A Picture-Perfect Idea for this Wedding Season

More often than not at weddings in Addis, we see the wedding videographer asking the groom and his entourage to do a repeat of breaking into the bride’s house at the Anasgebam Sergegna rite, the unveiling her, kissing her forehead and a repeat of several other parts of the wedding actually. Reason being they missed the scene and need to retake. Now, I am personally annoyed when this happens because I believe the video team is there to document the wedding, not to produce it. The bride and groom are not there to perform for them; camera men are there to use their skills to capture images from many angles.  If they missed the shot because for example, there was a surge of guests wanting a glimpse of the bride, then that should be the story, not the directed version of it where the living room is cleared and the groom is normatively re-entering with his men.

The videographers become producers and directors indeed, when they direct the bride, for well over an hour, to do twirls, pretend like she’s sleeping or throw rose petals in the air. Perhaps for photographers who look for picturesque poses, such directions might be helpful, but for videos, I don’t see how several minutes of the close-up of a bride with her eyes closed can be interesting for anyone to watch, maybe save for the bride herself.

I wish to argue that having the videography team do a factual documentary of a wedding instead of a produced version of it can result in a fun-to-watch wedding video. The kind your grand children will actually sit through. To begin with, the camera men can and should film the wedding from a corner where they don’t disrupt the natural course of the ceremony. They don’t always have to position their tripods at absolutely in front of the bride and groom at all times blocking the view of invited guests who want to share the moments too. (Some of their recording can be done by handheld cameras which yes, might produce shaky pictures but I believe that contributes to telling the story as it happened). To put it simply, videographers should film everywhere but still be invisible.

I feel camera men need not direct the mother of a bride to hold kohl for a make-believe her-mother-did-her-makeup shoot. While we fondly remember the tradition from earlier generations, it is far too obvious that the likelihood is that this bride went to Terry Style or Boston Day Spa for her makeup, making the mother-daughter makeup scene a superficial one and even a slightly stressful one for the mother who’s being asked to act. Rather, the camera can follow mother’s love in real action as she supervises the cooking in the night before the wedding day or a day before the Mels when she will surely be busy. I think here you’ll see where my suggestion is going to extend to. It doesn’t take one day to organize a wedding and so can’t a whole documentary be filmed in one day. I think if we are to say, ‘this was my wedding’ in watching the video, then it should show all the components it took to make it the wedding that it was. I’m talking about including the Shimagile-sending ceremony, the Tilosh, the grooms men’s (last minute) shopping for their tuxes which usually involves teasing and mockery, the (several) bride’s maids’ meetings, the nightly singing and dancing, the address-writing of invites, and so forth. The everydays behind the special day. Weeks of wedding fever all caught on camera; filmed in front of as well as behind the scenes. Of course this will mean the camera men shooting hours and hours of footage (by which they can justify more payment for the service) but it will all have been worth it in the editing room, where an excellent fun-filled, historical and more than anything, factual wedding documentary will come from!     

I hate English! Well, sort of.

I come from Ethiopia and we are people who pride ourselves for never being colonized which also means a European language was never imposed upon us. We take pride in being the only African country with our own ancient writing alphabets; numbers included. Amharic was the language that reflected the sophistication of the Amhara. The Tigre and the Oromo and the Somali and the Gurage all had their tongues which carried their tribe’s distinct essence. They were all spoken mindlessly by their speakers who took for granted the honor that comes with owning a language, maneuvering it the way a sword master sways his sword.

That was until globalization swept the country and planted English as the master’s language – in every sense of the word. The colonial master, the elitist master and the material master. People ‘opened’ their eyes to the inferiority of their own languages and were infected with the need to make one’s what is the other’s language.
The West largely discoursed in English; through its media, its books, its embassies and its aid agencies in the developing world. Their media is more entertaining, their books are the canons, their embassies are the gateways to their civilized countries and their NGOs pay salaries no other employer does! Of course we were going to want to learn their language!

Where the elite was in Addis Ababa, so was English. Universities taught and published scholarly papers in English. Public events, discussions, seminars, captions at art exhibitions, babies’ names became more and more English.

The businessman who had no education for himself wants to send his children to schools where the best English is spoken and then he ends up miscommunicating with his own children! Not just businessmen in fact, even modest-income families seek for English-teaching schools. I can’t blame them however, every parent wants their child to grow to be a ‘master’.

What I hate is the language mess all of this created. When companies hold interviews in English before hiring, many Ethiopians struggle to speak the master’s language, their grappling with the foreign language is visible in their faces in the form of strained veins and shaky hands. And do all meetings have to be in English? “There is a foreigner amongst us, so let us speak in English” the chairman would say and participation is seriously affected in the meeting and even those who did speak in English said only about one third of what they had in their minds, in Amharic, in their able minds, made unable because of English! English in Addis Ababa is teenagers growing up to speak a little bit of English and a little bit of their mothers’ language which in total is a lot of nothing. English in Addis Ababa is the opening of language schools everywhere; schools that need schooling themselves. English in Addis Ababa is an artificial blend of English and Amharic with speakers inviting the former to disgustingly affect the accent of the latter – post-adolescence, post-maturity! English in Addis Ababa is a mishmash of fluent-speakers, good speakers, average speakers, poor speakers, hardly speakers and non-speakers. They struggle for class, they use their English as a passport across many doors; they pay great prices to climb up the ladder towards being a fluent speaker. I hate what English has done in my country.

God is your maker.

God is your maker. Nothing knows the workings and the well-being of a product better than its maker. So when you are broken and you need a fix, no psychologist, no spiritual book or no ‘law of attraction’ will set you straight.

God’s deliverance is foundational, where man’s is re-structural. God plugs you to the very essence of being well when the world would only align you to its distorted reading of that essence.

Go to your maker. He’ll know what best to do with you.