Wedding update: The Cow and the Cod
This is a very extended version of the brief post when I had just returned from the one-of-a -kind wedding where we all sat in a soaring, stained glass Anglican cathedral, hearing the satin-vested reverend say: "If anybody knows any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy matrimony, please state it now", looking at that luscious bride tightly bound in white sequins and lace, knowing six weeks before she had been traded for 250 cows.
According to what they told us at the rehearsal dinner, the groom and his father had flown from Arctic Newfoundland to equatorial South Sudan to negotiate the mandatory bride price. It didn't matter that the bride had been long gone, one of the lost girls from the brutal conflicts in the Sudan who only found her family three years ago, or that in the long interim, she'd managed to graduate with honors from Brandeis University and get both an MBA from the London School of Economics and American citizenship. The men of her ttribe saw opportunity. At first that was 500 cows, two Range Rovers and 1 house. It took two and a half weeks of continual negotiating for the groom and his dad speaking through a local friend to get the 100 Dinka tribe male relatives of the bride, all present all the time, down to 250 cows. The cash equivalent was about $18,000. "They told me I could go across the river," the groom told me with some disgust, "and get a cheaper bride for maybe three goats if I didn't want to give them the 250 cows."
So there was the bride, free at last, all dressed in white in St. John's, Newfoundland with seven bridesmaids in flame orange gowns. Five were tall stately Dinkas, one was the groom's sister, one her foster sister who flew in from San Francisco, and one her best college friend, a Vietnamese who'd just landed from Singapore hours before. When the reverend-- a very old friend and mentor of the groom's family, proudly declared: " I now pronounce you man and wife!", the bride's foster mother's cousin sent the organ chords soaring through the stone cathedral and the Dinkas scattered in the pews ululated over them.
There were 250 cows waiting for us at the reception overlooking St John's and its sliver of harbor. The bride had spent the two and a half weeks the groom was negotiating her dowry in a pottery studio in St John's making them. Evidently the Dinka cow is humped like the Indian zebu, and like a camel, which must enable it to survive in the equatorial desert that is South Sudan. But unlike the Indian cow it's horned, or at least all of the bride's pottery cows were longhorns. They were also, as she painted them, black and white like Jerseys.
After dinner, one of the Dinka bridesmaids took the mic to explain the cow was the Dinka measure of wealth, the currency for trade and its milk the assurance of survival. "The cow is very important to us. That's really all I can say." As ulalating rose from several of the round, pink clothed tables, a stocky man head to toe in fishing oilskins blew through the door and began shouting in brogue too thick to comprehend. Newfoundlanders have a distinct brogue and cadence, leftover from their arrival in the 17th Century and held over by their isolation. Newfoundland is an island, a massive rock. I was told the cadence dates back to Shakespeare's time.
The fellow in the black oilskins and sou'wester hat kept the pitapatter banter going a mile a minute, blimey, luv and gawd. He slowed enough to let us know how important the cod was to Newfoundland, sped up and whipped a whole fish out of a cooler that had been sitting by the table with the cows. He took it from table to table so everyone could kiss it. Then he passed out shots of Screech, Newfoundland's rum flavored from the original barrels of salt cod traded for it two and three hundred years ago. (Salt cod sailed down to the Caribbean, rum brought back in the barrels.) Everyone who kissed the cod and guzzled the Screech got a certificate with their name on it, even the Dinka who ululated in joy.
Then tables were pushed back to make way for a local band that specialized in '60s and '70s rock and roll. Everybody kicked off their shoes and boogied. The best, most magical part was that everybody behaved as if nothing extraordinary was happening.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy Garson
According to what they told us at the rehearsal dinner, the groom and his father had flown from Arctic Newfoundland to equatorial South Sudan to negotiate the mandatory bride price. It didn't matter that the bride had been long gone, one of the lost girls from the brutal conflicts in the Sudan who only found her family three years ago, or that in the long interim, she'd managed to graduate with honors from Brandeis University and get both an MBA from the London School of Economics and American citizenship. The men of her ttribe saw opportunity. At first that was 500 cows, two Range Rovers and 1 house. It took two and a half weeks of continual negotiating for the groom and his dad speaking through a local friend to get the 100 Dinka tribe male relatives of the bride, all present all the time, down to 250 cows. The cash equivalent was about $18,000. "They told me I could go across the river," the groom told me with some disgust, "and get a cheaper bride for maybe three goats if I didn't want to give them the 250 cows."
So there was the bride, free at last, all dressed in white in St. John's, Newfoundland with seven bridesmaids in flame orange gowns. Five were tall stately Dinkas, one was the groom's sister, one her foster sister who flew in from San Francisco, and one her best college friend, a Vietnamese who'd just landed from Singapore hours before. When the reverend-- a very old friend and mentor of the groom's family, proudly declared: " I now pronounce you man and wife!", the bride's foster mother's cousin sent the organ chords soaring through the stone cathedral and the Dinkas scattered in the pews ululated over them.
There were 250 cows waiting for us at the reception overlooking St John's and its sliver of harbor. The bride had spent the two and a half weeks the groom was negotiating her dowry in a pottery studio in St John's making them. Evidently the Dinka cow is humped like the Indian zebu, and like a camel, which must enable it to survive in the equatorial desert that is South Sudan. But unlike the Indian cow it's horned, or at least all of the bride's pottery cows were longhorns. They were also, as she painted them, black and white like Jerseys.
After dinner, one of the Dinka bridesmaids took the mic to explain the cow was the Dinka measure of wealth, the currency for trade and its milk the assurance of survival. "The cow is very important to us. That's really all I can say." As ulalating rose from several of the round, pink clothed tables, a stocky man head to toe in fishing oilskins blew through the door and began shouting in brogue too thick to comprehend. Newfoundlanders have a distinct brogue and cadence, leftover from their arrival in the 17th Century and held over by their isolation. Newfoundland is an island, a massive rock. I was told the cadence dates back to Shakespeare's time.
The fellow in the black oilskins and sou'wester hat kept the pitapatter banter going a mile a minute, blimey, luv and gawd. He slowed enough to let us know how important the cod was to Newfoundland, sped up and whipped a whole fish out of a cooler that had been sitting by the table with the cows. He took it from table to table so everyone could kiss it. Then he passed out shots of Screech, Newfoundland's rum flavored from the original barrels of salt cod traded for it two and three hundred years ago. (Salt cod sailed down to the Caribbean, rum brought back in the barrels.) Everyone who kissed the cod and guzzled the Screech got a certificate with their name on it, even the Dinka who ululated in joy.
Then tables were pushed back to make way for a local band that specialized in '60s and '70s rock and roll. Everybody kicked off their shoes and boogied. The best, most magical part was that everybody behaved as if nothing extraordinary was happening.
~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma, Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, Buddhism, Spirituality, Religion
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
posted by Sandy Garson @ 7:35 PM
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