Africa Adventure 2012: Wedding Day!

March 12^th, 2012

It is early am and I had a hard time sleeping again last night. There are constant noises going on. The cockroaches sing, the Muslims chant and sing their prayers, and all the other bugs making noises. I swear people never sleep around here. No wonder why I feel exhausted all the time.

Have you ever heard of the expression your running on African Time. This is something that I have a very hard time with, but almost all of my family would fit in well with. They tell you that church starts at 7:30am. Which actually means 8 or 8:30am. Everything runs late. I can't stand it. So Saturday was the wedding, which is an all day affair here. The Council was at 9am. The phone rang at 6am that someone was going to drop off our dresses. I hung up and literally there was a knock at the door. They asked for a “document of just married”, I had no idea what they were talking about nor did Llonda so we took the dresses and they left. A few minutes later we received another call that they wanted us to print “JUST MARRIED” on paper to put on the car. I started to print it then let Llonda finish as I went with Eric to go watch him play football. (our soccer) He invited me to play and I politely declined thinking I would have probably been trampled on as most everyone here is in good shape. After all, they walk almost everywhere. Eric and I got back at almost 8am, so it was rush rush to get ready and be out the door and to the Council at 9am. We left at 8:55 thinking we would be late, and showed up and where the first ones there. Everyone else is running on African time. A few more trickled in, then we got the call that we were at the wrong place. So we piled into the couple of cars there and went up the street to the Hotel DEVILLE. It was a nice government building and I guess that one has to have a council ceremony before having the church wedding as it is the only legal wedding. Each the bride and groom have two witnesses. Llonda was one of Adda's, so she sat up front with them. Once the ceremony finally got started around 10am (again we are running on African time) it was over in about half hour. We went outside for pictures, then headed home for a break before the church wedding.

The wedding was at the Catholic church here in N'Gaoundere, and anyone who has been to a Catholic wedding knows they are long, and almost every wedding its always hot in there. The wedding started at 3pm and the priest Friday night at the rehearsal said we must not be late as there was mass Saturday night. So we made sure to be there promptly at 3pm as our prior engagement with the priest was not a good one, and of course we were one of the first ones there again. People trickled in up to an hour later. We stood there in the heat with our gowns on and had wished we left later. I begin to hate this “African time” more and more. The wedding starts at 4pm, and drags on and on. The priest went on for an hour about some speech who knows what he was saying as it was all in French which we couldn't understand. Between the heat and the smell of body odor I started to feel nauseous. I made it another half hour and when it was time for the offering, we took our chance and bolted outside for some much needed fresh air. We stood outside for awhile, with others as well, then went back inside and sat in the very back so we had an easy escape if needed. It was after 6pm, and finally over. We congratulated the bride and groom, took more pictures, then back to home to change clothes for the reception.

The reception started at 8pm at the hotel du lac, which is far away from town. We purposely didn't leave the house until almost 9pm not wanting to be the first to arrive. We were going to be officially running on “African time”. We arrived there to find that alas, we were again one of the first ones there. “Are you kidding me!”, I thought to myself. So we stood outside again, and it finally started around 10pm. We didn't eat dinner until 12:30am. We couldn't make it any longer and were the first to leave at 1:30am and they hadn't even cut the cake yet! Apparently weddings around here are nearly a 24hr ordeal. We found out the next day that most started to leave at 4am. Even getting home at 2am, we slept most of the day away.

Sunday, after getting up at around 12 -12:30pm, we tried to visit the neighbor man who moved to Cameroon with his family in 1960 as missionaries, but wasn't home, and I still was not feeling well from I think being a little dehydrated and overheated, so I laid down for a nap. We finally were able to meet up with Mr Nelson and he showed us a very nice presentation of N'Gaoundere from back in the 60's and how it has formed into what it is today.

After visiting with him, we went into the market to buy some groceries, as we had planned to make cookies and homemade pizza for dinner. We came back and were not home long before we had a visit from Adda, JB and Danielle. It was a short visit, but we had brought some medical supplies for JB for his schooling and had some toys for Danielle. We gave them their wedding present and then they had to leave. We cooked pizza for Eric and then had some more surprise guests show up. The Dr in training from Germany and another gal from Germany who is on a year long expedition traveling every week to a different town and hospital doing some sports medicine training. They were more than thrilled to have pizza and cookies. As was Eric. We stayed up late again even though we knew we would have a long day at the hospital.

Good night all!