Just Another Saturday in Rwanda...

Yesterday, I had two new and wonderful Rwandan experiences.  First, a dowry giving ceremony and second, a football game.

First:  The Dowry Giving Ceremony

The receptionist at my school’s sister is getting married and she invited our staff to the dowry giving.  Eight of us put on our Sunday best and headed to her mom’s house in Nyamirambo arriving “15 minutes late” for the 11:00 ceremony.  Needless to say, we were among the first to arrive.  After waiting an hour and a half, (the extra time was necessary to acquire a generator because the power went out) the ceremony began.  I won’t bore you with all of the details (though, believe you me, the ceremony was not boring, especially not with it being interpreted to me by William, my favorite guard at school and “Assistant PE Teacher”), but I will share with you the gist of the event and my favorite parts.

The Gist

The dowry giving ceremony is a time for the bride’s family to name their price for their girl.  The groom’s family makes an offer and they debate a little and then eventually present the bride to the groom and everyone eats, drinks, and bes merry.  It’s more for entertainment than to actually agree on a price, but the price will end up being paid.

My Favorite Parts

The first hilarious event was when the groom’s father elaborated on the “cow” he would pay to have the bride join his family.  A group of men went out of the garden to see the “cow” and then returned with a veterinarian who vouched for the health of the “cow” and the shepherd who sang a lovely song about the state and name of the “cow.”  The reason why this was so funny was because William informed us that there was, of course, wait for it… no cow.  The “cow” is actually amafaranga (money). 

Another comical occurrence was when the groom’s family informed the bride’s family that they had a son that wanted to marry a girl from the bride’s family, and asked if they had an eligible bachelorette. The bride’s family then presented this girl…

The groom’s family was of course not pleased and asked for an older daughter, to which the bride’s family presented this girl….

(Still not the actual bride.)  After some more shenanigans, the bride was finally presented and the bride and groom presented each other’s families with gifts, fed each other Sprite/Fanta Citron….

And we all ate a fabulous Rwandan meal.  As we were finishing the meal, I informed William that I wanted to go to the football game.  We looked at our watches and saw that it started in an hour and a half.  (Sidenote:  Now, my Muzungu friends had all been at the stadium for hours, paid 5,000RWF for tickets and surrendered their cell phones to get VIP seats.  I had been communicating with them earlier and was hoping to join them at the game.  But who needs to wait around all day and buy expensive tickets when you have William by your side?)  William informed me that, really, the wedding was finished since we were eating and we should go... which brings us to the second wonderful Rwandan experience…

The Football Game

 I had my doubts about getting into the game since my Muzungu friends had informed me of entrance’s implausibility even hours before, but William “knows the people.” So we walked through the dusty streets of Naymirambo to a taxi stand and got in a 15-passenger van taxi to town.  Then we found a Coaster bus taxi to the stadium.  Now this process takes a bit longer than you might assume with stops here and there to let people in and out of the taxis, and thus we made it to the stadium about 10 minutes before the game’s start time. 

When we arrived at the stadium, we were informed that they were no longer letting men in (as the President had already been seated), but women were free to enter.  The crowd shoved me toward the fence to enter, and I pulled the damsel in distress card and reached out and cried (not literally) for “MY FRIEND!!!!”  To which, they shooed William in the fence as well.  Once we got in the fence, there were no problems, because apparently William used to be in the President’s Guard.  Who knew?!?  He found a security officer he knew for his pat-down, and sent me to the woman (who took the obligatory “the President’s at this event, so we have to take a picture of you with your own camera to make sure it’s not a weapon of some sort” photo....).

We made it through security and ran up the steps into the stadium where we were stopped (relatively unsuccessfully) by the ticket collectors.  We waited about thirty seconds and then entered with another group of people who had somehow finagled their way in as well.  We made it to the front row merely 2 minutes after the game started.  Here was my view…

What a raucous environment.  We happened to be sitting right between Rwanda’s fans and Burkina Faso’s fans, but clearly Rwanda’s fans dominated, as you can clearly see in this guy….

And by the sardinely packed nature of the crowd:

What a fun, fun time!  It was actually my first ever live complete football game, and what better time than the

Sadly, Rwanda lost 2-1, but as it was the furthest any Rwandan sports team has made it in any competition ever, it was still a great day for Rwanda and the U-17 football team.

Thank you, William, for making it happen and totally unexpectedly transforming my Saturday into one big, fun adventure!