I am taking advantage of the school holiday and put down as much as I can before I have to start class preps again. :)

Once I had got used to Senegal to the extent that I was actually eating again, it was time to settle things with Robbie. We decided that we wanted to get married and that sent Robbie into a vicious circle of Senegalese bureaucracy. I have to tell you quite frankly that if you want to visit Senegal or live there, that's fine, but try to avoid offices for your dear life. Nothing good comes out of offices. Generally, they will tell you what documents you need to provide and you go back, happy that you have all of them, but then the official will tell you that you still lack one document. So you go and get that. Then they say that you should have got someone's signature on it. You go and get that (on the third occasion, as the guy is probably out of office during his hours the first two times you try). Then they say that now you are almost done, if you could only go and get the first pack signed too because you should have but you didn't because they didn't tell you that you should have.

If you got lost in the last sentence then you might have a fraction of the idea what the word "confused" is about. Confused is what you get if you try to fight the bureaucracy windmills of Senegal. They push you around until you are ready to leave the country for good (I wonder if that's the idea), and when you finally get all the necessary papers signed and think you are done, think again. Surprises never end. Namely, in Senegal (as in many other African countries, as I've heard) many documents expire in the course of three weeks. If you need them later, you just go and get them again. That holds true even about a birth certificate. Go figure... I demanded the bulldog across the desk how many times in his opinion I had been born - well, guess if it helped. I am glad I lived to this day to tell you the story.

So we re-visited some people we had already seen for a couple of times and got valid papers.

To get married, I had to present three documents - my birth certificate, the ID-card, and the passport. That, for me, was another enigma. Why should I present three documents that carry identical information? The answer still eludes me but that's the thing about Senegal - you shouldn't try to understand. You just do what you are told to because the Senegalese officials are the closest things to God and Prophet Muhammed as you can get (it's a Muslim country). At least, considering their authority.

Compared to all this rushing up and down before the wedding, getting married happened really fast. Of course, it was a far cry from what I had dreamed of in my childhood, as we were seriously running out of time with all those document problems. But I got two very nice-looking traditional garments to wear, and everything was simple and sweet. Only 30 or so people attended because we wanted it that way. That proved to be an issue in our circle as many of our Nigerian friends failed to understand why they didn't get invited. Nigerian weddings host between 600 and 1000 guests, plus all those people who see the invitation and say, "Hey, I know those people, I am going too!" With our non-Nigerian budget, it was clearly anything but possible. Some time after the wedding, they even started talking to us again...

Unfortunately, we didn't have a digital camera at that time, so the pics that I added are rephotographed from printouts. I apologize. Honeymoon next time! (Don't expect too many details, though! :D )