Handadawa Wedding

Camels by the road on the trip

I have a love-hate relationship with weddings…and just know that I’m not talking about ones in the  US, because aside from my sisters’ weddings, I can only remember 2 others that I’ve been to. That is one of the benefits of living overseas—wedding shindigs and showers get to be missed. I really don’t like showers that don’t involve water. My lovely Southern belle college roommate loved them, planned them, and made me go with her. If she reads this, she may suddenly realize that I only went to those things for those big sugar cookies some lazy person (probably me) bought with icing the color of marriage (white?) or the impending child (pink for girl, blue for boy, or yellow for people who think it’s cute to keep it a secret or purple for those who want to buck color-linked gender stereotypes as soon as possible, green if you can’t find/don’t know the appropriate color and really want to eat those dang cookies, etc). Since college I realized that one doesn’t need an excuse to buy a container of those cookies because no one has to know that you’re not going to a party, but staying home and eating all of them while watching dumb TV shows online. And since I no longer have that reason to go to baby showers or wedding showers, I just make sure to be out of the country for all I might be expected to attend or I offer to babysit other progeny. Anyway, there is a SYSTEM. But with weddings overseas, they are important cultural moments, where I learn a lot and have Experiences that I can write about here, and even though, no, I’d rather not kill my whole weekend at one go like I did this time, I’d rather not miss it either.

Another animal shot on the journey

So this last weekend was the wedding of one of the girls in our office. We (7 women, 4 babies, 5 men) piled into 3 cars and caravanned out to Atbara, about 200km north of Khartoum. OK, the truth is, I vaguely remember someone saying 200km so I picked that number but that might have been the distance from Shendi, the half-way point town, to Atbara or something else completely different. Anyway, I was told it would be a 3-5 hours trip. And I was told to meet at the office at 8:30am on Friday (our weekends here are Fri-Sat), and I said, “No way am I getting to the office at the same time on Friday as I do every other day. I need to have the pretense of a little extra sleep for the weekend, and let’s please make it 9:30.” And because I’m loud and annoying until I get my way, I got my way. And naturally, we left 30 minutes late anyway.

The amazing thing is that I let us drive
by these guys without stopping the first time.

The trip ended up taking us about 6 hours, as we stopped for what I call lunch, but they call “breakfast.” What I call breakfast, they call “tea—sometimes with cookies,” and what they call “lunch,” I call “dinner” and what they call “dinner,” I call “bedtime.” After “breakfast” in Shendi (the half-way point city), we got back on the road to continue our straight, flat, dusty, desert journey. From the road, a little ways outside of Shendi, we passed the Meroe pyramids, just hanging out there lonely in the middle of a bunch of sand dunes.  I started right then and there to be loud and annoying about stopping there on the way back. Do you think I was successful in my mission?

Atbara is a cute town with cute donkeys

Eventually we made it to our target destination before driving around in circles trying to find our way to the bride’s house. This reminded me of driving around Damascus with a taxi driver who couldn’t find the way to our friend’s house. His way of asking directions was to roll down the window, stick his head outside and yell, “Ya, Muhammad—weynak?” (Oh Mohammed, where are you?). And since more than 50% of all males in Syria are named Mohamed (this statistic I just made up right now is also true of most other Muslim countries as well), 3 or 4 nearby men or boys would stop and come over to the car to see if the driver was calling them. Then he would ask directions from the comfort of his cab. It was a genius idea, I thought. AND we made it to our destination. If Patris, our Sudanese wedding driver, had known this trick, we might have made it to our wedding destination before “lunch/dinner.” But they brought us food anyway, so it was fine.

"Resting" with Selma

Our Atbara location was right by the White Nile, and really a beautiful place. Now 8 of us ladies (our Port Sudan team met us there with one other lady), plus 4 kids, were put in the bride’s neighbor’s guest room.  The neighbor lady was a Syrian refugee living there with her family. We had some sad talks about Syria in the beautiful Syrian accent, and it was bittersweet reminiscing about old times in Syria and remembering what it is now.  But how hospitable are Arabs?  This lady took us in to help out Zuhur’s (the beautiful bride) family. She had never met any of us before. Say what you like about Arabs (and of course people will always be doing that), but you cannot possibly beat them on hospitality. They will hospitality you into the ground with their generosity and kindness to visitors, and insistence that you eat more and MORE, “Why? Don’t you like our food?!”

White Nile at sunset

After a short rest – 12 of us on 4 beds, so comfy—we went out to watch the dancing. This is a traditional part of Handadawa (Zuhur’s tribe) wedding culture. The men of the village, young and old, gather together to dance with swords. It was impressive and fun to watch. If I ever get married, I definitely want sword dancers. Anyway, it seems like a preferable option to what the Ja3liya tribe does to their grooms on the wedding day. According to my friend, a member in not good standing of the Ja3liya tribe (since she married a guy from a different tribe instead of the cousin her family wanted her to marry), Ja3liya guys are known for being tough. So all the men get together and the groom lets them beat the crap out of him with sticks to prove how tough he is. But if my time in the Middle East has taught me nothing else, I do firmly believe that no wedding is truly complete without swords.

When it got too dark for the sword dancers to continue having fun safely, they called it a night, and we went back to the room for more ‘resting’ until time to get ready for the wedding. I kept asking if it was time, because I kept thinking we should be leaving for the dang wedding, the whole point of which we were in town in the first place. But we really didn’t start getting ready until almost 9pm. At that point, I was ready (with thobe secured properly with safety pins and make-up and hair fixed with a little more effort than usual) in about 15 minutes. Then I had to wait for another hour before everyone else was finally ready. Then we had to wait for the men to come pick us up in the car and take us to the venue, which was not, sadly, by the river, but rather in a nearby athletic club. We sat near the basketball goals.  And it IS nice to go to weddings with several men who are really handy about finding chairs for everyone because, while we got there before the bride and groom, everyone else in town had arrived before us to score the best of the plastic chairs. From somewhere, I still don’t know where, our men conjured up enough places for us to sit down.

Many photos of sword dancing with sun behind them since I couldn't get many "see-able" wedding shots at night:

 I like the little boys with their stick "swords" who are learning their moves now

These guys were some of the best. Poor wives and mothers who will have to wash their dirty white robes later.

The colorful ladies watching the fun - their turn comes later

I like the fat guys.

That guy's about to get sworded in the back!

The groom (with the red sash) is hoisted on the shoulders of the swordsmen

We sat around and waited for the bride and groom to come (عادي for Arab weddings) and ate boxes of food handed out to everyone, while little kids snuck under our chairs and tried to steal anything we left there for later (they got half of my apple soda, but I ate most of the food before I put that container down, so better luck next time, kids). While we were eating, camera men slowly panned the crowd, examining people carefully with their bright head-lights, stopping and swooping certain individuals from head to toe if they were considered extra-interesting. Guess who was considered extra-interesting? Yup, the khawaja in a thobe. Guess who is really awkward and disturbing to watch on video camera? Yeah, that same person whose thobe kept sliding off inappropriately. And the best thing about our set-up is that everyone in the whole complex could watch what the cameramen were watching on the big screen. And the other best thing was that it was a really cold desert night, the thobe I was wearing was not that warm, but the camera lights were nice and toasty on their victims. Silver lining.

With my beautiful friend Noor who helped me pin up my thobe

Finally the Bride and Groom graced us with their presence. With great fanfare and smoke machines, they exchanged rings and danced their first dance.  Then they went to sit on their thrones for 5 minutes while crowds pressed in to shake their hands in congratulations. I was also pushed into that crowd, but I wasn’t really committed, so I never made it to the platform. Instead, I was carried along in the current of dancing people, and I ended up in a ring around the bride snapping along with everyone else, as that is Sudanese group-dance-style: bounce and snap.  I will confess that I do this badly, especially when cameras are trained on me and my thobe is falling off because it’s still too long and I’m tripping on it.

The beautiful bride

We danced for a little while, but it was already after 11pm, and our group was pretty tired, so we rushed everyone over to the microphones to give a speech and hand out the presents on behalf of IAS.  There loud cheers and claps (mostly from us) and then we high-tailed it out of there. I thought that was the end. I was preparing to share a twin bed with another woman and/or a child, sleeping until 5am, our estimated departure time.  But I was wrong. About sleeping with people and about being done.

Instead, we went back to our room, where we had to wait about 30 minutes until the owner came back to unlock the doors for us, moved our stuff to another house with more beds and a small couch (where I slept because I prefer to sleep alone), and then headed out AGAIN, this time to the courtyard of the bride’s house.

The bride is in red-photos after this moment were inappropriate

The yard was packed with ladies—no men allowed except the groom. This is the part where the bride dances for about an hour to traditional songs sung by the women and accompanied with a drum or two.  No men are allowed because these dances are…well…wow…yes they were. One of the main dances is when the girl takes off her thobe (while dancing) to reveal a much less clothing underneath—think, Aladdin, specifically Disney version, but any movie about harems and the exotic Middle East will do. At the end of each very impressive dance, she would stop with her hands up in front of her mouth, fingers and thumbs touching, facing her new husband. Meanwhile, all the women were cheering and singing along and critiquing her dancing skills (she had all good comments that I heard). A couple other friends of mine told me that they didn’t do this part at their wedding because they didn’t like the idea of all the people talking about them, and while I was glad this bride didn’t feel the same way so I got to be a part of this tradition, I get where they are coming from. One of my friends said she waited to do the dances just for her husband when they were in the hotel. Another as-yet unmarried girl had danced through the main traditional dances for us while we were waiting for the party to start in our rooms, so it seems that these are really important cultural aspects of the wedding. There are even institutes around Khartoum and elsewhere where you can learn these dances (I wonder how my future taxi-driver husband would feel about me learning the moves?). While American girls are choosing their dresses, the Sudanese girls are practicing their moves. If I were to have to dance in front of a bunch of women, I would for sure start practicing from a very young age. I would need a lot of extra work. But also, I should note, that the Sudanese girls have to spend significant time choosing their dresses too. This Bride had her white poofy sparkly wedding dress, a sparkly red expertly-removed thobe  and a shiny green one too, and two dancing costumes—halfway through the dance, she went inside to change into the other outfit. Apparently, you can change up to 3 times. Still, I’m pretty sure that the wedding dress at least is rented. I think that is genius, because currently both my sisters and my mom are wondering how to get rid of theirs, which they will never wear again, and they know I am not likely to wear. For one-time use: rent. It’s just the logical thing to do.

Hamudi and I took selflies while waiting for the other ladies to finish getting ready.
How cute is he?

We got back from the sexy dance performance after 2am. I made a small effort to get some of the make-up off my face before going to sleep. I wasn’t very successful, but then I didn’t have to put on make-up again for another three days, so I call it a win. We then got up at 4am, thinking we were going to leave by 5am, but we finally made it out at 6am. On our trip back, we didn’t stay together, and can you guess whose car was the last one home? But I take most of the blame because Pyramids. I know how to get my way when it’s really important…and sometimes even when it is not important.

Shopping and Salons—Wedding Prep.

Selma came in to my office and said, “Let’s go shopping! All the girls are going. We want to buy clothes for the wedding.” This meant that I could leave the office about 30 minutes early and get an appropriate outfit for the wedding, so I said yes. They said we’d be gone about an hour, but I should have known they were underestimating.  Ten minutes into the trip, I remembered that shopping is not one of my favorite things to do, and I was ready to say yes to any thing I was told to buy. We’d pop into one shop, and I’d see a thobe in an acceptable color (a thobe is a long piece of cloth like a sari but wrapped differently), and I’d say, “I like that one.” Then I’d be informed that it was for “big” women, not me. Does that mean “big” as in “old” or “big” as in “tall” or “big” as in “plus size”? I never figured it out. Eventually we landed on a piece of cloth that met with everyone’s approval, and I grabbed at the chance to be done, so I accepted. I thought we were done, but that was only the beginning.

I amused myself by admiring other merchandise. Observe the social-media abaya (long black dress for conservative girls). That Zuckerberg guy is working the advertising here in Khartoum.

 

Horrible photo of
 inside the market

First, we had to go get that piece of cloth chopped down to a length appropriate for my miserable size (too young, too short, or too skinny—still don’t know) and hemmed. Then the real hunt began—I had to get appropriate clothes to wear UNDER the thobe. At this point, the girls began to realize just how helpless I am.  I suggested just wearing a white tank top and leggings under it—that suggestion was met with horrified looks. White? With a green and gold sparkly thobe? Impossible. Cease to think it. It can ONLY be warn with a gold or green top over a black or olive-colored skirt (also, this shopping excursion was totally useful as a refresher course for the appropriate Arabic names for various shades of colors). And now that we had specifics in mind, our search became nearly impossible. I just gave up and followed them around as they imperiously informed shop-keepers throughout the entire market of our needs. They were going to make me buy shoes, but I was kind of having fun horrifying them with my terrible fashion sense by suggesting various types of shoes that I saw, ranging from comfortable ones that I probably would wear even though they wouldn’t match at all to terrifically ugly ones that I would never wear that would also not match at all. They gave up on me for the shoes. But I was not allowed to leave the dang market until I had bought an appropriate skirt (which no one will see anyway, since it will be under the those).

Dumb thobe photo of me

We rode home in a Bajaj because those guys are EVERYWHERE

After buying appropriate clothes, the next important thing to do is go to the salon. Maybe because we went on Thursday afternoon (their equivalent of Friday afternoon, i.e. weekend party preparation time) or maybe because it is a popular place, but that salon was packed to the gills. Women were fluttering around getting henna applied to their hands and feet and having their hair brushed and oiled and braided and henna-tattooing eyebrows on and applying extra slimy facial goo. I caused a stir as the lone foreign woman getting some appropriate black hair dye (what they use for henna tattoos here) drawn all over my hands. I also let them thread all the unwanted hair off my face, which amazed them as they don’t really have much extra hair anywhere, lucky ladies…

It PEELS off--better than nail polish. Definitely as good as peeling strips of dried glue
off your hand, if I remember correctly from the last time I did crafts ( 20+ years ago)

  

The scariest thing was the gas burner in the middle of the room, heating all the hair utensils—curling irons and straighteners. True confession time: I have never owned a curling iron because I have never successfully used one on myself or anyone/thing else. Although, I can cleverly snap it open and closed like a crocodile devouring its prey (and it occurs to me suddenly that maybe THIS is why I associate curling irons with pain and death? Or maybe it is being accidentally burned by them when Mom used to insist on curling my hair for church?). Forget straighteners. I won’t even pretend I know what to do with those, not that my hair needs help being straight… One time I did buy these travel hot rollers because, well, they were TRAVEL SIZE (that is an almost irresistible trait that can convince me to buy things I would never need because-hey!-they fit in my suitcase, so why not?). After several months of using them exactly NEVER times, I gave them to my sister who is not mystified by metal pins that fit somehow over plastic cylinders of electric heat death.  So, I no longer had something extra I had to fit in my suitcase (travel size or not) and she had some travel-sizeable hair accessories that she could fit in her suitcase—win/win. Anyway, these ladies were using some serious fire-powered hair tools that scared the crap out of me. It really terrifies me to see steam rising off people’s hair. I just don’t see how that can be OK.  Hair is flammable, right? At least no one caught on fire on my watch. I even got a few sneaky photos of the whole set-up for you, dear readers. And getting photos in a salon full of Arab women, terrified of being accidentally seen on someone’s social media and then snagged and put in a pornographic film somewhere on the internet, is not an easy feat. But I did it. See for yourself.

 

So, properly henna-ed, depilatoried, and outfitted in a sparkly thobe, I was considered wedding-ready. Just got to drive 5 hours to get there…

Me, admiring the finished product in the car on the way to the wedding

Wedding picture preview

Celebrating a New Decade

I don’t believe that friendship should be limited by age or similar life stages. That said, at my current life stage it is hard to find friends who can celebrate with me important life milestones like turning 30. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself about that, but then I had lots of great friends from various and sundry life stages and ages send me nice messages on Facebook, and that made me feel better. And anyway, I DID get to spend my birthday with a great old friend and a lovely new one—Captain Roy and his wife Carolyn. They took me under their hospitable wings and showed me how the English live in southern Spain. Fortunately, they never made me eat Marmite, though it was present in case being English is contagious and I suddenly lost my sense of what things taste good. I did enjoy being the fact that refusing coffee for tea was not met with any sort of trepidation or snarky remarks. 

Of course, probably the best thing about hanging out with English people is the conversation. Here are some examples:

• Dear, dear. It seems I’ve gotten my trousers a bit wet. I’ll just pop over to the car and get my spare ones out of the boot.

• Have you got any trainers?

• Well then, what do Americans call a ‘bathing costume’?

• Jolly good. Let’s keep going [on our hike] then, shall we?

• *Ten minutes of laughing at the way I pronounce the word “leisure.”*

• Also, after telling him about my anglophile sister who went to the University of Central Lancashire for a semester and thinks that qualifies her to spell everything with an extra ‘u,’ he said, “Well that is splendid. Your sister must be top form!” But then on finding out that she doesn’t consistently use British spelling for words like “tyre” or “programme,” he said, “Well that won’t do at tal.”

Lovely. Indeed.

Here are some photos of our last outdoorsy day (just me and el Capitano, as Carolyn had to get back before the end of half-term break). I went for a run in the morning. Then we went up to Roy’s son’s house to admire the view. Then down to brave a swim in the icy waters of the February Mediterranean, while pasty Germans bathed in frigid sunshine (probably under the delusion that we were having a nice summer day), then back up the mountain to hike as far as we could up the nearest slope in the local nature reserve.

Hanging with the Captain on the last day photos:

An Old Arab Village:

View of reservoir from Arab village

Cold swimming (note sunbathing
Germans in the background)

If growing up means it would be
a great indignity to climb a tree,
 I'll never grow up, never grow up,
never grow u---up, not me!

Anyway, Southern Spain is beautiful, if a bit cold in February. I enjoyed the pristine beauty of trash-less beaches and lovely Mediterranean villages. Carolyn rented a car and drove us around the area to nearby Nerja and slightly farther away Granada and even all over Gibraltar. We saw the Alhambra on a cold rainy Tuesday, and it was exactly like I thought it would be: incredibly beautiful and amazing and much worse than it would have been decades ago before tourism became a thing, but still really enjoyable. We went to Gibraltar on a beautiful sunny day (day of my birth) and it was very lovely and British-y (we started out with breakfast of toasted hot-cross-buns at Morrison’s) and yet also not…I mean, apes aren’t exactly something you associate with England or any other part of the UK, and yet they were there on that rock. Captain Roy said I could touch one so I did and it came after me, but he saved me.

Gibraltar Photos:

Gibraltar is just a big rock

Driving across the border

Map of the rock

Little old Gibraltarian ladies sipping their tea at Morrison's

English breakfast with Carolyn

English stuff in Gibraltar:

The Union Jack is flying, even if you can't tell from the photo.
It made Roy and Carolyn happy anyway.

Fixing the cable cars

With the Cap'n on top of the rock

Roy liked telling me about all the ships--where
they were going and how much cargo in them.

Reclusive ape

Hey, I'm 30!

Examples of bad panorama photos I took:

More apes, probably discussing the amount of traffic each
 port in view (Algeciras, Gibraltar, etc) can handle,
anyway that's what me and Captain were talking about. 

Lighthouse--that's Morocco in the background.

Super-creepy underground history display--
every time you turn the corner one of these
guys is watching you through a window.

The Middle-East representing in Gibraltar!

I did go to Morocco by myself. The going and coming and meeting people part of the adventure is in the other post about my traveling (before or after this one maybe), and I really loved it. I love the mix of cultures and languages, Arabic, Spanish, French…as you like…and I like them all. I loved seeing the tomb of Ibn Battuta, famous Arab world traveller. That guy got to see the world before tourism became a thing—also before efficient public transportation, the internet, and airplanes became a thing. At least I know that my iPhone photos are better than his. I also loved the light house, seeing the Kasbah from the outside (it was Friday prayers…), and visiting the Caves of Hercules (seaside caves where Hercules was said to have resided at some point for some reason). Just driving around town was super fun. Coming back through the beautiful city of Tarifa was also super fun. I haven’t decided if I want to live the rest of my life in Tarifa or Tangiers.

A few more Morocco photos:

Bint Batuta at Ibn Batuta's grave

Door to Ibn Batuta's grave

Breakfast view

Breakfast cafe-I think it was founded in 1921 or something…


Lighthouse and view from Hercules'  Caves

The Kasbah, which I didn't get to see