I thought I would provide a bit of a description of how the wedding progressed. I’m sure a lot of you will be absolutely horrified at my description, not understanding how things are here, but hopefully you will get that I had a great time in the process and wouldn’t really have had it any other way.
I think for a lot of people it was a bit of a surprise that I had only just announced our engagement and then like 4 weeks later I announced that we got married. I’m sure you’re wondering “it’s been 15 years, so what’s the hurry all of a sudden?” Well, in reality, we did actually get engaged in April, April 5th or something, and Loren actually even called my dad to get his permission. My father was of course a bit confused by this given our history but Loren’s actually kind of old fashioned in certain ways. I think my father’s comment was something to the effect of “if you can manage her, you’re welcome to her”. Loren offered to send some cows (by DHL I think), as per tradition here, but my dad was concerned about space (cows might not fair so well in Newmarket) and more importantly, the reaction of his wife, and their 5 cats. So he let Loren keep them.
In the intervening months, it was actually kind of touch and go. We had a lot of big fights and nearly called it quits. But we also did some pre-marital counseling and resolve a lot of the big issues, including some of the deal breakers. We decided we would marry – civil wedding in Burkina and church wedding in Canada, but we never set a date.
I had decided who my witness would be. It was a pretty easy choice. Rachel Johnston Nacoulma, was a new friend I had made here. Someone I think has a good head on her shoulders, a solid relationship with God, and… an African husband. As white as Loren is, his reactions are more often African which causes a fair bit of exasperation on my part. Rachel and I would have a number of discussions about our “husbands’” behaviours and the frustration. Here, your witness isn’t just like your best friend brides’ maid. The witness is the person you expect that when things get rough, will step in and help smooth the waters, give you advice. The person Loren had wanted as his witness originally, was someone he respected a great deal but who is Muslim, doesn’t like me, and wanted Loren marry an African woman, I think preferably one of his daughters. So I wasn’t too comfortable with that.
Anyway, we found out in September that Rachel was pregnant, and due to go back to Ireland on maternity leave from Feb til May. So I said to Loren that it would probably need to be in January or in June, as we’d be in Canada July and August. We didn’t get on discussing it until early December when we thought about the fact that Julia, his younger sister would be here visiting, as well as Shanalyn, his cousin. So I think it was just before they arrived, he picked a date based on their schedule, and just one month away.
Now, I think most people (women) would find that quite stressful. After all, there was work and school to finish, Christmas happening, New Years’, planned travelling with the relatives, and then to plan a wedding on top of that might be a bit much. A few things saved all of this. The first was that my only real responsibility was to show up. Here, weddings are largely planned by the men. They do all the organizing and setting up, ordering food, getting the rings. Even your dress is pretty much optional. I doubt if anyone would have remarked should I have shown up in work clothes. It would have been chalked up to my being white (or being with Loren, which also comes with a lot of margin).
The one thing that could have been a problem was the fact that you have to post notification of your marriage on the City Hall for one month but you need to provide all your papers to get that started. In usual Loren fashion, where he gets away with the most incredible things, they waived the need for the papers, copies of our passports would do, and we only posted for 3 weeks, not 4. Loren joked that it was good thing it was being posted in Koubri so none of my Ouaga boyfriends would come down there and read it so they couldn't object. I responded that it was good for it to be in writing only as none of his girlfriends could read.
Actually the spreading of the news was part of the problem, that being because Loren is 1) very well known, and 2) an infamous bachelor. If he told everyone, and we had it in Ouaga, we could have expected over 1000 people to show up. So we kept it super quiet. I don’t have a huge number of friends here but I think I invited about 10 or so people. With that we still had about 140 people.
So my only concern, besides getting my original birth certificate (and Ben’s so we didn’t need to do blood tests) was to get a dress.
Because of Christmas and New Year’s, every tailor in town worth talking to was busy. Actually that time of year is huge for weddings as well for 2 reasons: 1) everyone comes home at that time of year anyway/ or is on holidays and 2) because you are nearly 100% certain that it will neither rain, nor be over 40oC. As it was, it was 37oC the day of our wedding and it did rain 3 days later, which is slightly more common than snow in July in Toronto. Needless to say, tailors are very busy. There are wedding shops in Ouaga but they aren’t as numerous nor as well stocked as North American ones. We did find some material at one of the European textiles stores, but then found a little shop that provided material and had wedding catalogues they said they could copy. I already had a design in mind, and we found a cool, blue coloured material, that was slightly stretchy. After looking through catalogues, we revised the design slightly so it would be more similar to something they knew already (Burkinabe are famous for telling you they can do something, and then can’t). Just to be sure, I had actually ordered a dress online through Victoria’s Secret, not very wedding like, more evening gown, but I knew if I had a plan B then plan A had a much greater chance of success.
We decided after that we would add sleeves which they agreed to do but in hindsight was more than they were able to do. As I put sleeves on my drawings, I started to laugh as I realized what my design now resembled. I pulled out my computer and showed Rachel a scene out of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, and we had a good laugh calling me Princess Aurora after that. Needless to say, not having a 20 inch waist, nor waist length blond hair, I didn’t look much like her in the end.
We ended up changing the sleeves anyway to being open rather than slim fitting to make room for error.
So, December 31st we went and took measurements, gave them the final design and the blue material. We ended up deciding to do Rachel’s dress in the same materials so had to do it there as well, as they don’t sell the material. I came back on Jan 7 to try on and refine.
The dress was nice but they were having some problems: they had made the front lopsided and instead of 10 cm wide white in front, it was more than 20 and that wasn’t fixable, and one shoulder too tight, they put the sleeves on sideways, and couldn’t figure out how to make the train attach so I didn’t have to hold it. After 3 visits, the dress was quite good (Wed night before the wedding) so all they had to do was clean it and I could come back on Friday to get it. All good right?
That night I get home and I’m beat. I go to bed with an excrutiating headache and have weird dreams and body pain. I know the signs…. Malaria. 3 days before my wedding and I get malaria. So on getting up on Thursday, I take the first of the treatments and pray that because I caught it early, maybe it will spare me. Thankfully that was true, as Rachel had invited several of my friends over to her house to have a bridal shower for me. In French, this is translated as the last night as a young girl. I had to laugh at that. It was a fantastic party. First she dressed me, as fitting for a woman who will be married to a Gourounsi man (Loren grew up in Gourounsi country). Rachel had some of the teachers from her husband’s organization come and teach us all a few steps from a Gourounsi dance which was quite hysterical – the first part you look like you are grabbing someone’s butt, then you flap like a chicken and turn in a square like the Macarena, which is somewhat difficult, at least for 6 white women apparently, however long we might have spent in Africa. I think Julia has video which I will try to get burned. They very kindly gave us a 9 out of 10 for our efforts at which point Rachel explained to us that they normally teach pre-school children so it was on that scale we were probably being rated.
Following the dancing, I was dressed for my wedding in toilet paper, and a back up dress, also in toilet paper was put on my friend Ineke. Mine was definitely prettier but it fell off which isn’t optimal for the wedding so Ineke’s dress won. We then had dinner, and then the ladies each wrote me a piece of advice or prayer on a scrap of paper that I got to take home.
So Friday. The night before the wedding. I didn’t go to work til afternoon, as I still had malaria. My boss was arriving at the airport and he called just before he was supposed to get on the plane in Ghana to come to Ouaga, only to find out that the agent had booked the tickets in the wrong direction and he was booked that day to fly from Ouaga to Ghana instead. We sorted that quickly, thankfully but not what you want as last minute stress. It gets better.
At 6pm, thinking I was just picking up my dress, I show up at the tailors and she says the dreaded words, right after greeting me – Madame, there has been a problem. Apparently when they dry-cleaned the dress, the lining shrank. They ended up having to pull the skirt and sleeves apart and starting over with a new liner. When I put the dress on it was like they had never measured me in the first place. I rapidly text Rachel, who also has to pick up hers, and say “BRING THE TOILET PAPER?!”
Her dress, or rather the jacket was also completely wrong and we spent nearly 4 hours together at the tailor’s until he got it sorted. They can’t figure out how to attach the train so we just cut it off right there. I didn’t have my shoes with me so she didn’t have any idea how much to cut so we had to wait until wedding day to see how long it still was. Rachel recounted to me all the unbelievable things that had gone completely wrong at her wedding but how she had a great day anyway.
Exhausted we then joined Loren at a maquis where he had filet of antelope grilling away and had a couple now badly needed drinks.
Wedding day was fantastic regardless. Rachel surprised me with a couple beautiful bouquets which I didn’t think of until Friday night after the bar but really didn’t care at that point. Getting dressed with shoes I realize my dress is still 6 inches too long at the back but it’s too late to do anything. We arrived early to the City Hall in Koubri but as it we drove with the windows down, I was quite windblown on arrival. I decide I need to go to the bathroom and realize abruptly that this was now going to require some significant logistical genius. I hadn’t taken into account 2 things: that any toilet I would have access to at that point would be a dirt hole in the ground, and that I could not just lift my skirt as it was skin tight to the knee – I would have to hold it up and pull it down at the same time. I was suddenly grateful there was no train! TMI I’m sure. I decided to hold it and worry later.
Clark and Carol, Ben, Julia and Shan nearly arrived late as Clark went to the Prefecture instead for some reason and Loren’s witness, showed up 2 minutes before as well. So we all go in without any sort of ceremony and plop ourselves down.
The Deputy Mayor officiated the ceremony. She was quite serious in nature but there is always an undertone of amusement in any African in my experience. She made the day even more fun, and certainly for me took a lot of the stress off. She first needs to confirm that all the names are correct especially because most of the names are not Burkinabe and fairly confusing. So my father’s name, written in capitals on my birth certificate went from Gerald to Geralo and my name as always was spelled with an s instead of z. Elisabeth is the French.
So having corrected this, she starts by telling us that all the things that we have complied with, documents provided etc and what we have agreed to. In Burkina you can chose Monogamy or Polygamy (uh we chose monogamy) and if your stuff becomes shared or is separate. As we are both responsible for large companies and potential liability in large sums, we agreed to separate belongings (biens separé). She reads out Loren’s name, family etc and birthdate (Sept 29, 1977 – or in French 77 is 60- 17 – soixante dix-sept). She reads mine and thinks she has read the year wrong so says my birthdate year as soixante dix neuf, or 1979 instead of 69. We correct her, and she looks at us as though we are crazy and again reads it as 79. We correct her again, she looks at me, shakes her head and continues. I’m okay with that!
Entry without order
Deputy Mayor
Clark, Loren's Dad; Peter; Kathy
R; Eric, Loren's witness
Myriam, Pauline, Danika, Darel,
Carol, Loren's mom
Seeing everything in order she proceeds to read the law. As she put it, you need to hear it, understand it and agree with it or we stop now. Because “once we attach it, we cannot undo, no matter how tight” (quand on attache, on peut pas detacher, meme si il serre). Loses something in translation but made me laugh. I found it interesting the things they put in the law, such as fidelity is required by law and even under polygamy there are procedures to follow. Not sure what the penalty would be… it is civil law after all.
Finally she required that we stand up and say our vows. She told us to hold right hands. Loren takes my hand, looks me in the eye and says “Bonjour!” as if greeting me for the first time. She requires us to say Present when she says our name and when we agree, we must say YES! very loudly. She calls Loren first and when he says Present, she tsks and teases, saying “No one could hear that, are you sure?” We proceed in this way with much laughter and amusement. She gives her blessings, and then says you may kiss the bride. Loren, being shy, kisses me on each cheek. The attendees went crazy saying NO NO NO!!! Do it right!!! So he kissed me properly and all was good.
On n'est pas d'accord! Lucie
So the Deputy gave her blessings and warnings to each of us and we had lots of photos. Loren managed to keep his shirt buttoned through it all and his sleeves rolled down but after the photos he couldn’t take any more, the sleeves went up, the first button undone and his sunglasses back on his head. At least he didn’t put the ATS vest back on – he was going to wear it.
We went to the maquis/restaurant down the street and had a great party. Even the provincial tribal chief came to the reception which was a great honour. Both Clark and a long time friend, Sami gave their recounts of how we met and the events leading up to the wedding. I had heard of the stories behind Loren's other nicknames: Whirlwind and Break-the-City, but finally learned that he had earned the nickname Sniper when he had returned from Canada and recounted to his friends that Ben was born. They called him Sniper for a person who with one shot can hit the mark.
We had a lot of meat, as we had 2 front quarters of Roan antelope as gifts as well as 2 pigs. That and beer and whisky and life is good. My only remaining problems were the fact that people kept stepping on the back of my dress as I was dancing so I had whiplash and a 6 inch strip at the bottom which was filthy, and I did finally go to the toilet and it wasn’t as difficult as I first thought, even, or maybe because of wearing 6 inch heels.
Reception Hall
Koubri Naba (Chief)
Sniper?
Michel
Carnivore's dream wedding
Chicken Dance
Dembele
Pauline
Rachel and Simon Nacoulma
So we are finally married, and will be in Canada for our church wedding. I will bring pictures of our life here, and will probably wear the same dress. Our rings are silver and Loren’s has already tarnished/gone black, but he figured out how to clean it with diesel and clay. We may get them changed to gold, later.
We’ll see how things for the Canadian wedding progress. Preparing from 10000 miles away adds challenges but I also have a more African level of expectations so I think some people may find the whole thing a little strange. Oh well.
Bonjour!
