Nigeria: An Unexpected Weekend Getaway

It isn’t a secret in Africa that Nigerians have the worst reputation. Most of us have probably heard of the infamous ‘Nigerian email scams’ and if you have been to West Africa you probably have not escaped someone saying that the country was much safer until they started getting Nigerian immigrants. But my weekend trip to Nigeria with my host sister Ekua proved to me again that you don’t always find what it is you have been told you would find. My time in Lagos was nothing short of a relaxing, almost spa-like, holiday getaway weekend.

The wedding in Lagos was for George’s oldest daugher’s husband’s sister, Sola. It’s okay if you have to reread that sentence. Basically, it was the daughter of the Baiden’s in-laws. Ekua and I stayed with one of her brother-in-law’s friends and that guy’s brother. They were great and picked us up from the airport, and from that moment on gave us anything and everything we wanted or needed while we stayed with them. They were some of the best hosts I have ever stayed with, and went above and beyond to make us comfortable.

Ekua and I

Sola and Tolu’s wedding was very beautiful. The colors were aqua and wine, so those who came to represent the bride or the groom wore those colors, and were also given a patterned lace to make their outfit from for the day. Sola did not know I was coming, so she had only sent the lace to Ekua, but Ekua gave me a little bit of her extra lace to accent the neckline of the dress the seamstress made for me out of a wine-colored material. This was my first full traditional wedding in West Africa, so I had to have some of the actions explained to me, as there are many parts to it. For example, one part involves the groom prostrating himself in front of the bride’s parents three times, while also putting money into a basket. The money is a type of dowry that is a token amount for what has been the ‘up-keep’ of their daughter over the years. That amount cannot truly be quantified, so there is just a traditional amount established. Another example is that the groom’s family writes a letter to the bride’s family and a member of the bride’s family has to do a bit of a performance (dancing) before receiving it to read. After the traditional wedding, the bride and groom changed into more western style wedding attire and danced their way into the beautifully decorated reception hall. And there was SO MUCH FOOD at this wedding. It was like food came from a magical well that just kept pouring, and it blew my mind because there were hundreds of people at this wedding. Probably about 600 or so. There was an assortment of fried rice, soup, chicken, beef, several types of meat pastries, and a multitude of different types of drinks from sparkling wine to orange juice. Apparently weddings in Nigeria are one of the biggest events they hold and they are always quite a spectacle.

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