Obviously. Clearly. Indubitably.

A few weeks ago, my friend asked me if my camera could take video. When I said that it could, he asked if I could film a wedding for him. I agreed (though what a villager with no electricity or computer or television will do with a wedding video, I have no idea).
Since people here are SO wonderful at sharing information with me (not!) I didn't find out that it was actually HIS wedding until the day before. I also didn't find out that it was in a different village until the day before. "Don't worry," they told me. "It's not far at all, only 3 km." Okay, 3 km, I can handle that. Except I think they really meant 6 or 7. In the 2PM heat of the day. In the bush (which means I'm biking through sand and bushes and ditches and such). I arrived exhausted but ready to film. I was led to a huge tree where a group had gathered-all the men on one end and the women on the other. Obviously I sat with the women, who all got a kick out of talking at me in Gouin and watching me cluelessly stare at them in response. People continued to chat as a group of men in the middle of the semi-circle talked amongst themselves. Phones were answered when they rang, children ran around, the bride and groom were nowhere to be seen and I figured that, like everything else here, things were going to start far later than planned. After a while, people got up and prayed (it was a Muslim wedding) and a woman instructed me to follow her.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To eat," she responded. That's weird...eating before the wedding?
Another friend came up to me who knew I was going to be filming the wedding and said "Did you film it? You got all of it? I want to see what you got!"
"What?!" I cried. "What do you mean?!"
"The ceremony," he responded, with a tone that I expected to be followed up with a drawn out "DUH!"
"Um...well...people were running around and talking and there was no bride or groom or anything and I didn't know it even happened!" I blurted out.
He just stared at me for a minute.
"The guy gave the mother of the bride a pagne and then someone gave 500CFA. Then the dad got 1000CFA and then they..." he continued on about this convoluted ceremony that apparently took place as if to say "Really, Lindsy. How could you be so daft as to NOT realize that the ceremony was taking place right in front of your face?!"

Silly me.