The Wedding



 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8
You know this verse. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast...

The Bride and Groom
 



We went to a wedding while in Malawi, it was the best wedding I have ever been to. Actually let me back track that, we went to a reception, the wedding was somewhere else for 20 min. The reception was right next door to the ABC campus and it was 5 or 6 hours long. It was amazing.

Something I loved about this day, before the actual reception, it was a normal day in Malawi, it was hectic and we were everywhere. We were told that we were going to this reception to set up chairs, so when we got there, we all piled out of the bus and prepared to set up chairs, we waited for about 2 minutes before finding out that the chairs were not there yet, so we all piled back into the bus and went to the village for a few hours. Then we were told the chairs were there, so we all got back into the bus and went back to the reception, where there were at least 150 plastic chairs. So we all piled out of the bus and started to set up chairs. As we were setting up the chairs there were suddenly these sheet looking things sitting on each chair. We were told that we needed to dress the chairs with these sheets.  They just slipped on, but it was not what we were expecting. That took all of 30 minutes or so, but then we were not done. They brought out black 2 inch thick 'ribbon' that we now needed to wrap around the back of the chair and tie a bow on to them. I would love to show you all a picture of these chairs, but of course I did not take one.


 

But I stole someone else's. haha
 

After we were done with the chairs we left again for another hour, and then came back.

As soon as we got off the bus, the caterer came up to me and asked us to cut 16 cakes, that were 10X10 size pans into 300 slices. The guys were told to go and start the chicken on the grill. So as we did the math on these cakes, the men went over to the grills, and realized that these grills were charcoal only, so they needed charcoal and fire. But charcoal is not readily available in Malawi, and neither is fire. So they were stuck. We watched as the Malawian men took what they have for charcoal and fire and slowly start each grill (all 5), they would put the 'charcoal' in the grill and they started a small fire for the first one, and as the fire got bigger, they took the charcoal/fire in their bare hands and put into the next grill. The men were then told to fan the flame to get it bigger, and hot enough to cook food.









 

man and grill
 





We found out that because we were the Azungu's we also were the servers for the party. So they set up two stations for us to serve the guests at  the party. We served little tiny appetizers 2 to each person, and a drink. It was fun to see all the people who were dressed up in the most amazing outfits, all the husbands matched their wives dresses.

But the best part of the wedding was the dancing and the throwing of Kwatcha (money). The DJ would call up different parties like: family of groom, family of bride, people from Live Love (us), People from ABC, there seemed to be 20-30 different groups that went up to the couple and threw money at their feet. And you could be in several of those groups too. The best part was we danced up the aisle to the couple and then threw money until we were done.

The aisle and the back of the brides dress, beautiful
 

money we threw at the bride and groom
 



The aisle, and the groomsmen/women dancing down it.

The students that were with us had the privilege of picking up all the money and counting it. By the time we left they had 1,000,000 Kwatcha, which comes out to approximately $3000 in America. I was told by the students that a lot of times the bride and groom use the money to pay for the wedding and reception. So the caterer, the DJ, the reception hall everything may not be paid for, they do everything on good faith. And if they don't have enough money to pay everything back, they can make payments.

 

 

If you ever decide to go to Malawi, ask if there will be a wedding, because that is something you don't want to miss.

 

Also, Blessings is getting married in October, Paul and Melinda are in the wedding and will happily accept any money you want to give towards his wedding before they leave. He is worth every penny, if you choose to do so.