much been my overall experience with Ghanaian women during my time here. Either they weren't drunk enough, or I wasn't.

For the first part of the evening, the bride and groom were nowhere to be seen. Then they showed up in a red car, and a bunch of horn players ran up to the vehicle and started blaring into long, black instruments. The newlyweds, along with the best man and the bride's maid, sat at their own special table arrayed with a variety of bottled drinks. I should have asked about the meaning of that.

For some reason, I was really tired that evening and I felt really uncomfortable in that dress and bored and sober too. Unlike the fineral I went to last Thursday, where I felt totally welcomed and accepted, this evening I was acutely aware that I was out of place. I don't know, maybe people don't have time to act all jealous and bitchy in the face of death, but it seems like weddings are just storehouses of girly bitch politics. That is, if I know anything from those glimpses I got of Sex in the City reruns we watched in the Talbot house lounge last year.

But the dancing continued, and the drinks made their rounds, and a bunch of people made some speeches and announcements.

Then the bride and groom stood up and some people showered cedi bills on them. Kojo told me that the practice is really popular in Nigeria, and that it's often performed here in Ghana too.

More dancing. And then the food came. But this time is was well after midnight. It's weird how long the ceremony went on before the food was served. It just seems like in general, that's how food works here in Ghana. Eating out at restaurants often requires a three or four hour commitment, because that's how long it takes to prepare the food. The whole concept of scheduling seems practically non-exitant here, and understandably, we Americans go crazy because of all those cancelled appointments and three-hour dinner delays and waiting around for God knows what. But in a strange way, not having to catagorize life into one-hour time slots is liberating too, and I feel people here are more in touch with themselves and each other because the culture allows them to simply be.

I bypassed the meat, but opted for the rice-based dishes and the bankum, a paste made from maize that is eaten with sauce or stew. In Ghana, no one uses forks or utensils. People eat with their right hands (the left is considered unclean) and there are often bowls of water with soap at tables for washing up before and after meals. I picked up a spoon at the buffet line, but eventually tossed it at the prompting of Eric (ERIIIIICOOOO, as he calls himself) who told me that this is Africa, where nothing bad will happen and germs won't kill you if only you believe hard enough.

During the course of the meal, about five different strangers ran their fingers through my food and dropped food bits from their hands and their mouths onto my plate. Then people started eating off my plate. They also complained because I wasn't eating the bankum with anything, and I eventually agreed to dip a little of it into the meat/fish sauce meant to go with it. Needless to say, toward the end of the night, I got pretty bad indigestion. Perhaps it was psychologically induced, though, but nothing some Tums couldn't remedy.

After the food and subsequent indigestion, I fell asleep for a little bit. But before I did, I noticed several of the women walking around with tear-streaked faces. For the most part, the women at the party kept a low profile, not talking much, and dancing only a little. Definitely not sauntering around with near-empty whisky bottles, like their husbands and boyfriends. So when I noticed that most of the women were crying amid all the dancing and drunken revelry, it occured to me that there was a whole other universe unfolding that evening, but one that I wasn't welcomed to witness. Even as a woman, and perhaps especially because I was a woman, an obruni woman. I wondered what was going on in the minds and hearts of the bride and her friends, but there weren't any women I could ask.

The actual marriage ceremony took place earlier that day, but it was a women-only affair, which is how it's done in traditional Muslim ceremonies I was told. I wonder what it was like that morning, but none of the men I spoke with were there to experience it.

As usual, there are accompanying photos posted on facebook here. Check them out.

This will be my last blog post for who knows how long. I get kicked out of the NYU dorm complex today, and will be staying at this beach front motel Todd found for $15 a day. Running water? Check. Electricity? Most times, check. But wireless internet access? Hell no. So I'll be writing on Word documents and posting the entries online when/if I get a chance.

I have a couple more interviews lined up for next week in Accra, and after those are over, I will most likely be traveling east to the Volta region with some people in my group. We'll be talking a boat up the Volta river and maybe visiting Tamale before heading to Mole National Park. Some people in my party want to go all the way up to the northern border to visit a witches internment camp (if we can find it, since no one knows where it is or whether it even exists in reality) and maybe cross over into Burkina Faso. I doubt I'll be going up all the way with them, and plan to come back to Accra to do more exploring. It's amazing how much there is here in the city that didn't make it into the last edition of the Bradt travel guide.