here comes the bride

I recently attended a wedding in the village! They call them merids (marrieds) here and they sure know how to throw em! And it wasn't any exception for the marid of Joann and Ench.  I've actually met a few Enochs, Ezras, and Yaels here. They love my sister's name Shoshana and I've already been promised by pregnant mamas that if the next ones a girl, it'll be a Shoshana. Ha! And that's about the extent of the Jewish presence in Vanuatu. 

Because there aren't defined or maintained truck paths up to the villages on top, we had a nice 2 hour offroading adventure! It takes about an and a half on foot, but we were bringing wedding goodies, so four wheel drive was the only option. They put me inside the cabin and my uncle Braun filled me in on the villages and land that we passed on the journey up. There were two times we all had to get out of the truck to get it over a messy spot, but Braun is a skilled driver and only had to smoke a cigarette after one of those feats. 

We arrived and dropped our stuff off at my mama's childhood home. I got to look around my bumbu's house and the area surrounding where my mama grew up. My bumbu's bush kitchen is the size of my house and home to some delicious laplap! 

We headed to the ceremony and first thing I noticed was all of these women carrying their offerings to the pot. Not a woman would pass without a stack of mats resting steadily on her head.

The kastom bride price on Ambae is primarily mats and pig tusks, and man were there plenty of both. The Ambae mats are long and narrow and the women weave them with dried pandanus leaves all year long. My mama says it's very therapeutic (well not that word, but that's what she was getting at) I'll have to go through that tedious process in a future entry because these women work extremely hard to produce all these mats. Hundreds of mats stacked on top of each other - I was blown away. It would have been unbelievable seeing that many store bought mats, but knowing how much effort was put into each one really made me step back in awe and appreciation for the craft. 

those are seriously all mats!

I tried to take pictures for my own memory bank without being intrusive. Everyone pushed me forward and told me it was important to capture these moments, but I usually feel that things are better cherished when you're participating instead of observing. And I was the white man taking pictures at a kastom celebration, which always feels ridiculous. However, there was a villager using a laptop to video tape the ceremony so that made me feel a little better! 

I've mentioned before how important and valuable pig tusks are here. There's a special part of the ceremony where the chief pays respect to the pigs. One fun fact (well, depends on your definition of fun. I think it's pretty fun!) I learned recently is the local language word "ala" means the last twist of the pig tusk. And striving for ala is a thing - like doing your best to reach the ideal, the last curl of the tusk. My school's name is Qwatuneala, named after an old Ambae warrior leader named Qwatu who was deeply respected, so they referred to him as Qwatuneala.  Fun! 

bags of pig tusks

 

So part one was paying the bride price at the village of the bride Joann. All the women family members of both sides of the wedding party got up and filed into a small nakamal. They draped a mat over my shoulders and told me to come along, so I happily did. I got into the dark enclosed space and saw that Joann was in the center covered with namele leaves. The namele leaf is a sacred symbol in Vanuatu that represents protection. You'll see the "tabu leaf" on conservation areas, personal fruit trees, or on the doors of new households. It's even on the flag! 

Anyways, my mama passed out coconut oil to all of the other women and everyone sang a beautiful kastom song while covering Joann with the oil. Hair, head, arms, toes - the whole shabang. Everyone reloaded on oil, and found a woman who belonged to the other side of the wedding party until everyone was paired up. My mama later explained that this part of the ceremony signifies the joining of the whole family through the love and care of the women. Turns out I'm an aunt, too, and was included in the ceremony! One of Enoch's aunts partnered up with me and they gave me some coconut oil. Now all the women sang another sweet song, covering each other in the oil! I think that my pal wanted me to forever remember my first bridal ceremony because she doused me good- it took atleast a week for me to get the oil out and for my hair to feel like hair again. Everyone got a kick out of that. The ceremony was very special and I'm happy that I got to participate!

All was going well until the yungfalas (usually misfit boys around 18-25 years old) who were plastered on home brew strolled in yelling out, hitting walls, knocking over cooked food, and trying to be super cool and drunk-like. I was finding it easy to avoid this commotion until one yungfala (who I found out is the brother of the bride) decided he wanted to kick this pregnant dog - hard enough for the dog to fly in the air and crash into something 5 feet away. Everyone around me acknowledged that it happened and laughed and thought nothing of it and I was left to face this stupid animal abuse by myself. I couldn't believe that no one mentioned how horrible it was, just laughed to themselves and returned their attention to the main event. At that moment, there was a lonely feeling in my heart. That among a sea of humans, I was the only one who felt sympathy for this animal. There are reckless yungfala in every society, but it's hard to accept their disruption of the island harmony you find in Vanuatu. 

I found out the next day that two of the yungfala (including the brother that hurt the dog) had to go down to lolowai hospital. One punched a bamboo hut and a piece stuck into his hand and the other punched something else he probably wasn't supposed to be punching and a 2 inch nail went through his palm. 

Those sad feelings were definitely acknowledged by myself and by those around me - community members who will hopefully take my sincere emotion as something deeper than the natural acceptance of these reckless yungfala. That weird time soon passed and we were off to more celebration. I guess I could have easily skipped over that low of the day, but I think that it's important to share both the roses and the thorns of this little world floating in the Pacific. 

After the bride price was finished, we walked over to Enoch's home village which was conveniently located 1 minute away. On the walk over my mama told me that sometimes you must walk over an hour to get to the groom's village! And if the bride's papa is healthy enough and she's not too fatfat (saying "fatfat" here isn't an insult, just a description) than he will carry her on his back to the groom's home!

When we got there, men were finished up their afternoon-long  kastom dances. There were big piles of gifts to the new couple. My favorite one was the massive laplap wrapped in everything a new bride could need - mats, fabric, and plants for the home! It reminded me of the diaper cake made for baby showers in the states!

that's a lot of thank you notes..

We were given a meal of fresh beef and delicious susut (like zucchini) and cake and I wanted to eat it all, but saved most of it for post kava. A big kava rule, especially with extra strong merid kava, is that you're not supposed to drink kava on a full belly. 

The sunset and night was quickly sweeping in. We watch the family members give blessings and wa-la merid complete! Mama, papa, and I walked home with the torchlights on our phones and made a few pit stops for kava shells on the way down. 

Really looking forward to my Mami Amina's wedding in December!