Barefoot Dripping Groom

One of the weekends that happened to me in the recent past presented me with an opportunity to attend a traditional Burkinabe wedding. As my host mother explained it to me, for many couples this traditional wedding is the first of three wedding ceremonies. It is the wedding that takes place in the village, with the families of the bride and groom. The second wedding is the celebration that takes place in a church or mosque, in which the union is blessed by religious leaders. Often, vows used here are identical to those taken in marriages in the United States. The third wedding is the legal union of the bride and groom. It's where the paperwork happens.

The traditional ceremony centers around the giving of the bride to the groom and his family. This is an important point to remember. There are some aspects of the marriage that make more sense if marriage is seen less as a bringing together of two families and more as a transition on the bride's part from one family to another. My experience was partly that of a complete outsider, partly that of a member of the groom's family.

In the morning, around 9 a.m., I went with my host parents to the home of some relatives. There, people greeted each other, and then, while sitting in the courtyard chatting, we were presented with a late-morning meal. A large communal platter of chicken atop fried rice. At the table I was seated around, a bucket was passed around, and everyone took turns helping each other wash their hands by pouring water over the hands of the person next to them. The rice was hot - my fingers ended up bright red even though I spent less time with rice in my hand than most of the others. (I say hand, not hands plural, because you must use only your right hand to eat, especially when sharing food). After we finished, we packed ourselves onto a bus ('we' being the groom and family/friends), and started the two and a half hour drive to the bride's village. After a few stops along the way (at villages where bread and water and fruit and tissue paper were stuck into the bus windows by local villagers hoping to sell) we arrived in the village at what must have been around noon.

I'm fairly sure that marriage-related things started happening as soon as we arrived, but I wasn't a participant in these preparations. I sat underneath an enormous mango tree with most of the rest who had come on the bus, enjoying the shade and the company of my host mom. After about an hour we were all summoned to the other side of the village, where we sat in the shade of another mango tree. Mats were laid out on the ground. Before going onto the mats and sitting, I removed my sandals, following the example of others. Only the women in the groom's family who couldn't fit on the mats (and sat instead on benches along two sides of the matted area) kept their shoes on. Among those sitting on the mats, there was more or less a division of the bride's family on one side and the groom's family on the other. At the center were a handful of elderly men.

The bride's family (her whole village, actually) was Mossi, the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso. The groom's family (my host family) was Samo. In Moore, the language of the Mossi, the old men began to discuss the amount of money that would be given by the groom's family in exchange for the bride. This was not a simple procedure. It is not only the bride's parents who receive money. Her uncles, her sisters, the wives of her brothers, etc... all are paid separately. The bride's village (particularly her family) is losing a strong and capable worker. They want compensation. (Incidentally, my host mom explained to me that women in the village (meaning women of all villages) do more work than the men.) Every few minutes, as the leaders of the bride's family insisted that what was being given by the groom's family was not sufficient, one of the men of the groom's side (the groom, next to me, seated among them) would reach into a pocket for another bill or handful of coins.

While the old men were discussing amongst themselves, a whisper began circulating among the members of the groom's family: "hide your shoes." People who had taken their shoes off reached for them and put them back on. My shoes were passed to me, and I was told to put them underneath my leg. "If their girls take your shoes," it was explained to me, "you have to pay to get them back." Sure enough, soon a few young women were walking around the perimeter of the group seated on the mats, looking for unguarded shoes. They found none.

And then it was done. Perhaps fifteen minutes after quickly protecting our sandals from being "collected," the deal had been finalized. The marriage was paid for. Together, those of us in the groom's party walked back to the first mango tree, a grand tree with a large circle of dozens of chairs in the shade beneath it. There, we (the groom's family) ate a delicious meal prepared for us by women from the village. The bride's family would eat later, feasting in celebration with the entire village. At some point amidst the celebrating, two pairs of sandals were collected by village women. The two who had been careless enough to leave their footgear unguarded: my host father and the groom himself. Someone asked if we were going to pay. We paid. I don't think there was ever really a question of whether we would. The price to get the shoes back was about a dollar (which goes further in Burkina than a dollar would in Kansas, but is still not much).

Around nightfall, as the groom's party was preparing to leave, I was confronted by a handful of grinning village women after using their bathroom. I had been watching some other nearby women brewing cauldrons full of their village's particular version of Burkina's millet beer, waiting for my host mom to finish in the bathroom. When she did finish, and came out and began talking with the women who were trying to talk with me, she was pleading. "No! No, he doesn't understand!" she said of me. She threw out the excuse that I was a white person. I was, of course, completely lost. "What did I do?" I asked, directing the question at my host mom. "Nothing." she said, and began leading me out of the courtyard. As soon as my back was to the women who had confronted me (confronted me in a way I could tell from the start was friendly), I felt a bucket of water being emptied onto my back.

"It's tradition." That's the explanation I received. "There has always been joking between the Mossi and the Samo." I had come to the village seeking a (the) young woman, same as the rest (of the groom's family). So in the end, I was doused with water. The same as, I quickly discovered, the rest. Most of us were wet as we began the bus ride home. One group of young men had brought with them the beer from our meal that had yet to be consumed. It was a noisy ride home.

That was my experience. Some further notes:

-This traditional village marriage (described by my host mom as the "family" marriage as opposed to the "religious" or "legal" marriage) can only happen once. If the couple divorces, they can remarry legally, but this ceremony will not be repeated by the family of the bride or the family of the groom.
-If the marriage doesn't work, the woman's family must reimburse the man's family when the woman is returned to her home family/village.
-unless the marriage has already resulted in a child, in which case the man's family cannot talk of being reimbursed.