Last night I went to a wedding with some friends. The going was a long and involved process: they picked my flatmate and me up from our apartment at 4:30 in the afternoon, and we didn't actually get to the wedding until almost 11:30 that night. What happened in the meantime? A excursion to the hairdressers, a run-in with security at a Metro stop, and a bit of wandering lost through the streets of a not extremely nice part of town (especially so late in the evening). All intermixed with the usual relaxed pace of life that pervades this culture. (Americans would say we wasted a lot of time.)

The trip to the hair salon was definitely a highlight of the day. Consider: in the States when women make themselves up for a fancy dress party, dance, what-have-you, they have a stylist pile all their hair on top of their heads in french twists and beehives and other more elaborate concoctions. But here, in a place where generally women's hair must be covered, or at the least pulled back from their faces and tightly bound, women go to a stylist to have their hair straightened and brushed down around their faces, or curled into long sausage curls that bob down past their shoulders. Even after this older women will often still cover their carefully arranged loose hair for the evening. But it doesn't matter. That's how you do your hair for a party.
My friends insisted that Allison and I do the same. But here some complications arose. I would be willing to place a fairly large sum of money on a bet that we were the first foreigners (Westerners) ever to walk through the front door of that hair salon. This in itself caused a stir. But more amusing than this-- our hair simply isn't like theirs. Allison wasn't as bad off-- her hair is thick, and she decided not to have it curled. But my hair is fine, very fine, and tangles at the slightest provocation. So this poor man, who I'm sure is quite competent in his craft, was completely baffled by my hair. Everytime he tried to do anything, it slipped out of his hands, off the brush, out of the clips, and then became (in his eyes) inexplicably snarled. Everyone was quite frustrated, and I know that none of them were satisfied with the end result. Which in some ways added to my discomfort at walking through the streets... at night... with my hair blowing about my face. It felt wrong. And I've haven't even been here two months. Imagine how I'll feel after two years.

The wedding itself was great. "Wedding" is a bit of a mis-translation into English, I think. The ceremony is not actually public, so to picture where I was think of the biggest reception you've ever been to... outside... with carnival lights... and a throne for the bride and groom that has for a backdrop an eight-foot tall fan-shaped extravaganza of air-brushed hearts and rainbows and clouds... and a live band (whose repertoire is definitely not that of The Wedding Singer; this was a Sudanese wedding) playing music pumped out of speakers at such volumes as might be heard if you were leaning up against the front mains at a Metallica concert (my ears were still ringing this morning)... and hundreds of people laughing and talking and clapping and singing and dancing-- and warbling the odd traditional call of celebration that sounds rather like a jackal mourning his dearly departed mum... and then throw in some more noise and people and color just for effect... and that might be something like the wedding I attended last night.
It was wonderful.