Ethiopian Wedding

Sunday

Today we got a wonderful look at Ethiopian culture. We walked into town (about 35 minutes) and passed by hundreds of people – all dressed in white and going to church. On a church day, the typical Ethiopian woman will wear a white dress made of many layers of thin cotton and a shawl over her hair and sometimes mouth. It was quite an experience to see all of these men and women (most men wore white as well) walking through the streets and grassy areas on their way to various churches. When we arrived at the church downtown the service had just ended – but our enjoyment had just started. There were people all around us, and we could hear singing still coming from the church doors. When we made it closer to the church, we saw many people – very elaborately dressed up – singing in formation in some sort of traditional way. There appeared to be two people of significance everyone was singing to and focused on, so we assumed it was a wedding of some sort. After watching for a while a woman approached us and spoke perfect English. She had lived in D.C. for many years and she was able to explain the tradition to us.

It was a wedding – but it was a very special wedding. She said that church weddings do not happen often. For one, they are very expensive and the couples are usually in debt to the church for the rest of their lives. They were intricately dressed and had an entire choir with drums lead them wherever they went. Secondly, church weddings can only be done two months out of the year. You must not have a church wedding during a month where there is to be certain fasting obligations, so this leaves very little time for people to schedule these weddings. Finally, church weddings were much more sacred than other weddings, because you were making a much more public commitment. If you are married in a church you could only divorce for two reasons: infidelity or not being able to produce children. There were two wedding processionals going on at this church while we were there and they were wonderful to watch. Pictures to come, if I ever get a good enough internet connection.

The rest of my day was spent preparing for tomorrow. I have had to pull many more resources together than I had initially planned, but I am SO thankful for the internet. I was able to download PDFs from DHAs website (desert-heights.com) about our life skills program and positive behavior management which will help me greatly in trying to describe some of the practices I use in my classrooms back home. I prepared a meeting agenda – although I am not sure how closely it will be followed. There are definite points I want to cover before Friday, but tomorrow will be a trial and error day of how the staff at Nehemiah would like everything to be structured. The teachers who will be coming do not speak English, so that will be another barrier to overcome. I will have someone able to translate, but the time it takes to do this is massive. Just trying to get through an IEP at home with a translator can be an agonizingly long process.

I can’t wait to see how Monday goes, and I will update you all when I get a chance!