Parties and Porkies

Yesterday morning I was invited to join one of my colleagues at a Muslim pre-wedding ceremony for her friend. The woman has already agreed to marry the man, although no date has yet been set. The tradition is that the groom’s family send suitcases or boxes full of gifts for the bride-to-be and her family.

When we arrived, we wandered round the house and the grounds and I was shown how to make sanasil and masa (don’t know if that’s the spelling, but they are both kinds of pancakes made from rice – delicious). We were then given a huge plate of food each (jollof rice, spring roll, samosa, chicken and sanasil) and went and sat in the bride’s bedroom, eating and chatting with her. Halfway through our meals, we heard that the groom’s family was arriving so we went into the living room where all the female members of the bride’s family were gathered (but not the bride).  The female members of the groom’s family had travelled from Zaria (about an hour away) with the suitcases, and they brought them into the middle of the gathering, explaining what was what.

After a quick prayer, the bride’s family began to take a look inside the suitcases, and the groom’s mother took out the money and solid gold jewellery and took them straight to the bride’s mother so that no-one could take them. The groom’s family also took this opportunity to propose a date in October for the wedding. After the suitcases had been opened, the groom’s family seemed to disperse and the bride could come out. Then the suitcases were fully unpacked and there were hundreds of gifts! Two suitcases full of clothes and fabric, a case full of cosmetics (including Veet!? Is that a romantic courting gift?), a case full of jewellery and a bag full of handbags and shoes. And that was just for the bride! Then there was a suitcase each for the mother and father of the bride, a large bag full of 26 types of fabric – one for each of the female members of the bride’s family – and three small bags for each of, what my collages called, “The bride’s mother’s rivals”; in other words, the bride’s father’s other wives.

And that was it really. We finished our food, wrapped up some sanasil for Simon and were on our way.

Then in the afternoon, Simon and I had been invited to the birthday party of a ten year old boy who lives in the next compound – Joseph. We’d asked around about what 10-year-old Nigerians like (in case you need to know, it’s a cartoon called Ben 10 – any of said merchandise will apparently be a winner), bought a Ben 10 Bubble Gun toy and wrapped it in a carrier bag along with some World Cup stickers we’d brought from home. At 4pm, it was raining pretty heavily, but we put up our umbrella and went next door. Not knowing exactly which house was his, we knocked on someone’s door to ask. It was the wrong door; not just in the sense that it wasn’t Joseph’s, but also wrong in the sense that it was the one person who had given us an evangelical booklet (“Rhapsody of Realities”) the week before and asked us to go to her church this week, and of course she now wanted to know why we hadn’t been. Fumbled excuses over with, she pointed out Joseph’s house and we went across to knock. A puzzled young woman said that yes they did have a Joseph living there (“Small? Black?” Sounds like all boys in Nigeria, yes), although he was 8 years old; she agreed to take the present for him. Since there was clearly no party, we left and went back home, confused.

A minute later, the woman was at our door with the present, saying that it wasn’t Joseph’s birthday, that he just likes to say it is, and that there was no party. Ten minutes after that, Joseph was at our door, saying he should have made it clear that his birthday isn’t until Tuesday. Five minutes after that he was back again, saying ‘Please, come round whenever you want’. And then he was gone. Upshot: we were duped by a boy who likes to say it’s his birthday to foreigners and ended up buying him a toy gun.