My cousin got married yesterday!!!
It was a traditional Nigerian wedding, meaning traditional dress, meaning I looked like this:
Awesome right?!Anyway the wedding consisted of several ceremonial type things. Like they would bring out girls and the bride's dad (my uncle) would ask, "Is this the beautiful flower you saw in my house?" And the groom would be all, "she's cool....but that's not her!!" And then they would negotiate how much money the groom should pay to see a different girl (in the hopes that it's his bride) and then when they finally brought out my cousin, he had to pay just to peek behind the veil.
It was all very interesting, and very comedic--it was totally informal: people would yell out for him to pay more and stuff.
Well once he finally figured out who his bride was, there was a bunch of exchanging of stuff. Like the bitter kola, kola nut, horsepepper (each symbolizing different phases of the marriage). And then there was the exchange of gifts and the drinking of the pure water...there was just a lot going on. It was all VERY theatrical.
And I had a lot of fun considering that the whole thing was in either french, ibo, or some sort of pidgin English. Nigerian accents are strong.
Meanwhile, my "cousins" (you know the type who aren't really related to you but your families are intermarried) didn't know that we were cousins and so were apparently going on about me in french, only to flip a shit after realizing we're family. They were about ready to buy me (meaning marry me...but still that's not much better) according to my oldest cousin.
That's so weirdly and incestuously flattering.
In any case, today will be wedding part deux--church wedding. So I'm hoping to dodge some cousins and have a good time convincing the rest of the family that I will in fact NOT be the next one to get married.
Wish me luck!
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