Preparing for marriage begins with paperwork. Frankly speaking, the US Embassy is hard to get to. Not physically- they have several locations around town and all are quite accessible. The problem is communication. They never seem to respond to email....or if they do, it could be months later. Remembering my advice to Souleymane about other contacts he had been trying to make, I decided to hop in the car and go downtown to ask for an appointment in person. Kinshasa does not run by phone or by internet but by face to face contact.
Passport in hand to prove my American-ness, I approached the security guard to inquire about making an appointment. He pointed out a flyer on the wall and indicated a phone number. I spoke with the man who answered and informed him that I was actually outside the door. He promised to talk with a guard and ask them to let me in. Wow. Appointment confirmed in less than a minute.
Once inside, I found the man behind the counter to be very helpful and pleasant. This is only my second experience at the embassy, in need of documents, and both times (once the appointment has been secured) have proven to be full of efficiency and politeness. Although he wasn't exactly sure what document I needed, he felt certain he could draw up a form and have it ready for me by the next morning, maybe even later that same day. He took my number and promised to call.
A mere two hours later, I received his confirmation call and made my way back to the embassy to retrieve the paper. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. A notice of non-empechement de marriage, meaning the embassy has no problems with me getting married as long as I follow the local rules.
This led to a trip to the maison de commune in Ngaliema to verify, again, the exact procedures and paperwork needed. The woman we spoke with was very friendly and remembered Souleymane right away. She invited us into the office to look at some more forms. The office had window shutters and door open with no screens. Every so often a breeze would waft past, blessing us with a moment of cool air. There were four desks crowded in there and the one we were beckoned to was actually a table stuck behind the door.
There was only one chair left and Mama Lily offered it to me. She began to explain some of the papers we needed. She even began to fill one out for us. We happily went along with this procedure until she informed us each of those papers would be $36. It hardly seemed possible. The Attestation de Residence was a badly copied form that asked merely for our name and address. Mama Lily didn't even ask for any ID, although we offered it to her at certain points for ease of spelling.
We decided to get the project du marriage paper instead as it was only $5. It has been interesting to me to hear this "project of marriage" mentioned several times. I suppose the undertaking of marriage is something like a project, but I simply never considered it quite that way. This paper outlined all of the things we would need and Mama Lily suggested we fill it out at home and bring it back when we had decided on a date. We tried to foresee all the of the questions we might have about the form before leaving the bureau and made many inquiries in hopes of achieving clarity and understanding. We never arrived at the reasoning behind buying a case of sucre, beer and whisky. Who would be drinking that and why should they benefit from our special occasion?
Filling out that form later in the evening became a project of its own. We had many questions about the parental consent part of the form (really?) and neither of us had full information about our dads. (Where did they work and when was their exact birth date? Ah yes....children of divorce.) I was stumped by the very first question which had a place to fill in your name followed by etat civil_______________. I thought the only answer here could be single (after all, if I were already married I wouldn't be filling out this form, would I?) Only later it occurred to me that in some cultures, I might actually already be married and still be filling out this form. Wow. That certainly opened my eyes a bit. I asked Souleymane what the procedure for plural marriage was in Dakar. Apparently when you get married there, you are requested to sign either monogamy or polygamy and then, if you sign monogamy, you must stick with that decision.
There was not a place to make such a decision on our form but we'd already had that conversation. We continued filling out the marriage contract to the best of our ability. The last page was completely confusing to me. None of the French words were ones I knew and I simply couldn't make any sense of it. Finally, after reading a few times, Souleymane was able to explain. It was the part of the contract referring to the DOT - wikipedia describes the dot as a gift to the family of the bride from the husband, also known as the bride price. In some countries, the future bride can make demands of her hoped-for husband about what this dot should actually be. We laughed as Souleymane and Ousmane traded dot stories from Guinea and Senegal. Most often, this is not discussed beforehand but is something the husband offers at the ceremony to the father of the bride. Depending on the offer, father reactions can be quite comical.
Ousmane was ready to jump in and accept my dot....whatever it might be.....but cannot stand in to be my witness. This is the last complication I seem to be having. According to the rules, my witness must be someone older than me. This has turned out to be an oddly difficult requirement to fulfill. Most of my friends and acquaintances here in Kin are younger than me, something I have once been criticized for but mostly pay no attention to. Added to that is the fact that it is difficult to actually know a person's age here. Age seems so fluid and relative in Africa. It most often appears a matter of convenience and choice, not stark reality.
So I am left to consider....finding a witness and pondering a dot.....
