English Club, Marriage & Weddings

Relatives posing with the bride and groom

“What is the difference between ‘marriage’ and ‘wedding’?” we asked our English club. This is an important distinction since mariage in French can mean both the ceremony and the life together.  We shared our sentiment that the marriage is so much more important than the wedding. The wedding lasts a day (or here a week) but the marriage is your life.  Our English club attendees seemingly agreed with this idea, but we’re not sure if all islanders agree with us.

Parade of gifts for groom

Weddings are such a big deal here. They are talked about a lot. They are a huge investment.  The nature of their wedding will mark a change in how the bride and groom are treated in society. We’ve heard of islanders getting divorced right after a wedding— seemingly marrying just to move to the status of “married” in the culture. Big weddings last a week, but they are then dissected for a long while after. Details are written down and compared. Proceedings are videotaped and then watched multiple times. Weddings are even played on the local TV channels— hours of dancing and face shots of everyone who attended. And people actually watch them!

Weddings here are both important and complicated. We’ve learned a lot by just living here, but we wanted to learn more. What better place to go than our English club!  For the past few weeks we’ve been asking our students about marriage and weddings. This past week we asked them to tell us all about the different wedding events on the island.  We thought we’d share with you some of the surprising insights:

The food gifts

• There are at least 12—that’s right!—12 different kinds of possible marriage ceremonies.  Each is distinct.  No one does all of the ceremonies.  Certain ceremonies are paired together but only one ceremony is religiously required.
• Nearly all ceremonies are gender exclusive and there is only one ceremony (for women) where the bride and the groom appear together in public.
• The bride and groom are expected to pay a “dowry” of gifts to the family of the respective partner.  The gifts for the bride always include gold jewelry, but the amount will be greatly reduced if she is found to not be a virgin.
• In one event the groom and his entourage get full body massages from old grandmothers skilled in this art.  (Tom has thankfully, never had to participate in this ceremony)
• In another ceremony, the groom’s gift of gold for his bride is the center of the ceremony.  In this event women dance suggestively with each other and with the gold.
• Though a long way from Oman, the dress of the groom has been strongly influenced by Omani culture.  He wears a turban and dagger and holds a sword in the style of Omani grooms.
• In the only ceremony that brings bride and groom together, the bride dances her way up to the groom.  Upon reaching him she starts to fall down at his feet, to show her servitude to him.  However the groom grabs her before she can fall at his feet.  Instead he pulls her up and embraces her and showers money over her.

Groom and "best men" in Omani garb

We’ve learned a lot and are eager to understand more, especially as the wedding ceremonies give insight into how islanders view marriage. As a team, we have been looking more deeply into the meaning of marriage, here on Clove Island, in our home cultures, and finally in God’s plan.  It is a rich and intriguing study we hope will result in new ways to talk about life, love, and meaning. 

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our English Club is very well-attended lately (we struggle sometimes for enough seats). We’re thankful for the thought-provoking discussions and cultural insights that have happened via our English club— we pray it would continue. We’re thankful that after some bouts of illness this week— our family is feeling better.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Megan is on her third night in a row of  late-night wedding events— pray for perseverance and that going to all these wedding events would be relationship-building and would result in opportunities to share with people. Pray for our kids as we start our homeschool year and try to balance homeschooling with our different commitments. Tom has two men that he has been studying with semi-erratically. Pray for more chances to study deeply with people and that he could find more regularity with these two. Pray for Ma Imani’s 9 year old daughter who fell down some stairs and hurt herself badly—still not sure the full-extent. Pray for healing. We haven’t heard anything new about the country’s airline problem or the computer problem with the language project- so keep praying about those too.