Eritrean Wedding Afterparty

I took Maya last week to a wedding afterparty for Tirhas while Mike was in Qatar. Maya and Mike went to the actual wedding while I was in Sudan.

The party was in the evening at the apartment complex where Tiberh and Tirhas both live in Mohandiseen, across the river from where we are in Zamalek. It was a casual party so I dressed Maya in a pink playdress and sandals and we took a taxi, since Mike had driven the car to the airport for his trip and I am still too freaked out by insane Cairo traffic to drive here.

When we got to the apartment we were among the first to arrive. We hung out for a while with other early arrivers and finally the organisers put on some Ethiopian music, which was a signal that Tirhas and Yohannes were about to arrive. They were paraded in by their bridesmaids and men of honor and seated in two big armchairs that were arranged to look like thrones in the front of the room. They were both wearing long cloaks with gold embroidery on them, and they spent the evening sitting in the chairs while all their friends and family greeted them and congratulated them on their wedding. It was a pretty cool tradition.

They also served traditional Ethiopian food, including Doro Wat, and Injera. They had some homemade honey wine that they were serving from plastic bottles. Maya saw a bottle of the wine and asked for some "juice", but we steered her toward the less harmful orange soda instead.

All of the bridesmaids, including Tiberh, had their hair done in traditional braids that were drop-dead beautiful. They had tiny cornrows down the front and bigger braids on top going back and then their hair was loose in the back. They decorated the braids with white cowrie shells. Tiberh, who normally wears her hair loose and blow-dried straight, said the braids were really tight and extremely painful, and she looked like she was in pain every time she moved her head. She was dying to take the braids out but ended up having to wait a few days because she didn't want to hurt the feelings of the woman who braided her hair.

Anyway, there were lots of children at the party including a very cute 18-month-old Eritrean girl named Nasi who Maya played with while I chatted with her mom as we waited for the party to start. It was really interesting to see Nasi next to Maya, and her mother and I had an interesting conversation about the size of our babies.

Nasi's mom thought Maya was huge and asked us how we managed to get her to be so big and chubby, because she was concerned that Nasi was too small. Nasi was a lot smaller than Maya, although they didn't seem very far apart developmentally as Nasi was running around and talking a little and basically doing most of the same things Maya does. Nasi's mom was really surprised when I told her that Maya was tiny compared to other American babies, because she considered Maya to be very big for her age compared to other Ethiopian children. We compared what we feed our kids and it seems like we feed them the same things. Both the girls are getting whole milk and eating regular food, not in particularly large quantities. It seems like Maya maybe is getting more cheese and yoghurt and that kind of thing, and I wonder if that is making the difference.

I find it interesting that Ethiopian babies adopted by American parents grow to be so big compared to their Ethiopian counterparts. Maya is hardly big by American standards, just 22 pounds at nearly 20 months. But she is big compared to the Ethiopian and Eritrean same-age kids in Cairo, and the Ethiopian kids here are not malnourished nor are they super poor.

On another note, everyone at the party was really interested in Maya and asked me about her a lot. They wanted to know if she was "Habasha", or Ethiopian, and were all very happy when I said she was. Without exception, they told us she was a very lucky girl -- not exactly the message we are trying to send Maya. They would not listen to me at all when I told them I didn't see it as her being lucky. They would just dismiss me by waving their hand or look at me with a puzzled face and say: "Have you been to Ethiopia?"

Hmmmm. Not sure what to do about that exactly. I asked Tiberh about it later and she agreed with them, saying that Maya is lucky and that she thought probably most of the people at the party wished they could be adopted by an American family. She said she thought that once Maya sees the poverty in Ethiopia she will see how lucky she is as well. I told her that I thought Maya had to lose a lot to get to be adopted by us, so I didn't see it as luck really. But I get the feeling this argument is lost on the Ethiopian/Eritrean community in Cairo. We'll have to see how it evolves over time.

Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the party, but I forgot my camera. I'll post some new pictures of Maya building a lego tower soon, though.