The Night Before The Wedding

The big day is tomorrow and you can tell! My house has been taken over with family friends, mostly women. In addition to the 15 or so here for the wedding, there are about 10 women from Bambey that are cooking all of the food. Today we had couscous and meat and tomorrow's looking like something delicious but who knows what. I've finally been told the schedule of events: hanging out in nice but not super nice clothes all morning, eating lunch, then getting ready and going to the mayor's office (which functions as a reception hall) for the actually party. That'll go until about 11pm and then my hostsister is off to her husband's village (he isn't present for any of tomorrow's activities).

But! To the best part of the day. I had bought bin-bins (aka a kind of bead necklace women wear around their waist "at night, in the bedroom") for my hostsister. I presented them to her wrapped in a little fabric and tried to explain a bachelorette party (I think I said, "before a wedding your friends give you nice bras and things like this"). When she opened them she was AMAZED for several reasons. I think the shock of the gift, the fact that I knew what they were, and general appreciation for the cultural exchange/gesture caused her shock. After she finished laughing, she asked me how I knew what they were and I explained Peace Corps showed us them as part of a cross cultural awareness day (keep your minds out of the gutter, we learned about Senegalese clothes and food mostly). Then she thanked me a million times and told me it was really nice of me. I explained that she was my sister and she was getting married so I wanted to share this little American tradition. Within 15 minutes she had shown all of the women of the house who thought it was the most amazing, hysterical thing ever to hit Bambey.

The wedding is tomorrow so I'll have lots of photos and hopefully more stories.

KO