So, I've been to a couple ceremonies recently. Rwandans (it seems to me) like ceremonies, and discussing protocol, and having protocol committees. At these ceremonies no one is in a hurry and there is a lot of introducing someone who will introduce someone else who will introduce a speaker on a topic. No ceremony is complete without some traditional dance, traditional songs and usually an appeal to live up to the development goals of HEPK. Rwandans seem very patient to me, or maybe I seem impatient to me, probably both.
The first ceremony was the village naming ceremony. We got a name! No more "Family 8". I have been really looking forward to having a hero name. Each of the 16-child families in the village have hero names to serve as role models. The names range widely from biblical names like King Solomon to more modern names like Steve Jobs. Other examples include a Marie Curie family, a Joan of Arc family and Abraham Lincoln.
I didn't involve myself too much in the name choosing. I'm going home in 8 months (who's counting?) but this will be their family name forever. Moreover, sometimes my opinion in the family carries a lot of weight and I was afraid that if I voiced a preference some of the girls might get behind my suggestion blindly. This is a big decision, part of their identity, and it is their decision to make. The girls had a (NY-provided) list of names to choose from and on their own narrowed the options there to their top 5: Max Weber, Moses (yes, that Moses), Olave Baden-Powell (founded girl scouts), Eleanor Roosevelt and King Faisal.
I was pulling for Olave or Eleanor because I think girls make good role models for girls, but also kept that to myself. I helped the family research (read the wikipedia pages of) each 5 names and sat back to watch the internal voting. Olave and Eleanor were the top two, and what really sealed the deal in the run-off was that Eleanor lost her parents at a young age herself.
We were announced as the Eleanor Roosevelt family in a special village time ceremony that also welcomed families named after Rosa Parks, Clara Barton, Adam Smith and Martin Luther King Jr.
I think Eleanor is a good role model for the girls in my family and I'm looking forward to sending them a copy of her biography as a gift when I get home so they can really get to know her. One thing that makes Rwandan sense about Eleanor is that she sometimes worked behind the scenes to exert her influence and powerful Rwandan women are coalition builders and string pullers. (Maybe that is true everywhere.)
(The good news, is my nickname still works. In Rwanda, I'm CMFK-ER, so that's a relief. )
Here's Grace and Chantal Vanna Whiting our new family name:
I also recently had the opportunity to attend a wedding introduction ceremony for an ASYV Big Sister/ family chaperone. The introduction ceremony is traditionally the first meeting of the bride and groom, and the exchange of the cows. (That's right, it's cows then vows for Rwandans.)
This instance of the modern day introduction ceremony was held one week before the wedding. The ceremony involved traditional dance, traditional singing and the fathers of the bride and groom negotiating the terms. It's common for the father of the bride to fib things like "she's not even here" or "she's off at college" to drive up the price. In the end, Betty went for 8 cows and Fantas all around. I got mashanana'd up again for this event.
Here's me and Shira:
And just me in front of where the bride and groom were eventually stationed.
We had a lot of time to kill taking photos because Rwandatime is even worse than ultimate time. The wedding invite was for 1:00, we were the first to arrive at 1:30 and the ceremony began at about 3:00.
One notable item, the mothers of the bride and groom didn't even sit on the front row and weren't acknowledged in any way. Also the bride and groom miss, most of this ceremony, as the two fathers are hammering out the terms, so when they finally appear it means it's almost over. It would be weird for me for my whole family to be having a party about my wedding and for me to miss it, but I guess that is the tradition.
And okay, one more. This is a stretch for a "ceremony" but I went up to the Liquidnet Family High School for my girls end of term English projects and got to see them put on sketches, read poems and sing songs in English. It was great and a huge marker for how much they have improved at English in just a few months since they arrived. They were 'cold' because it was only about 75 that day. This is how one of my little dears (Josiane) was dressed:
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