On Saturday November 16, 2013 we were invited to attend the wedding of the niece of Dr. Samuel and Sister Caro. We had taught and baptized Sister Caro and had spent a lot of time in their home. Their niece, Sidoni was living with them and going to school and had sat in on a few discussions. We have grown very close to their family and felt honored that they would want us to come to the wedding. Weddings here, are an all day affair. We had a zone training with the missionaries in the morning and got there just as they were coming out of the mayor’s office where he married them. Branch presidents in Cameroon don’t have authority from the government to marry.
This is the bride, Sidoni and her two nieces who were flower children outside of the court house. When someone else takes the picture, it is hard to know when they will snap it, so most of us weren’t ready.
I’m not sure if they are hired or just show up, but these men were playing music when the wedding party came out. They play flutes and small drums and parade around.
Transportation here is a huge problem. Taxis are plentiful, but money to pay for them is not. People actually skip meals to save the 40 cents to come to church. These ladies asked if they could ride with us. Six of them climbed into the back of our small Toyota truck. We also had 7 people, including 2 younger children in our back seat. Jan and I were quite comfortable in the front seats.
We drove about 20 minutes to a little park in between two lanes of busy traffic to take pictures. Pretty places like this are rare in Cameroon. It is near our apartment and we often see wedding parties taking pictures here. This is Sidoni, her husband and the wedding party.
After wedding pictures, we drove, with all the same people in our truck, out to the village to the home of the groom for the wedding reception and the church wedding. It was about 45 minutes away but took us 11/2 hours because of the traffic. An evangelist pastor then married them in behalf of the church. Dr. Samuel and his family are Anglephones which means English speakers, so everything was in English. It was really nice to be able to understand most of what was being said. We drove along this road until it looked to steep for the small cars to make it back up, and then we parked and walked about 1/2 mile to the home of the groom.
On the way, we pulled over to let a large truck pass and one of our cars got stuck. This is a Toyota Corolla and it had at least 8 people in it. Everyone piled out and we soon had it back on the road.
As we started walking we looked up and noticed these very dark clouds coming our way. They were very black and we knew it would soon start pouring rain. Jan had hurt her knee and we were walking very slowly down a large hill when we felt the first rain drops start to fall.
We paused just long enough to take a picture of this beautiful rainbow that was just ahead of the rain hitting us. We would have loved to video the storm, but were afraid to ruin the camera. Lightening and thunder were all around us and we were seriously worried about being struck with the lightening.
Just as we came to this little bridge over a stream, the rain started to fall in buckets. By the time we crossed the bridge we were very wet. We looked for shelter and could only see the small building on the left. It had about a 1 foot overhang and we huddled next to it. I had my back pressed against the wall and Jan had her face buried in the corner trying to keep her mascara from running in her eyes. The wind started blowing and the overhang did no good at all. We were both soaked to the skin and water was dripping off our noses. We both just started laughing out loud. After about 20 minutes a little girl came from the house looking for us. She had one little umbrella and told us to come with her. We started walking up the hill in front of us and it was a river. The water was 4 inches deep coming down the road. I was holding onto Jan and we were trying to stay under the umbrella when Jan went down, face down in the mud, and I fell on top of her. She had on her huge African dress and the front was all muddy. I was better off because I was on top.
We finally arrived at the home and they had this tent set up out in front. Most of the other guests had gotten there before the rain and were sitting under it. When we arrived, they made a path right down the middle and we marched through. It was so embarrassing. I’m sure they were thinking, “you stupid white people”, but they were so nice to us.
They led us into the house, right in the middle of the ceremony, two people jumped up, right behind the bride and groom. and insisted that we have their seats. We sat down looking good. We laughed, everytime they took pictures of the couple, knowing that two soaking white people would be in the background. We sat there for 3 hours and they insisted on feeding us first. We had chicken, rice and some stew looking stuff. It was all very good.
This is the wedding cake.
This is the happy couple. I hope they are happier than they look. They were all very nice to us and we felt like honored guests. As we drove through the village all the children would look at us. We finally rolled down our windows and said Hi to them. A little girl in our truck said, “you are probably the only white people they have ever seen.” It was probably true.
This is Dr. Samuel and Sister Caro’s smallest child Jimmy. He sat on our laps for a long time and was very content. We finally decided that we had better get going about 8:00 that night. It was dark and we knew we would never find our way home. They arranged for 5 people, complete strangers to ride with us and show us the way. We walked back down the same path by the light of the moon, the fire flies and our lights on our phones. They were very nice and spoke enough English to get us back. We dropped them off one at a time along the way. We got back to where we knew the way and it was just the two of us driving home. We got home at 9:00 and it felt so good to get into the shower and get some dry clothes on. My shoes were wet for two days.
