I was invited to the wedding festivities of the daughter of one of A.P.’s co-workers last week. The day before the wedding was a gift-giving ceremony. Because weddings are arranged and dowry-based here, there is a significant exchange of money and gifts between the families of the bride and groom. In this case, the day before the wedding was chosen to be the gift-giving ceremony. Basically, it involves dancing, presenting the gifts and lunch. This one was much more exciting because Little t got to tag along for the ride.
I had decided to take Little t with me…his first appearance at such an event because A.P. was swamped at work with a report that had to go out and that left me no option. Usually Little t stays home to nap or hang out with A.P. but today was his big debut.
With all of the rain and snow we have had, the ground is saturated and muddy. This made it delightful to try to get out in and out of the van with a 2 year old, tall boots and my burqa. The first house we stopped at was fine. We sat in a room for a few minutes, greeted other women, said a pra-yer of blessing over the house and family and then loaded up again. We got to the house where the party was and the street was a river of mud. I opened my door and realized that I could only step down into a ditch full of mud and snow because the driver had parked so close to the side of the street. I was going to get down myself and then get Little t down, but at the last minute, he climbed on my back, so we all went together. Between him pulling on my back and me stepping on the back of my burqa as I stepped up out of the ditch, I found my head very naked. My scarf and burqa had both been pulled off.
It is in those moments that you realize how much you have adapted to a place. I felt SO vulnerable in that moment…in the middle of the street, surrounded by both men and women, with my head showing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wear a scarf in my yard and am not super strict about it, but in that moment the SHOULD kicked in strong. Still juggling the monkey on my back and my purse and my burqa and slick mud under my feet, I was able to get my scarf back on and get in the door. My friends reassured me that I was fine and I quickly forgot about it.
Inside the yard, music was blaring and girls were dancing in the middle of a circle. We squeezed onto the veranda to stand and watch. Little t got down and did some dancing of his own. He also made friends with a little girl sitting next to him who gave him pumpkin seeds to munch on.
After the gifts were brought into the yard, we were ushered into one room where we sat like sardines and joked about the fact that there was no way we would be able to eat sitting so tightly. A girl brought around a tray with candies on it and after they had been passed out, we were asked to move to another room in the house. This meant unpacking our sardine selves, finding our shoes in the midst of the pile outside the door, moving across the yard to the other room, taking our shoes off and re-packing our sardine selves into another room that was set for lunch. We started to eat right away.
Little t was excited about the lunch and immediately exclaimed, “oh, so nice ladies! Nice nice rice! Thank you!” There were many women in the room that we didn’t know and they were very curious about us (Little t and I along with our German teammate). They asked a lot of questions to us and our local friends. Overall, lunch was good.
The music started up after and Little t wanted to go outside. I was afraid this would happen and wasn’t entirely sure how to handle it. There were a ton of kids playing outside, but no big kids and no one he knew. I went out with him in the beginning and laid the ground rules: 1: don’t climb on the motorcycles and try to start them, 2: don’t climb those stairs that lead to the roof, 3: stay away from the goat with huge horns that is tied up in the corner of the yard, 4: no rolling in the mud, 5: basically, stand here and don’t move. Easy enough, right?
He was fascinated by the music and did some dancing. He was fascinated by the other kids and followed a few around. He was most fascinated by the group of men and older boys who sat in the corner of the yard. Most likely because they were equally fascinated with him.
See, here is where events like this are weird. In a place that is so conservative and tightly segregated, there is a always a mixture of genders at events like this…but it is always a weird mix. These men were some of the older men of the family, or young men who were ‘helping’ with the party, or just there to watch…or something.
At every event like this, there is a videographer who is taping the whole thing. Girls will unashamedly go into the middle of the circle to dance, usually with their heads uncovered and in quite form-fitting dresses. They don’t pay any attention to the men in the corner or to the camera then, but if they are on the outskirts of the circle just watching, they try to hide their faces from the men in the corner and duck and run when the camera pans the crowd. Is anyone else seeing the disconnect here? I really struggle to know how act in these settings. I don’t feel like I have anything to hide, but it seems like I should hide my face like all of the other women.
The same is true with the men who are at these parties. I ‘should’ be inside hidden away, especially because I am not family and am a married woman (which somehow raises your status so that there is greater need for other men not to see you?). But, I just don’t care that much. It is not that I have any interest in flaunting myself in front of these men…it is more that I really could care less what they think. So, especially in a case where my son wants to be outside, I am not just going to turn him out and go sit inside (I am way too paranoid for that). I stood on the veranda as much out of sight as I could be and watched him.
So, Little t went on playing, dancing to the music, talking to other kids when they came close, chatting with the men when they asked him questions, eyeing the motorcycles. When I was convinced that he wasn’t going to do anything crazy, I went back into the ladies’ room where I could watch him from the window.
The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully, we drank tea and ate candy and answered more questions about ourselves. The dancing started up again and we went out to watch. We watched for a few minutes before saying our goodbyes and leaving so that my German teammate could get back to the office for a meeting.
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| Little t and A.P. in their fort...they spend a LOT of time in here these days! |
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