Ephrem Endale Contributer
Someone said, “A wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers.” Well, your philosophical gens might argue there is nothing wrong with such a saying it is a little too hard on the ears, especially to a still highly conservative society of ours. But as a wedding sounds the opening bells to a new chapter in the lives of the couple involved, I don’t think it’d be fair to treat it like some rich guy’s birthday party.
But unfortunately while many have definitely started thinking twice before they make themselves prisoners of lifelong debts for the sake of throwing a wedding party and impress everyone there are also those who crossed all the decent lines of humility and social responsibility utterly inconsiderate to what happens around them. We’re in economic crunch times with many finding it hard to remain on their own two feet. It is not about having or not having.
If you have enough and some more, then that’s good. Of course, the term ‘enough’ is subjective, wouldn’t you say? After all enough for some is certainly too little to others. And your life many time than not reflects your status on the social strata. But wherever one is on the ladder one’s actions directly or indirectly impact especially those in the society he lives in. I mean you have gone through life more or less on bumpy roads and all of a sudden you’re about to have your life’s partner.
You decide to throw a wedding. Mind you, from the start you took home your very first salary of a few hundred birr to the present days when you are paid ransoms as salary with even more beefy incomes from here and there the society has stayed by your side. Remember the last time you renovated your house. Society members have helped you helming manual work without demanding a single (Sebara santim, as they put it in Amharic 😉 for their services.
Now if you don’t have high regards for such members of a community would you really have any regard for whomever? Now you’ve decide to throw a wedding party which would be described in one word, extravagant. You know all the glitter and carnival like atmosphere which you think would steal the headlines for years to come.
As if nothing happened in your previous life, your wedding party turns out a carefully choreographed event which reflects nothing of what you’ve ever been. Firstly the ceremony would be held in two places.
Now we come to the real talk and the convoluted thinking of some of us who are never thankful for or even acknowledge all that has been done to help us and lift us above the fray. One event where lunch with mostly local drinks and some beer and some cocktail like snacks is at a not-so-impressive hotel for the residents of your community and others you put in that box as the rank and file.
Then there is in one of the plushiest hotels in town for ‘The others.’ What! Hear me out; the others are, to borrow from the one time Chelsea coach Mourinho ‘The Chosen Ones.’ But life was never like that. I mean unless all the money, heavy leather chair , the five, eight million birr car have messed up with the brain cells life before the wedding was never about the rank and file being on one side and ‘The Chosen Ones’ on the other. For the most part of your life The Chosen Ones weren’t the ones who carried across all those valleys and gushing rivers, who helped you beat the hurricanes and cyclones of life.
“The Chosen Ones’ weren’t there when you really needed consoling people by your side on whose shoulders you cry on; the ‘rank and file’ were there for you 24/7. In fact The Chosen Ones given the VIP treatment at your wedding are newer additions who featured in your life once you’ve beaten the nastiest storms life could throw at anybody.
It’s astounding to hear about all those millions and millions of birr weddings, sums which have covered the costs of eight or ten decent wedding parties, and I am not exaggerating. Believe me, if you hear about the amount of money spent at some wedding parties you can’t help missing a heartbeat or two.
All this came to me because of an incident which, so I presume, is still being played out. A month groom comes all the way to Addis to scoop up his princess off her feet and carry her across the Atlantic. And, I think you should brace up for this, they never met in person! It is said they connected on Facebook a couple of years back and stayed friends with absolutely no reason to ‘block’ each other! Ha! Of course pictures were exchanged, and they seemed to have been impressed with each other. Wouldn’t you say it’d be difficult to be impressed by pictures in the age of Photoshop and all those image enhancing software!
The guy is told he is supposed to send elders to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage. (Such a story happened sometime back and I think I must have mentioned it.) This guy refuses to do so. His reason was that this is an old and primitive culture which we should throw away. And his ‘supporting evidences’ come from across the Atlantic and they couldn’t click any nerve back here. After all, this is not just another night out on the town.
This is about the next phase of the girl’s life and you are not just to pull hand with “Come on honey; we’ll miss our fight.” All done to convince him that he had nothing to lose by conforming to the established norms could convince him. As I write this I heard that he has threatened to fly back to the US and he has given them the ultimatum.
What about the girl? Well they say she was a complete wreck! Torn between her parents who brought up with all the love parents could offer their children and her would-be husband and the American life she has been dreaming about she is left in limbo.
A joke I wrote sometime back comes handy here;
Will you hold my money please?
What’s the idea? Are you trying to be funny?
I’ve just got married.
And you want me to keep your money?
Yeah, you don’t think I should keep my money in the house with a strange lady around?
Now this must be e of those ‘weddings’ where ‘The Chosen Ones, don’t feature high and the Rank & File move the earth; well, sort of!
The Ethiopian Herald April 2/2023