Photos from Ennie and Henry's big day

Part 1: The salon


Part 2: The Church
 

Part 3: Posing for photos
 

Part 4: The Civic Centre

Part 5: The reception
 

 

Ennie and Henry get married

Weddings can be exhausting and I was only taking the photos! Today, and many congratulations to them both, Ennie and Henry got married. Hooray! As Ennie is a good friend from Maz, and because I have bored her previously with loads of photos from my Zambian travels, she asked me to photograph her every move. 

It all began with me finding the ladies at the salon around 0800hrs, hair being straightened, curled, lengthened, make-up being added, and lips pursed. I then caught a few glimpses of them all getting dressed up before we headed to the church. The service was simple with plenty of big smiles emerging once it was all over. Next came the official posing of the wedding photos which took place in the gardens of one of Lusaka’s smarter hotels. After that it was a trip to the Civic Centre as more officialdom was required – signatures and a bizarre talk from the registrar who focused more on what the bride and groom should do if they should decide to separate or divorce and little on the anticipated joys of marriage. At last everyone could relax and take it easy for a bit as the main members of the wedding party escaped to my house for some late lunch. The groom definitely needed a drink by this point. 

Last up was the main wedding reception in the evening which was being held in the grounds of the Zambia National Service; not army, not air force but something military which was almost a disaster for me. No one had realised that foreigners are not allowed on the base without written permission beforehand. Hence, the armed security at the gates refused me entry, even though they appeared to be doing little checking of the other guests. They are obviously so well trained that even at night they can tell the difference between someone from Zambia, Malawi, Angola and so on . . . you get my point. Anyway after calling to higher and higher officials, pleading from members of the wedding party, checking all my documents and convincing them that I was in fact the official wedding photographer I was let in under armed escort. And then closely watched for the next few hours. 

Parts of the reception were similar to back home, others interesting and different. The wedding cake was shared out – one layer each to the parents of the bride and groom, one kept for their first born child and one divided up for all the guests. Ennie and Henry also had to through a very public display of feeding each other chunks of the wedding cake, followed by another first kiss (the third one I think after the church and civic centre). Then it was all over, sometime around 2200hrs and as soon as the happy couple left so did everyone else.

Welcome braii for the new vols

Tradition dictates that a welcome braii is always held for the new VSO volunteers, organised by the current ones. Hopefully, the existing volunteers provide a few friendly faces to the new vols after they have only been in the country for 24hrs. With limited options in Lusaka we decided to have the braii at my new house, trying to squeeze in something like 45 people into the place. If the rain had come then we would have been in trouble and sat like sardines but luckily the weather stayed dry for a few hours so people could spill outside; so my house survived the invasion of so many people. And it was a success – lots of tasty braii food, cold beers and much excited / nervous chatter and questioning about life as a volunteer in Zambia. A good start for the new vols on the block and there was enough food leftover for the current vols to have another braii the following evening!

Independence Day 2011

In case you were wondering what the colours of the Zambian flag represent, here is a short explanation. The green background represents agriculture or the natural wealth of the country. Red symbolises the struggle for independence, black represents the people of Zambia and orange highlights the country's mineral wealth, particularly copper. The eagle at the top stands for freedom.

Party #2: Phyl and Judy

A double, or was it really a treble celebration? – birthdays for fellow Mazabuka volunteers Phyl and Judy, as well as a house warming for their new home, which is much improved compared to their last place where very little actually worked and it was opposite a noisy bar. Yet again the males were outnumbered 4 to 1 by the ladies of Mazabuka which is always good! And as ever the food was tasty, there was a drink or two, silly dancing and amusing photos.  A happy Saturday night out.

Party #1: Andrew's Big Day

This was the beginning of the birthday bonanza with four Mazabuka friends all getting a year older within a week of each other. The celebrations kicked off with my housemate’s (Andrew) birthday and the usual feast of great food. As a slight variation on the standard braii the party guests had DIY kebabs to make and barbecue with meat and lots of veg as choices for their skewers. Then came the traditions. First up was not one, but two, birthday cakes, equally tasty but very different; chocolate brownie vs. sponge and sugary sweet icing. Second was what Zambians see as very traditional which is where the birthday boy or girl must get soaked with water. And when Andrew was least expecting it a bucket of water was thrown over him, which he took very well.

Movies party night

Another party and for no particular reason we dressed up as characters from films. There was the usual great food, lovely people, amusement, drinking and dancing. Life can often be very good here.

Day of the Disabled

To cut a long story short, re-read my comments about Gender Day in late November but then picture this as day as being much worse . . . little organisation, few people and plenty of confusion. Shame.

Malaikha

An Austrian friend here is impressively and passionately trying to establish and build a school for local blind children in Mazabuka. So far progress has been slow, particularly frustrations with local bureaucracy which gobbles up what limited funding she has allocated to the school. Therefore, on Saturday her organisation held a fundraising event for the school. In the afternoon there was dancing and singing (plenty of miming too), and a fairly well know singer in these parts – Slap D – performed; the girls seemed to know and enjoy his songs. But the main event was the Miss Malaikha (beauty) contest. Lucia, an Italian volunteer here in Maz, gamely agreed to take part along with 9 other local girls who took the contest very seriously indeed; apparently they had been rehearsing for weeks whilst Lucia was a lot less serious. It was all very entertaining, especially as some of the contestants were very attractive.

Gender Day

This will sound all very cynical but . . . another week and along comes another commemoration day. I agree with the message and the need for policies, action and education and so on but I am unsure whether a poorly organised, small event, preaching to people who already work in this area (and not the general community), is the right way to go about addressing the issue. Anyway, here are some photos of the usual banner, t-shorts, dancing and drama.

Rebecca's birthday party

Stella, and her family, have been an integral part of our lives here so when she asked Andrew and I if we could help fund her daughter’s fourth birthday party it was impossible to say no. To be honest we did very little apart from ordering a birthday cake and turning up to take photos. Most of the work was done by various people from the Sunday School at Stella’s church. So for around 2 hours on a Sunday morning we were surrounded by 40 children, singing Happy Birthday to Rebecca and watching them all devour the birthday cake, popcorn and lots of other sweet treats. Rebecca (the girl in the hat and pink dress) was a little quiet and subdued because of the drugs that she is taking but her mum overjoyed and a very proud parent. The children did not stop talking about Rebecca’s party for weeks.

More presents

The time is takes for post to reach me here in Mazabuka can be very frustrating – being told that packages are on the way but never sure when they will arrive. However, I have discovered one benefit as this year it felt like I had two birthdays! A couple of packages failed to arrive on time but both turned up on the same day this week. So I now happily have some new music, films and a footy magazine to read. The chocolate has almost been eaten up! Thank you Paddy, Kat, Nol and Ann – greatly appreciated.

Toga, toga, toga!

And now for something completely different! For no particular reason we threw a party but with a twist, turning it into a Toga party in Siavonga on one of Zambia’s few beaches, which do exist despite the country being landlocked. So we played beach volleyball for hours on end, diving around in the sand until hands and arms were sore, and then jumped into the pool to try and play some more volleyball. It was then Toga time – some went for the traditional white, others added accessories, or there was red, purple, green, blue or chitenge Togas. The lodge provided a local band and the German owner played a few songs too, before sometime in the early hours of the morning the pool became full of people wearing Toga outfits.

Old bugger

Well that’s another one for me! I chalked up 35 this weekend, and was completely spoilt by my friends here. On the Friday night in Mazabuka we had a party at my house, inviting our various Zambian and volunteer friends, and then on Saturday we headed to Lusaka for food and drinks with friends there. I was given some great presents: a fancy red and black chitenge apron (essential for cooking given how low our cooker is); a lovely African painting; new sandals (essential for the hot weather); and to continue the pub games theme a dartboard! There was also a huge chocolate brownie from our local bakery as the birthday cake.

Sorry the photos are a bit blurry, maybe because I was in front and not behind the camera. 

 

 

Tonga tunes

The Chikuni music festival is an annual event held in September which seeks to promote traditional Tonga music, which is the dominant tribe in this part of the Southern Province. The village of Chikuni is about 2 or so hours south from Mazabuka and a place that Marco lived and worked in for two years when he first came to Zambia. So he guided us around the village, waving to various familiar faces and then we ended up at the home of a former neighbour. Kasonde and his family had prepared a feast for us – pork and goat cooked on the braii, nshima, various local vegetables and some beer too. We could not have received a warmer, friendlier welcome. We then spent the afternoon listening away to the various acts performing at the stage – having no real idea of what they were saying as the singing was all in Tonga but enjoying the music anyway. Some acts were simply a man on stage singing and strumming his homemade guitar, whilst others were much bigger with 10 or more people of dancers, singers and musicians. As dusk came in we headed back to Maz to continue our cultural experience, though this included enjoying the Lebanese food ordered from our neighbour (great hummus), and dancing and drinking away until the early hours. Needless to say Sunday was a lazy, lazy day.