I
know I can’t dance nor can I sing. I didn’t dance during my
wedding, this was thanks to the fact that MaNyoni was expecting our
first son within a few days after our wedding and she could not dance
and by default I also didn’t dance. Our white wedding was on
Saturday 14 December 2002. The church ceremony was at one of the
Methodist Churches in Chitungwiza and the wedding reception was at
Lord Malvern High School in Waterfalls where MaNyoni had also gone to
school for her A’ Levels. Personally I did not see the value of a
white wedding over and above the African Lobola ceremony and that
view has not changed. Also growing up, I was against the lobola practice. With time I began to embrace that tradition. Feminists are
of the view that lobola practice has been preserved because it
benefits men, I think they have a point there because most of the
money and cows goes to the father. In 1996 when my older sister
eloped, her boyfriend came home to initiate the Lobola practice and
also in 2006 when my youngest sister got married, In both cases as
father figure in my family, I pocketed the money and my mother's youngest sister was not happy with that.
My
African wedding/Lobola negotiation was on 8 September 2001 (one day I
will blog about that experience). As a young man raising lobola money, it
shows commitment to your girlfriend. I think it shows that you are
becoming a man. Needless to say the lobola charge must be reasonable.
I grew up hearing stories that you must never marry from Masvingo
Province as they are always expensive. In my defence, I am not the
first one in our extended family to marry from Masvingo province, the first
person to do so was my cousin, sekuru Gibson. After our lobola
ceremony MaNyoni moved in with me in Avondale where I had been
renting since 1999. It was her wish to have a white wedding. Our
first proposed date was in April 2002 and we had to cancel that date
after my mother became seriously ill and she eventually died in
February 2002. I started dragging my feet and I was considering a
simple civil marriage ceremony at the Magistrates office. My wife was
not very happy with that and I saw that it was causing a lot of
tension and I compromised. Marriage is like a government of national
unity where the ruling party and the opposition comes to form a
government. You can’t always get your way. Some days I fee like the
ruling party and some days I feel like the opposition party.
Compromise is the name of the game.
We
settled for the date of 14 December 2002 and we booked the hall. We
started making arrangements such as choosing a wedding cake, printing
invitation cards. After the Zimbabwean dollar lost value at the end of
1997, life in Zimbabwe had became unbearable. In 2002 Morgan
Tsvangirai had lost the presidential election in a dubious election
and the farm invasions were in full swing, life became even harder in
Zimbabwe. A month before our wedding, I got a job as a junior manager
and the job came with the use of the company car. A lot of people
offered us help, my father in law slaughter a cow for use during our
wedding, my wife’s uncle offered us the disco and the public
address system for the wedding, we bought food for the wedding. My
friend Cornelius Takawira was still in UK then and when I told him
about the wedding he said, “Tsano I will help you”. When the date
approached there was a fuel crisis in Harare. I drove to Mutoko and
Murewa a day before the wedding. I came back with my sister in law
and my grandmother. I passed through Musami to tell my mother’s
eldest sister about the wedding. I honestly did not want her to come
as I did not need complications. She refused to attend the wedding
and I was relieved as I did not want any drama on my wedding day.
I
drove to the Hall and I saw it was decorated beautifully in the
colours chosen by MaNyoni, the colour I saw was purple but she called
it Lilac colour. Anyway I was never good with colours. MaNyoni and I
joined the petrol queue at a BP garage in Newlands, Harare that
afternoon where my father’s cousin sekuru Adolf worked as they were
expecting fuel delivery that day. Whilst in the fuel queue, I got a
call that the General Manager- Finance had turned down my request to
use the BMW executive pool car as our wedding car. Anyway I never
liked a BMW. We left the BP garage late in the night and there was no
fuel delivery. Early on Saturday morning on the day of the wedding, I
received a call from a money changer to say that I needed to collect
money that had been sent to me by Cornelius from UK, around 6am my
friend Trevor Midlane brought 20 litres of petrol in a container. We
left home to collect the money and then drove straight to Westgate
Shopping Centre to buy our wedding rings at an Indian Jewellery Shop.
The rings we got were a bit over size and there was no time to resize
them. After a few years my ring fits perfectly but I can’t say the
same about the member of opposition. Some years ago the member of
opposition was washing clothes at our home in Zimre Park and she
realised that she had thrown away the dirty water with her wedding
ring and started crying. Fortunately my brother in law was around
and looked for the ring and found it.
After
buying the wedding rings, MaNyoni went into Harare CBD where her
cousin mainini Anna was going to do her hair. Anna came in late.
Reverend Balangile started phoning us as we were late for our
wedding. MaNyoni said to me, let not worry about anything we did our
best if anything is going to go wrong today let it be. I was worried
that MaNyoni should not have so much stress considering that she was
about to give birth. Trevor was going to drive to South Africa that
day with his family and had offered to carry MaNyoni from home to
church. Trevor picked up MaNyoni in town and he drove her home and
waited for her to change and then drove her to church. I picked up
the wedding cake in Avondale and drove to the church with one of the
messengers from work. When I got to Chitungwiza, the messenger went
back to collect my grandmother. The wedding ceremony started and went
on for hours. When I go to church, I prefer spending around an hour
or so as I do not have a huge concentration span. For years, I would
attend the early morning English service at Trinity Methodist Church
and the service would last roughly an hour. That long service did a
good thing because shortly after my father in law became a born again
Christian and is now a regular church member of The Dutch Reformed
Church of Zimbabwe.
The
messenger who went with my car never came back and we now had one car
short. There were only two or three vehicles available. I remember
the two Peugeot 306 sedans belonging to my work colleagues Agrippah
Marangwanda and Austin Samakande. With the way I hate French cars, I
can’t still it that believe our main transport during our wedding
was made done by French cars. We then drove to Waterfalls and because
everyone was short of fuel, we were not able to drive to Harare for
the flowers. The wedding reception went on very well. Unlike the
Lobola ceremony a number of MaNyoni’s relatives did not attend our
wedding. What had happened was that around August 2002, MaNyoni’s
cousin had a wedding in Mabelreign which we attended and about 6
weeks before our wedding, that cousin was driving from Bulawayo to
Victoria Falls for work purposes and he was involved in an accident and his wife died in that accident. Some of the relatives wanted our wedding to be
postponed and we decided to go ahead with our wedding.
During
the wedding my uncle who is my father’s only sibling gave a
beautiful speech, so did his wife who stood as my mother. My aunt my father's cousion also gave a beautiful speech. My aunt Mrs Maposa looks like my mother
in law so I was chuckling when relatives from MaNyoni’s side was
confusing my aunt with my Mother in Law. We went outside Lord Malvern
and the photographers took hundreds of wedding photos. After the
wedding reception we counted the money that we had been given by
friends and relatives. We paid the decoration guys, caterers,
photographers etc. We then went to my in-laws house in Chitungwiza
and left around 8pm to go to Harare CBD. A friend of my sister had
given us a complimentary voucher for 2 nights at Cresta Lodge.
Because MaNyoni was expecting soon after the wedding, we had decided
to go for our honeymoon holiday around September 2002, we had spent
10 days in Bulawayo, Hwange National Park and Victoria Falls.
Due
to the economic situation in Zimbabwe at that time we did not manage
to have the wedding we had planned, however we did really enjoy our
wedding. A lot of friends chipped in to make our wedding possible
and we did not pay for cars for the wedding as my work friends
chipped in, Onias my brother in law taught the bride and groom party
wedding steps free of charge. My father in law provided a whole cow
for the beef used during our wedding. A lot of people who provided
services were work friends whom we only paid after the wedding. I
really took to heart what Reverend Balangile said to us that day.
From a personal finance point of view, white weddings for young
couples, I do not encourage them especially if they are the ones
footing the bill. As a young couple you are busy buying furniture,
saving deposit for your first home etc. You then are forced to part
with huge amount of money for an event that lasts less than 12 hours
and can leave you with a serious debt. One of the main reason why
people divorce is money problems. My view is that when you pay for
your Lobola, the marriage officers should come and let you sign your
marriage certificate.
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