Beautiful, isn't she?
I don't expect to see a lot of weddings in my time here. From what I've seen and heard, they don't happen very often. There's definitely not a wedding industry the same way there is back home. I believe that Seattle has something like three different wedding magazines. Seattle Bride and Seattle Wedding and that kind of nonsense. Rosy, on the other hand, had to wait for her mother to visit the United States, where she bought the wedding gown and brought it back to Haiti.
I can't say that weddings are rare. On the whole, there's plenty of Haitians getting married. But doing the whole official wedding thing doesn't seem to be a big "must" for most Haitians. This may be due to economics; weddings are pretty expensive no matter where you are. But at the same time, Haitians both rich and poor place a very high priority on baptims and funerals, often going way into debt for the sake of these social and religious obligations. But when it comes to marriages, there is a much more relaxed attitude.
This could be because dating is taken very seriously, there's nothing casual about it. Haitians don't generally "date around" much. They refer to their boyfriends and girlfriends as "menaj," which comes from the French word "ménage" that usually refers to a married couple. There is no step below menaj. You don't work your way up to menaj. Once you've declared that someone is your menaj, it's assumed that you are quite serious, perhaps even living together as if you were married. Perhaps with children. Women in relationships like this are often referred to as the "madam" or wife, of their boyfriend. Men, however, don't earn the title of "mari" or "husband" until they produce a ring. There's also a fairly common practice of men who are already in relationships taking a "ti menaj," or "little girlfriend" or two on the side. This double-standard is a Latin America-wide phenomenon, and some would say it's much less common in Haiti than in some of it's Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking neighbors.
But maybe there is a real split between Haiti and the rest of Latin American when it comes to marriage. Whereas abortion is completely illegal here, much like other Latin countries, divorce is as easy as can be. The laws are incredibly accommoding. Steely Dan even wrote a song called "Haitian Divorce," owing to the fact that there used to be a sort of niche market for "divorce tourism" here in the 70s. North American couples that wanted to untie the knot without all the legal fuss could get it done in an afternoon, and then stay for the weekend and come home tanned and ready for life as a single once again. Haiti is to divorcing what Las Vegas is to getting married. You can even get a unilateral divorce here, no matter how much your poor spouse protests.
But like I said, weddings still happen all the time, and I'm sure they're usually as lovely as the one I saw. It's especially interesting that Rosy chose to have a traditional wedding considering this: her father was a prominent houngan, or voodou priest, who had several madams. Rosy was the last of the thirty children he fathered. We've never spoken at length about it, so I don't know if her mother had a traditional catholic wedding or not, but I would guess not.
* * *
I also wanted to follow up on one of the comments to the last thing I posted here, about sayings in Creole. Matt shared one of his favorites, which I totally should have included the first time:
M ap kraze rak
I heard this a few times in my office before asking what it meant. A "rak" is a big bunch of trees, or a small forest. The phrase "m ap kraze rak" literally means, "I'm going to destroy a forest." People say it when they're about to leave somewhere. "Whoa, look at the time, I'm going to destroy a forest." The idea is that you're going to take off, you're going to hit the road, you're getting out of there at full speed, and you'll be going so fast that there won't be any trees left standing near the path you blaze.
My friend Almarie e-mailed me about the phrase "anpil bet" or "lots of animals" referring to wisdom. Whereas I thought it had to do with valuing wisdom as much as livestock, she had a more enlightened understaning: "my theory is one more based on animism, and on all the animals really being there, talking, with input, like in mythical times." A couple of days ago, a friend used the phrase this way, "moun sa a te gen anpil bét nan tét li." Translation: That person had a lot of animals in his/her head" -- which means "that person was incredibly wise." In light of this, I think Almarie has it right.
M ap kraze rak
I heard this a few times in my office before asking what it meant. A "rak" is a big bunch of trees, or a small forest. The phrase "m ap kraze rak" literally means, "I'm going to destroy a forest." People say it when they're about to leave somewhere. "Whoa, look at the time, I'm going to destroy a forest." The idea is that you're going to take off, you're going to hit the road, you're getting out of there at full speed, and you'll be going so fast that there won't be any trees left standing near the path you blaze.
My friend Almarie e-mailed me about the phrase "anpil bet" or "lots of animals" referring to wisdom. Whereas I thought it had to do with valuing wisdom as much as livestock, she had a more enlightened understaning: "my theory is one more based on animism, and on all the animals really being there, talking, with input, like in mythical times." A couple of days ago, a friend used the phrase this way, "moun sa a te gen anpil bét nan tét li." Translation: That person had a lot of animals in his/her head" -- which means "that person was incredibly wise." In light of this, I think Almarie has it right.
