of okadas and wedding cakes
so. i go to a lot of weddings. as in, one every weekend for the past four weekends. which is not, actually, that sped up from my normal 2 wedding a month schedule. why, you ask, are you going to so many damn weddings? well, there are many reasons, and we all know my love of numbered lists:
1. there are a lot of people in this country, and over half of them are under 30. which, given that being unmarried at 30 is a travesty in this culture, means there are a lot of people getting married.
2. in nigeria, when you have a party, you invite EVERYONE. and when you are invited to a party, you don't go by yourself, oh no, you roll in with your 10 nearest and dearest. so, a small party here will have 50 people, minimum. and weddings are NOT small parties.
3. when you are dating someone, and either of you is invited to a wedding, you MUST go together. in matching outfits. and by matching outfits, i don't mean his tie matches your skirt, i mean full on OUTFITS made out of the same material, and his hat must match your head-tie, or gele. MUST. like, not optional. plus, weddings have colors. so, if your friend's cousin is getting married, she'll declare that people on her side must wear orange and green, and his side must wear pink and teal. and everyone will do it. the wedding i went to last week (where both amanda and i forgot our cameras, much to our dismay) featured four different groups of 20-something matrons, all matching. one group in purple, another in green, another in peach, and the last in gold. it was amazing.
4. knowing an oyibo is a status symbol. so, as an oyibo, i am invited to weddings by people i've just met, never met, have never heard of, etc. and because weddings involve free food and free booze, i go. in fact, i'll be a bridesmaid (aso ebe -- it's not really a bridesmaid, but that's the closest equivalent) for a friend of mine in 3 weeks. i've hung out with her twice. ever.
now, getting back to the free food and booze. which we all know is good times. there's one thing that really frustrates me, and amanda, about all this. they never eat the damn cake! it's always there, they make a big deal out of cutting it (one of the more recent weddings offered a speech about the significance of cutting hte cake, how c stands for caring, a for affection, k for kindness, and e for... i forget. you get the gist, though), but then they serve little chunks of some other kind of cake which have been individually prewrapped for you. they don't serve the cake itself. they don't seem to eat the cake itself. until recently, i had assumed that all these wedding cakes have been cardboard. but amanda and i snuck a peek, and lo and behold, it's real cake! why don't they eat it?
here's where being an oyibo comes in handy. at the last wedding, we complained about the lack of cake consumption to the friend who had invited us. he wandered off and came back with about 50 of the little pre-wrapped cake chunks, but also a legitimate piece of the wedding cake. in fact, the only piece that had been sliced out of it. perhaps we should have felt a little bad about that, but it was yummy.
now, as i mentioned, you have to wear ankara (traditional cloth) to weddings. i usually get my ankara made in western styles -- skirts, loose dresses that end right below my knees, etc. even if i go with the more traditional style, i'll usually elect for something simple, instead of going for all the ruffles and bows that nigerian women LOVE. and i do mean love. amanda, though, has taken to getting the full traditional-style ankara, which means a full-length fishtail style skirt that is tight through the hips and thighs and then flares out below the knees. this was especially relevant this past weekend, since on the way home from the wedding we stopped to get fuel for the generator and the car broke down. as per usual (see my earlier post about pushing that damn car through the rain). we weren't too far from the house, so we elected to take okadas (motorbikes) home, with me and amanda on one and emma on the other carrying the gas can. you usually ride astride an okada -- just swing your leg over and go. it's a total faux pas to hold on to the driver, so you learn to grab your own knees or occasionally grab below the seat to steady yourself. amanda's skirt was so tight, though, that she literally couldn't separate her thighs enough to swing her leg over. so we ended up with me on the bike normally holding emma's hat full of pieces of cake with one hand and her knees with the other and her riding side-saddle behind me, clinging around my neck for support, both of us cracking up while emma was on the bike behind us yelling "small small" (which roughly translates to "be careful, damnit!" or "slow down!") every thirty seconds. moments like that are why i love nigeria.
oh, and here's a pretty common sight here in lagos -- students taking an okada. though there's way too much green and no traffic, so there's no way this picture was actually taken in lagos:
1. there are a lot of people in this country, and over half of them are under 30. which, given that being unmarried at 30 is a travesty in this culture, means there are a lot of people getting married.
2. in nigeria, when you have a party, you invite EVERYONE. and when you are invited to a party, you don't go by yourself, oh no, you roll in with your 10 nearest and dearest. so, a small party here will have 50 people, minimum. and weddings are NOT small parties.
3. when you are dating someone, and either of you is invited to a wedding, you MUST go together. in matching outfits. and by matching outfits, i don't mean his tie matches your skirt, i mean full on OUTFITS made out of the same material, and his hat must match your head-tie, or gele. MUST. like, not optional. plus, weddings have colors. so, if your friend's cousin is getting married, she'll declare that people on her side must wear orange and green, and his side must wear pink and teal. and everyone will do it. the wedding i went to last week (where both amanda and i forgot our cameras, much to our dismay) featured four different groups of 20-something matrons, all matching. one group in purple, another in green, another in peach, and the last in gold. it was amazing.
4. knowing an oyibo is a status symbol. so, as an oyibo, i am invited to weddings by people i've just met, never met, have never heard of, etc. and because weddings involve free food and free booze, i go. in fact, i'll be a bridesmaid (aso ebe -- it's not really a bridesmaid, but that's the closest equivalent) for a friend of mine in 3 weeks. i've hung out with her twice. ever.
now, getting back to the free food and booze. which we all know is good times. there's one thing that really frustrates me, and amanda, about all this. they never eat the damn cake! it's always there, they make a big deal out of cutting it (one of the more recent weddings offered a speech about the significance of cutting hte cake, how c stands for caring, a for affection, k for kindness, and e for... i forget. you get the gist, though), but then they serve little chunks of some other kind of cake which have been individually prewrapped for you. they don't serve the cake itself. they don't seem to eat the cake itself. until recently, i had assumed that all these wedding cakes have been cardboard. but amanda and i snuck a peek, and lo and behold, it's real cake! why don't they eat it?
here's where being an oyibo comes in handy. at the last wedding, we complained about the lack of cake consumption to the friend who had invited us. he wandered off and came back with about 50 of the little pre-wrapped cake chunks, but also a legitimate piece of the wedding cake. in fact, the only piece that had been sliced out of it. perhaps we should have felt a little bad about that, but it was yummy.
now, as i mentioned, you have to wear ankara (traditional cloth) to weddings. i usually get my ankara made in western styles -- skirts, loose dresses that end right below my knees, etc. even if i go with the more traditional style, i'll usually elect for something simple, instead of going for all the ruffles and bows that nigerian women LOVE. and i do mean love. amanda, though, has taken to getting the full traditional-style ankara, which means a full-length fishtail style skirt that is tight through the hips and thighs and then flares out below the knees. this was especially relevant this past weekend, since on the way home from the wedding we stopped to get fuel for the generator and the car broke down. as per usual (see my earlier post about pushing that damn car through the rain). we weren't too far from the house, so we elected to take okadas (motorbikes) home, with me and amanda on one and emma on the other carrying the gas can. you usually ride astride an okada -- just swing your leg over and go. it's a total faux pas to hold on to the driver, so you learn to grab your own knees or occasionally grab below the seat to steady yourself. amanda's skirt was so tight, though, that she literally couldn't separate her thighs enough to swing her leg over. so we ended up with me on the bike normally holding emma's hat full of pieces of cake with one hand and her knees with the other and her riding side-saddle behind me, clinging around my neck for support, both of us cracking up while emma was on the bike behind us yelling "small small" (which roughly translates to "be careful, damnit!" or "slow down!") every thirty seconds. moments like that are why i love nigeria.
oh, and here's a pretty common sight here in lagos -- students taking an okada. though there's way too much green and no traffic, so there's no way this picture was actually taken in lagos: