Wedlock

Nope, not me yet. Sorry. But I got to enjoy a wonderful Kenya wedding this weekend. My Kenyan "Sister" got married in Homa Bay at a beautiful lakeside resort. It reminded me of a typical American Garden wedding; except for the length of the ceremony (6 hours) and the other Kenyan traditions such as the entire wedding party breaking out into a line dance in the middle of the ceremony. I call Violet my "sister" because her mother has always called me her son since the first day I arrived in Kenya 6 1/2 years ago. Her mother is Margaret Nyangi who has a widows project weaving baskets, just next to the ICIPE gate.

I had the job of transporting the bridesmaids and 10 junior bridesmaids/flower girls from Mbita to Homa Bay on Friday afternoon. The journey usually takes about an hour, but this day it took about four hours. During rainy season, you never know what will happen. We ended up stranded for a couple of hours after a big vehicle got stuck in the middle of the road and blocked it so that other cars couldn't pass. Dozens of cars were stranded like us. The local villagers were able to push and pull a couple of small vehicles through the rut on the side of the road, but there wasn't enough space for the big vehicles. After hours of waiting, my friend who was driving the groomsmen found someone he knew who guided us a long way around through some people's compound on a bicycle path. It was a small path with some sticky, deep mud. My friend's vehicle got stuck multiple times and I was busy pushing, along with an older man and small boy (I think I was doing most of the work). Finally some of the villagers found us out in this remote place and assisted in pushing us safely back to the main road. Fortunately my vehicle handled the mud very well. I didn't get stuck one time though personally I was covered head to toe in mud from pushing Salim's vehicle.

On Saturday I was busy driving people around to do errands, setting up chairs and trying to help in any way I could so that the wedding wounldn't start too late. Most of the people had come from my church in Mbita so it was a lot of good friends and our church family working together to make the day a success. I got to spend some quality time with a couple of our secondary students from CGA who were also in the wedding.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ceremony with Christ in the center of everything. We hope and pray that Violet and Sylvano will keep Him in the center of their marriage!