Looking Like a Fool Either Way

Last weekend, I (Travis) learned to Shibsheba (the Ethiopian Christian style of dance). I didn’t have a choice. Well I could have been the “stiff-as-a-board white guy in the middle of all the dancing Ethiopians,” but hey, I figured that I would look like a fool either way; I might as well have fun doing it! You see, this past weekend, I was a mizay (groomsman) at a wedding. So during the service, when the worship music started, all the other groomsmen and bridesmaids shot to their feet and started dancing. So, I jumped into the deep end, with a packed sanctuary of observers (who, by the way were still seated, but, thankfully, I didn’t turn around to see that).

A groomsman? How’d that happen? Well, my friend Matt Wright, one of our classmates at language school this Fall, is an American guy who had served with YWAM in Germany. During his time there, he met and fell in love with an Ethiopian girl who was there doing her YWAM training (DTS). He has been in Ethiopia for the last 4 months getting to know her family and learning her language (he has the lofty goal of only speaking Amharic with his wife – that would be impressive!) Matt had no family or friends coming to the wedding and so after assembling his bride’s close guy-friends, he came up one short. Hence, I got the chance to see the inside of an Ethiopian wedding.

Some things in Ethiopian weddings are definitely unique, but because this wedding was a cross-cultural one, not all of the traditions were carried out. If we had, I would have had to do many things leading up to the wedding, one of which would be joining the groom in shopping for tons of presents and new clothes to give the bride the day before the wedding. Then, the day after the wedding, the groomsmen are expected to assemble early in the morning to go inspect the bridal suite for evidence of the bride’s purity with which she entered the marriage (if you don’t know what that means, that’s ok, don’t worry about it). Yikes! Thankfully, this part was omitted!

As it was, we did plenty of stuff on the wedding day. At 8am, I met the other groomsmen in the city center and we headed over to the groom’s house. He had gotten up at 5am, gotten dressed and met his bride at a studio for pictures together (they don’t believe in the weird superstition that seeing the bride before the ceremony is bad luck, they said that only pagans do that because they believe in such curses!). Anyway, the studio then made little wallet pictures that same day to be handed out at the reception – a very nice touch if you ask me. We arrived at Matt’s house around 9am and watched a little bit of European basketball, an Amharic music DVD (which taught me how to Shibsheba), and ate a very fancy breakfast (except it wasn’t American style breakfast food). After the breakfast, the camera guys arrived, shooting both still and video photos of us dressing each other. Matt and I felt weird, but apparently these pictures are important for the contrasting pictures of the couple somewhat undressing each other after the wedding. Hmmm…those would make good side by side photos to blow up and put on the wall!

Wow, this is getting long. But if you weren’t interested, you wouldn’t have made it this far! After the pictures, a bunch of other guests came for a part of the Ethiopian tradition that I really like. The groom got into a slick, brown Cadillac and each of us groomsman was escorted to our own pure white Mercedes Sedan. We then led a 10-15 car procession from Matt’s house to the bride’s house (with a video cameraman hanging out of a little junky car in front). It was a VERY disorganized procession which at one point included us blocking all three lanes of traffic for the chauffeurs to argue about which route to take. When we arrived at the bride’s house, there were a TON of people there and they all started yelling, clapping and singing to the beat of a huge drum. It was so much fun to walk right next to Matt as he entered the house and embraced his beautiful bride, Tigist! We were then dancing and singing for several more minutes. Well, I couldn’t sing because I didn’t know the song and some would say that I can’t dance, but it was just nice to be a part of the excitement.

After a formal exchanging of flowers between the assigned bridal couples, we returned to our cars to begin the procession to the church. The ceremony itself felt very American except the fact that most of it was in Amharic. The coolest part for me was right after the vows, when the couple quoted Ruth 1:16-17 to each other – “your people will be my people and your God my God…” Matt quoted it in his wife’s heart language (Amharic) and Tigist responded by quoting it in Matt’s heart language (English). It was very cool given the massive cultural barrier that is bridged in this marriage. The ceremony went without flaw, including my special role of lighting Matt’s candle in the unity candle part and then signing the marriage certificate (which is done during the ceremony). I was given these responsibilities because I was the best man, though I only became the best man at the wedding rehearsal because I was the tallest (I was supposed to be the last groomsman).

After the wedding, we had a reception in the courtyard of the church, which consisted of some great cocktail appetizers and multi-tiered cake (of course). After the first people finished eating, 20-30 people gathered in a circle and just started singing lively worship songs, with a whole lot of Shibsheba-ing. I tried to escape, but as a groomsman I kept getting nudged back into the action. At times it was very fun, but at other times I was jealous of Andrea who did a good job staying out of the limelight. Following the reception, we did a few more pictures and then jumped into our Mercedes cars again. You see, it is required that the wedding party accompanies the couple to wherever they are staying. Thankfully, when we got there, we didn’t have to do anything except eat all the leftover cake! After an hour or so, Matt and Tigist expressed their desire to go to bed (duh!) so the party broke up. I got home around 8pm, but it felt much more like midnight! I was exhausted after a full day of activity, emotion, and the most exhausting part, trying to understand the Amharic that surrounded me all day! Whew! I ate a quick supper, changed into PJs and popped in a borrowed Matrix Reloaded DVD into our computer for some much needed English-speaking down-time!