Beautiful day, beautiful bride

September has come and gone and while so many things have been happening here, let’s tell y’all about the best part…WE WENT TO A TANZANIAN WEDDING!

Inside the church.

WEDDING DREAMS DO COME TRUE:  On August 31, we were special guests at the wedding of Mama Leah, the help2kids Children’s Home Director (aka Boss Mama).  Mama Leah cannot be 5 feet tall, yet she has an energy that makes those around her listen, a skill that gets put to use everyday at a house with 31 children.  She is also incredibly kind and warm, and when the time came for her to get married we were not surprised that she invited EVERYONE from help2kids (staff, volunteers, children, spouses, etc).

Mama Leah enters the church, greeted by her soon-to-be husband.

Shannon was able to attend a wedding in Cambodia in 2013, she still had a dream of attending a Tanzanian wedding.  The day started by loading everyone (31 kids, 4 mamas and their kids, 8 staff, 10 volunteers) in a rented mini-bus and van, both of which were decorated in baby blue and white ribbons and bows – the wedding colors.  Shannon got a great seat in the van next one of the great help2kids children who kept checking his pockets every 10 minutes of the drive to make sure he still had his gift for Mama Leah – a 1,000 TSH bill (about 60 cents).  After driving about 1 hour through Dar, bumping along dirt roads, through a dry river bed, we reached a point where the road went no further and there was a tiny church.  The adults in the group were greeted by family and given prime plastic seats inside the tin roof, 90 degree, dirt floor church.  This was going to be good.

Tanzanian wedding selfie – feeling very special to have a seat inside the church!

The groom and bestman were already seated upfront, and then came the arrival of Mama Leah.  The bride’s entrance was exciting, but she held a very somber face and never looked up at her groom.  She was followed constantly by her matron of honor who has a very important job – sweat wiper.  The ceremony began with a 1 hour sermon on marriage from a guest pastor who wore a sweater vest under his suit (reminder, it was 90 degrees in the church).  He spoke only in Swahili and gave advice to the couple on how to stay happy with each other which he says comes from keeping your breath fresh, wearing perfume, and placing God above all.  The vows are surprisingly short and sweet and very similar to the one’s we said to each other almost 4 years ago.  A highlight was the ring swap which was just like our except their hands are held high towards God while the rings are placed on their fingers.

Volunteers (and Star!) with the guest pastor and his wife.

What a good matron-of-honor!

Ring ceremony.

All the guests other than close family then took seats outside of the church under trees so that we could watch the reception.  The reception tent was only for a few family members and involved many group dances (one to bring the groom out, one to bring the bride out), a few speeches, a cake cutting (including Mama Leah taking an entire tier of cake to her parents’-in-law via crawling on her knees), and a gift procession.  The help2kids crew was allowed to start the gift procession (we made up about one-third of the guests), sort of like a parade with dancing and you wave your gift in the air for everyone to see.  A traditional gift is long pieces of fabric (such as kitenge) so that the new couple can have outfits made to remind them of the people who gave them the gift.  However, to demonstrate how giving and kind Mama Leah is, she will be making her gifted fabric into new dresses for all the girls at the Children’s Home!

We feel very lucky to have been invited to Mama Leah’s wedding and I know she loved having everyone from help2kids there (although now everyone in her village thinks she is rich because she knows so many ‘wazungu’ – foreigners).  It was very formal in some ways (long sermons, bride not looking at groom until they leave the church), but surprisingly casual (kids were climbing the walls of the church to see inside since there were not enough seats, not everyone was in their ‘Sunday best’).  Maybe the thing that is most interesting though is that Mama Leah and her husband Peter have been together for several years and even have a 2 year old son.  It’s yet another sign that Tanzania is changing.  They loved each other, but were not ready for marriage until now.  This is not the traditional way to do relationships in Tanzania (see Nerd Alert below), but new traditions are beginning, especially in Dar es Salaam.

Baby Nathan!  He had a great time at the wedding, and so did we!

NERD ALERT:  An estimated 45% of Tanzania’s population is under the age of 15, compared to 20% in the US.  It is hard to imagine how this will effect this country, but it certainly means there are going to be a LOT of weddings in the coming decade.  Tanzania also has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world, with the law allowing girls to marry at age 15 and two-thirds of girls being married by their 20th birthday.