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Let us end this lavish spending on weddings
2006-09-03 09:58:15
By Peter Msungu
Some four decades ago, to be precise, here in Tanzania, marriage ceremonies and or weddings, were modest, cheap and simple and were mostly conducted on traditional or customary manners. One married in accordance with his or her tribal customs.
In many of Tanzania’s tribes,payment of dowry was in the form of cows or hard cash, where circumstances allowed. But for what I know many tribes demanded dowry to be paid in livestock.
Where hard cash was accepted in the place of livestock, that cash was very minimal to an extent that one ended paying only about 30,000/- per one head of cattle.
This is tantamount to saying that if you were required to pay three cows, the normal dowry in Uhehe(Iringa region), you will cough up only 90,000/- to get a wife of your choice and liking.
After a succesful wedding or marriage, be it in church or customarily, it is then followed by a grand reception, where invited guests are entertained with local brew, nyama choma, dances and what have you.
The expenses for the local brew and meat are in most cases borne by the parents of the groom, of course with some assistance from uncles and other close relatives of the groom.
This has been the scenario for the last many years in this country, and total expenses for any wedding never exceeded 3000,000/-. The avenues for such occasions were the respective homes of the groom’s parents,
All of a sudden, things have greatly changed not for the better but for the worse. Right now weddings depend on contributions from friends and well wishers.
When a young man intends to marry he no longer asks his father to do the needful.
Instead he goes ahead to distribute cards to his friends soliciting money, and naturally if he is in good relations with people he is likely to collect a lot of money for the grant reception he is anticipating.
It is on record that some weddings, here in Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, have cost millions of shillings to cover transport expenses, drinks, still photographers, video cameras, reception hall and many other petty expenses, things which were unheard of in the recent past.
Things have now been exaggerated to an extent that no young man would wish to go and wedd back home, where grand receptions are not held in expensive and well decorated halls. It has now become a fashion that even baptism, first communion cerebrations are held in big halls as if it were a wedding.
’’I would like to have my birthday party at the Diamond Jubilee hall, because two of my friends are having theirs there,’’ semwano asked his father who had planned to hold a simple reception for the occasion in the house.
Imagine, a ten year old girl, thinking of Diamond Jubilee hall. What about a boy of over 18 years old?
His mentality is more developed in that he and his other colleagues, are targetting Sheraton, Kilimanjaro or Court yard hotels for their activities.
If we may pose a question, what has gone wrong in our society. How come people are willing to contribute millions of shillings towards weddings and not education?
Try to circulate a card to your friends soliciting funds to pay for your child’s education in Kenya or Uganda. There will never be any response to such a request.
But send another card appealing for money towards your daughter’s wedding and people will come running with hard cash and presents.
Examples abound in this country of couples who are now divorced after very short period of stay and their weddings were the most expensive, one cannot imagine.
The weddings were grand due to the contributions from friends. So, to say the least people’s money has been dumped at Shimo la udongo dump.
It is time we made a quick U-turn and directed our attention to contributing towards education and other on-going development projects in our areas. Contributions towards weddings could continue but to a very limited extent.
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