The Simple Joys of Village Weddings: A Blast from the Past

These two pictures have really taken back down memory lane in regards to village weddings.
Unlike today's ostantatious and high end weddings we witness today. In the late seventies, early 1980's till upto mid 1990's weddings were simple,budget freindly,fun yet not pompous and we enjoyed them to the fullest.

For example what you see here is a make shift reception hall "Ekidaara" aka "Ekizaraaza" aka "Ekigango" that hosted the invited guests.

A person incharge of decoration only needed toilet papers of different colours by wrapping them around banana stems and poles supporting then the rest was covered with fresh banana leaves. 

But at the high table where the Groom and Bride sat women clothing "Gomesis" did the work of decoration,a white table cloth laid on the "high table" with a Pepsi,Mirinda,Vimto and sweepps sodas to give it "colour" and "class!"

Youth were mobilised in the village to carry church pews from nearby church and school benches as seats for the invited guests. Problem was organising same youth to take them back after the function!

Usually the music system was a double deck cassette player and the DJ was called "operator".
 Your enjoyment or sorrows depended on the operators "mood", for example the operator would put in Maywoods ballad for the lovers to dance the moment he walked around the "Ekidaara" and fails to hook a girl to dance with squeeze dance,he immediately went back to the operator's table and put in Lingala tunes or Kapere ka'Bugongi!

Yes, dancing was specifically in order of protocol. The first people to open the dance were the Groom and the Bride,best man with the matron,then braids maids and the with the pageboy with flower girl in that order. Then you could hear the day's event master of ceremonies announcing that the next one for the parents of the Groom,Bride. 

Then you hear this particular song is dedicated for the urshers, servers and those who collected fire wood and fetched water in that order.

Winning over a dancing partner one had to come armed with Obirt chewing gum or at least sweet pepsi those green round menthol throat lozenges. 


 At around 9:00 pm you would here the event's MC bellowing over the mic in a croaked voice, "that if you know you are not over 18+ years and you are not putting on a pair of trausers please leave the dance floor!" Us,the little ones we usually came during day to "rake" and "survey" the place which would inturn help us get the "entry" and "excape" routes in case the MC started his wiseacre "lugezi-gezi"!

When it came to serving time popcorns mixed with Groundnuts,warm milk tea, Bushera,loves of bread were served to the guests.

 A few eminent people were lucky to drink a beer or two but the rest of the local folks were served local brew "Tonto".

 Music went on till down with no cafue restrictions as it's today.

How was it in your area?
#culturalheritage 
#Ankoreculture

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