A Traditional African Wedding

We were invited to attend a traditional African Wedding with Romeo and Irene, our best friends in Douala.  Romeo’s youngest brother was getting married and it was held at Romeo’s parents home.  We have been to their home before and they were so nice to us.  The day after the wedding they had Romeo bring us some cooked fish and plantains for dinner, to show their love to us.  That was after feeding us two meals at the wedding.

When we arrived the relatives and neighbors were busy cooking a huge amount of food in the alley by their home.  The feast would be sent home with the bride’s family as part of the bride price.  These are plantains that are large bananas which they boil or deep fry.  They are a little sweet with a consistency of potatoes when they are boiled.

Jan wanted to help cook, but they told her she would light her dress on fire.  They were very nice to us and let us take all the pictures we wanted.


We did get to help in the kitchen.  We made sandwiches with bread, butter and salami.



We think this is called minindo.  It is a dough that they make and roll in little rolls and then roll it in large leafs.  It is allowed to ferment for a couple of weeks and turns to the consistency of soft taffy and is rubbery.  It has little flavor but the Africans love it.  They sell it on the streets to cars that drive by.


It used to seem so strange to us to be the only white people in a room full of black people, mostly men.  Now we don’t see color anymore.  We just look at each other and say we are really in Africa at an African wedding.  Here they are getting ready for the ceremony.  They all shook our hands and welcomed us.  We all introduced ourselves later in the program.  It wasn’t a whole lot different than our wedding breakfasts in the US.

Romeo asked Sister Gailey to wear her African dress, that was made for her, by the relief society for an activity they had where they all dressed alike.  The ladies did let her stir this pot, but were keeping a pretty close eye on her.

Here Jan is grinding pepper on a rock with a round stone.  They really still use this method to grind spices.


Behind the main house was a traditional home that has been there for a long time.  I guess it is a guest house now, or where the husband sleeps when he doesn’t behave himself.

The bride’s family gives the groom a list of what they want him to bring, for them, to the wedding.  As you can see alcohol is huge on their list.  The jugs have a homemade brew in them.  Here, a representative of the family checks things off the list if they are acceptable.  They pile continued to grow for an hour as things were brought in to add to it.  The father of the bride, in the colorful shirt, is checking out the tobacco that they brought.


They have now added plantains and two 100 pound bags of rice and some bottled water will be added to the gift pile.


We went outside to check out the goat that was on the list.  They kept smacking it to get it to bleat.  It would’t and was too skinny, so they rejected the goat.  It was later accepted and will be taken home with the rest of the loot, to the bride’s home where they will kill the goat and cook it.  They will take the huge pots of food, prepared by the family of the groom, and all the alcohol with them and will invite the neighborhood over for an all night feast and celebration.


These are the plantains that have been pealed and are being washed prior to boiling them.


This is the groom and bride and the spokesman for the grooms family.  I guess he serves as a witness to the ceremony.  We didn’t think it was appropriate to take pictures during the wedding ceremony, so this is the best we have.  We will show the chief that performed the ceremony in a picture with Jan and me.


This is the tribal chief.  He was a huge man.  When we were introduced to him he sent someone out to buy us a coke as a gift for us.  He was gracious enough to let us take his picture with us.


This is our best friends in Douala, Romeo and Irene.  They joined the church about 11/2 years ago.  They have 4 children and always others staying with them.  They are such a source of strength to the branch and have taken such good care of us, since we arrived.  Their English has really improved and Romeo and I speak our own language.  1/2 English and 1/2 French.
Whenever we have a problem or need anything, we call on them.  They do the same with us.  We have been in their home many times and feel just like family.  I like Romeo’s short sleeved suit.

When we get missing our grandchildren too much we adopt some of the beautiful children here.

Our Kenya Safari

Shortly after arriving on our mission in Douala, President and Sister Jameson came to visit us.  They told us that they had been on a safari on their first mission here, and they highly recommended that we go on one too if we could afford it.  Pres. Jameson even mentioned that the General Authorities had said that a safari would be a wonderful opportunity since we are so close and may never be this way again.  Since that day early in our mission we have planned to make it happen.  We decided to go on our 9 month anniversary which would be half way through our mission.  This week, the long anticipated day finally arrived.

Our good friend Pam Atwood, in Morgan, helped with the arrangements and everything went very smoothly.  Here we boarded a Kenya Airways 737 for a 4 hour flight to Nairobi Kenya.  Sister Whitesides is sitting behind us.  She and Elder Whitesides from Yaounde and Layton Utah, have shared everything here in Cameroon with us and we were so glad that they were on the safari with us also.


We spent the night in Nairobi in a Hilton Hotel, and then got on an 18 passenger plane and flew to the Mara Intrepids where we would spend 4 days and three nights.  We made two stops and let passengers off and picked up new passengers at two other camps along the way.  We flew over some beautiful country and could see wild life as we came into the dirt landing strips near the camps.

After a brief orientation and a fruit drink, we were taken to our tent.  It was very nice inside and had this nice deck that overlooked the river below.  The tent had a hardwood floor, a four poster bed with a mosquito net, and a nice bathroom with a large shower.  More pictures of the inside will be coming later.

As soon as we arrived at out tent, we looked down at the river, about 30 feet away and there was this huge hippo sunning itself.  He was there most of the time we were there.  An elephant also walked down the river bank one afternoon while we were watching.

Every morning at 6:30 we would go out on a game drive until 11:30.  They would pack a breakfast for us so we didn’t have to come back to camp.  The first animal we saw was this Gazel which had just had this baby.  She was still licking him clean and we saw him take some of his wobbly first steps.

Coming into camp after getting off the plane we were greeted by this baboon.

We saw a lot of Elephants just grazing in the meadows.  They are so huge when you are only about 10 feet away.  This one started walking toward our Land Rover and Jan was ready to bail out the other side.  They seemed so much different in the wild than they do in the zoo.  They just roam free and don’t seem to have a care in the world.

Many of the pictures we took were while bumping along the road and some of them are a little blurry.  The ostriches were running away.  They are even bigger than they look

.

One of our favorites was the Cheetas.  They are so pretty.  We saw a mother teaching her son how to hunt.  They caught a small gazell and the little one kept pouncing on it and then letting it go and then catching it again.  They eventually ate it.  The food chain is very evident in the wild.


This is a hyena.  They are scavengers.  They hang around a kill until everyone else is finished eating and then clean up the bones and scraps that are left.


This is a wilderbeast.  There were only a few left because every year 11/2 million of them migrate to the Serengeti for new grass lands.  Then in 6 months they migrated back to the Mara for the new grass here.  Our guide said this one was left behind and now he is a bewildered beast.

These are the strangest animals we came across.  We rode in these open Land Rovers and could stand up and see all around us.  This is us with the Whitesides and the Gills who were with us for the 4 days.  The Gills are from England and we loved their accents.



The giraffes were some of the easiest to spot.  With their long necks we could see them from miles away.  They are so majestic.  Jan thought I should have posted one with him looking at us.

We drove up to the river and looked over the edge and there were 20 hippos swimming together right below us.


There are 1/2 million Zebras in Kenya, but they also migrate every 6 months.  There are a few that stay behind and we saw about 30 of them.  They have very weak backbones and the lions sneak up on them and jump in the middle of their backs to bring them down.


There are a lot of beautiful birds and a lot of vultures.  This is one of the prettiest birds we have ever seen.  It has brilliant blues, purples and greens.  There were 3 of them on this tree.


Many crocodiles live in the  Mara River.  They can go for up to a year without eating and when the wilderbeasts migrate they hide and attack them as they cross the river.  This one was probably 15 feet long.  His head is by the tree.


This little baby Hippo was so cute that I had to include it on our blog.


Rhinos are very rare.  There are only 30 left in the whole park.  Poachers have almost killed them off, to cut off their horns to sell.  We were very lucky to find this one and to get within 30 feet of it.  He just eventually wandered off after resting in the shade for w few minutes.


We crossed this river a lot.  One morning as we crossed, we looked upstream and saw all of these elephants getting their morning drink.


This has to be one of our favorite finds.  We were a couple hundred yards away from a small tree.  We saw a male lion stand up and stretch.  We drove over to the tree and there were 4 huge male lions sleeping under the same tree.  They would yawn and stretch and roll over and then go back to sleep.  We parked 10 feet away and watched them for 1/2 hour.  By the time we left the tree was circled with other Land Rovers that had come to see our find.