Weddings In Namibia: How Traditional And How Contemporary

Courtesy of www.namibian.com.na 

THEY have a strong thread of resemblance. Some are traditional, some are religious while some are orlams. But all are expected to guarantee fun.

I attended two weddings of relatives who could not trade dates and I juggled between the two weddings. The interesting aspect is that both weddings were successful in that the bulk of their patrons were there for fun. The one wedding was driven by cultural practices while the religious element remained prominent, yet seemingly optional to the different players. There was no expectation from anybody to play by any rules and anyone could pull a trend during the show that went over two days. The traditional parents played a strong yet invisible role until the end when they took charge in the offering of the wife to the husband. Rituals were displayed and exchanged between the families and when these were complete, the two families became one.

The final ceremony was concluded by the husband taking the hand of his wife and it was time to go. Usually the new wife would be expected to show reluctance in the departure from the parents’ house and so did Kaatjee respond slowly when her husband, with the help of omakura, helped her on her feet. One lady patron yelled: ‘Kaatjee panda’. After the event I asked the young lady why she wanted Kaatjee to be reluctant when all of us were there because she wanted to get married. The young lady said it is traditionally expected of her to be seen to be reluctant. The men take you for granted when they think that you cannot wait to leave your parents’ home, she said.

The other wedding was rather different to the first described in one material way: no alcohol was served. Also, the wedding took place at a farm called Amos, which is enclosed and removed from regular selling outlets. As a result, it was a rather dry weekend for some of the patrons. Still, the evening interactions did not resemble the character of a dry wedding, judging from the voices that came through in the speeches. And as we kissed and hugged during and after the evening ceremony, I did not get the impression that the wedding was all that dry. I asked one of the patrons what it meant to them to have a dry wedding.. She said that, while there was need to respect the wish of the host, it was not all that dry because people had to be enterprising in order for the wedding to be interesting. Otherwise the wedding could not last. She said that in fact some people had left because they found it taxing to be at a wedding without hot drinks.

What struck me though was the level of calm after the formal ceremony and that is when I detected the difference. The atmosphere was very cordial, the patrons displayed strong family ties and there was a picnic style of interaction throughout the short evening and little else in terms of fun.

In the morning I teased out some of my cousins who woke up early to clean up when I saw a few Castello bottles mixed in with the rubbish. We all smiled and none of us had a comment.