WEDDING WORDS FROM TOUJOURS TINGO

WEDDING

Matchmaking
Until relatively recently in the West, open relationships of a pre-marital kind were not the norm. The Dutch described unmarried couples who lived together as hokken, literally, ‘living in a pigsty together’. In many other parts of the world, such a set-up still wouldn’t even be considered. The aim of society is to get a man and woman up the aisle, round the fire, or over the threshold:


Wedding Lists
Female relatives of the Swahili groom perform a ritual called kupeka begi (Send a Bag) in which they bring the bride gifts from her husband. In response, the bride’s female relations perform kupeka mswaki (Bring the Toothbrush or Chewsticks), whereby they deliver to the groom a tray of toiletries. This is particularly important because the bride and groom are forbidden to meet before marriage; their only communication is through secret messages conveyed by homosexual men, known as shoga.


The bride wore black
In the Tsonga language of South Africa qanda refers to the traditional bringing of an ox along with the bride as a symbol or guarantee of her future progeny. The ox is then eaten by her new husband’s family. She is not allowed to see any part of it, if she does she should say: ‘they killed my child’. If language is our evidence, this is by no means the weirdest wedding event in the world: