Wedding and a Reptile

This actually happened Sept. 4th. Our internet has been up and down....so here it is a week later than I planned

I was able to experience a Ghanaian wedding this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun. My aid, Helina, invited me to her older brother's wedding. They are very community oriented. Everyone is invited. First, they do a traditional blessing where the bride's family presents gifts for the bride to the groom's family. They have a singing competition while the family decides if they will accept it. Then, the future couple comes and the story is told of how they met. Apparently, Racheal (the bride) had a very pretty singing voice. :) Anyway, the groom to be then gives her the engagement ring. There was a short break for the bride/groom to get redressed and off to the church we go. The service lasted about 3 1/2 hours. I had a great time.

The funny part was when I first got there, Helina and I went walking around this Muslim village. We were stopped by the town assembly man who told us to go look at the 30 year old crocodile. So, we asked around and were finally pointed in the right direction. We found him. He was about 6-6.5 feet long and quite intimidating. He is kept in this shallow covered area and is fed chickens and fish. (Picture above) All in all, the day was quite an experience.