A Serer Wedding


Not only did I spend my final days in Senegal visiting my friends and host family members, but I also attended a two-day wedding celebration. The groom is one of my friends from the Beer-Sheba project and he invited me to enjoy the celebration with his friends, family and neighbors. I knew that it would be quite the affair because my friend knows a lot of people and is highly regarded in his community, but the number of attendees and the amount of dancing surprised me. We danced for nearly two days straight although I pooped out the first night at midnight and the second night at 10:30 pm. I am not used to Serer wedding celebrations!
What I loved most was the tradition of waiting for the bride to arrive. Both the bride and the groom have their own separate parties the day before the actual wedding ceremony, with the bride arriving at some point late in the evening or early in the morning to join her bridegroom. The fascinating point is that the groom does not know when his bride will join him because the bride’s family makes the decision regarding the time of her arrival because they are symbolically giving away their daughter for the rest of her life; she will no longer be a member of the household as in the past. This can be a very emotional process for some families resulting in a very late arrival of the bride. Thankfully my friend and his new bride are planning on living in the same village as her parents, so the separation is not nearly as serious.
I was not prepared to wait the whole night for the bride’s arrival, so I left at 12:30 am, but I found out the next day that she had arrived maybe 45 minutes after I left! I guess as the old adage goes, “Good things come to those who wait.” I can just imagine what a lovely moment that must have been, beckoning forth the nuptials the following morning. Crowds of people arrived, and a small army of friends and family managed to serve drinks, snacks and massive bowls of ceb bu yapp (meat and rice: they killed a WHOLE cow). The drums sounded loudly, and men and women burst into dance at random intervals. I had my fair share of boisterous dancing, much to the great pleasure and astonishment of my friends. The wedding was a wonderful way to end my time in Senegal. I am sure that more adventures await me in Senegal. I look forward to the next time.

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