On Friday, I went to a birthday party, and on Saturday I went to a wedding. A lot of events, especially things like weddings, are crammed into the time around Easter (or other holidays) because family will be back in the village from their jobs in towns or cities.
I didn't get any warning before going to the birthday party, and since I had been at home making crepes I was wearing very ratty jeans and a very bleach-stained Peace Corps T-Shirt. (I also didn't know we were going to a party when we left...) This is not appropriate wear for a birthday party in South Africa. Most people there were wearing traditional dress or otherwise dressed up. I felt a little embarrassed but I've definitely learned that most people don't really notice what I'm wearing at first. So it was okay.
The food at parties follows a regular menu, though the particular subsets might vary. This party had mainly beets and coleslaw with the mutton and pap. Am I a bad person for not liking beets? Or coleslaw? I always feel really guilty when I don't eat my beets. I keep trying to like them, but the taste just hasn't come (as a side note, I very much enjoyed broccoli the last time I had it, a thing I thought might never happen, so perhaps it will happen with beets as well...on the other hand, the broccoli was smothered with cheese sauce and I was starving). Fortunately, my neighbor is used to my strange eating habits by now and she ate the evidence on my abandoned beets. She also very usefully chased away all of the drunk men who tried to talk to me.
A small girl was sitting near us. There was a cake that we had somehow come into possession of, and people kept giving her chunks of it--she was clearly in the right place. Eventually she was given several chunks and told to share them with her friends. A few minutes later she and a friend wandered back with icing smeared all over their faces. Hilarious.
A confession: I didn't actually know whose birthday it was. Um, or whose house we were at. Or, well, that it was a birthday party. I found all of these things out as we were leaving and I was taken to be introduced to the host. In South Africa, there are no invitations, you just show up and anyone's invited. Including me.
The wedding I had a few hours notice on, so I was in skirt, headscarf, etc. in time. My host mom looked kind of relieved when I came out of the house wearing this...I think she was a little concerned about a reprise of yesterday's wardrobe. Anyway, we left a few minutes late and ended up getting there forty five minutes after the wedding started, trying inconspicuously to sneak into seats in the back. (I was a little concerned we were gate crashing the wedding since I didn't see anyone I recognized, but it turned out that they were just sitting somewhere else.) After a few minutes the minister stopped preached and the music started and people began to dance, at which point I thought, "Oops, looks like we missed the whole ceremony!" And, "that was a lot shorter than I would have expected..."
No such luck, though if there were vows exchanged we did miss them. The following THREE HOURS (for a total of nearly four hours) were taken up by long-winded speeches by relatives about how wonderful the bride and groom were, which were actually kind of nice except that there were so many of them, then another sermon, all interspersed by minute-long musical intermissions and on one occasion, the cutting of the cake. By the time it was over, I thought I was pretty near death. Yeah, we were sitting in the sun and the small tree shadow we were chasing with our chairs kept moving.
I was a little disappointed to find how westernized the wedding was. The bride wore a big poofy white dress and veil and the wedding party were wearing ugly bridesmaid colors. The cake had white frosting and many tiers with a bride and groom on top. However, there was no throwing of the bouquet/garter, alcohol, post-ceremony dancing (only during the ceremony), "you may now kiss the bride," or rice throwing. I'm not sure if there was a formal walking down the aisle or exchange of vows since we were so late. I didn't notice any pillow-bearing children, though.
The food was pretty good. I avoided beets and coleslaw, though they were both present. However, what I really wanted after sitting in the sun for three hours and walking half an hour to get there was cold drink. I was even willing to drink grape fanta, the bane of my cold drink-related existence (this post has taught me that I am a pickier eater than I thought). When I got to the end of the buffet where the drinks were, they
took the cold drink buckets away! I was going to cry. My host mom browbeat them into letting us take some juice out from it, though, so it all turned out all right.
Another key difference? While at a party, you eat and then linger for hours, after a ceremony (or any kind of festival where you have to watch something), it goes on for hours and hours, but you get to leave as soon as you finish eating.
We bought pretty tomatoes on the way home. They taste delicious.
