A loud, high pitched ululating erupted from the crowd as the bride walked down the aisle. The cathedral was cheerfully decorated with lacy artificial flowers sprinkled with glitter. The place was packed with people, elegantly dressed bridesmaids and close family, then a multitude of others, dressed brightly and smartly, but in a more casual way.
The wedding did not differ much from what I was used to. It was held at the Episcopal Cathedral, so the order of service was much like that at my sister’s wedding. There was a lot of ululating throughout, bouncing Arabic praise songs and a festive air. The whole affair was a little more informal, and a little less grand than the weddings I was used to. There was no meal at the reception except for small snack boxes. The advantage of this was that the invitations had been given out a lot more freely.
I had never met the couple before, so I was quite surprised when I received the beautiful card inviting me to their wedding (about four days before the event). I was also a little surprised when I turned up a few minutes before the stated starting time to find myself practically alone in the Cathedral. “I thought the wedding starts at 2.30,” I said, as I was lead to a pew that seemed embarrassingly close to the front for someone so tenuously connected to the wedding couple. There was a laugh and a mention of “local time”. In Juba time is a lot more malleable; it was four o’clock before the service was underway.
While any visitor from the UK or US would have found the wedding remarkably familiar, the marriage practices of the South Sudanese can sometimes be more alien. I thought I’d heard incorrectly when a guy told me he had over 60 brothers and sisters. “My father has eighteen wives,” he explained. He went on to tell me that his father also had between three and four hundred cattle – he’d just received 72 as a gift from a man to marry one of his daughters.
The practice of funerals can also be a little different. One day we saw a great line of cars and trucks, maybe over a hundred. In some of them were people shaking rattles. It was a funeral procession for an important government minister who had recently died in India. Wakes are held for the dead and can carry on throughout the night – on one occasion close to my room I could hear singing and music from late at night until the dawn. When I walked past another of these wakes I saw a large number of chairs arranged around beneath erected shelters. People sat around and in the middle I saw a portrait of the deceased hanging.
In their celebrations and their remembrance there seemed a great deal of spirit and energy. Such occasions can be marked in different ways around the world – a small intimate gathering; a grand, solemn and sacred affair or, as in Juba, a very public, unreserved and colourful outpouring. Each is beautiful in its own way.
The wedding did not differ much from what I was used to. It was held at the Episcopal Cathedral, so the order of service was much like that at my sister’s wedding. There was a lot of ululating throughout, bouncing Arabic praise songs and a festive air. The whole affair was a little more informal, and a little less grand than the weddings I was used to. There was no meal at the reception except for small snack boxes. The advantage of this was that the invitations had been given out a lot more freely.
I had never met the couple before, so I was quite surprised when I received the beautiful card inviting me to their wedding (about four days before the event). I was also a little surprised when I turned up a few minutes before the stated starting time to find myself practically alone in the Cathedral. “I thought the wedding starts at 2.30,” I said, as I was lead to a pew that seemed embarrassingly close to the front for someone so tenuously connected to the wedding couple. There was a laugh and a mention of “local time”. In Juba time is a lot more malleable; it was four o’clock before the service was underway.
While any visitor from the UK or US would have found the wedding remarkably familiar, the marriage practices of the South Sudanese can sometimes be more alien. I thought I’d heard incorrectly when a guy told me he had over 60 brothers and sisters. “My father has eighteen wives,” he explained. He went on to tell me that his father also had between three and four hundred cattle – he’d just received 72 as a gift from a man to marry one of his daughters.
The practice of funerals can also be a little different. One day we saw a great line of cars and trucks, maybe over a hundred. In some of them were people shaking rattles. It was a funeral procession for an important government minister who had recently died in India. Wakes are held for the dead and can carry on throughout the night – on one occasion close to my room I could hear singing and music from late at night until the dawn. When I walked past another of these wakes I saw a large number of chairs arranged around beneath erected shelters. People sat around and in the middle I saw a portrait of the deceased hanging.
In their celebrations and their remembrance there seemed a great deal of spirit and energy. Such occasions can be marked in different ways around the world – a small intimate gathering; a grand, solemn and sacred affair or, as in Juba, a very public, unreserved and colourful outpouring. Each is beautiful in its own way.
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