My Toposa father, Aloso, recently got married to his second wife. Toposa culture is a never-ending puzzle and I will never come close to figuring it out, but I will say that the celebration experience is always an interesting one. The Toposa take their ngakidamdam times seriously and really it's enough to make any American party seem really lame.
For this particular ngakidamdam, the people from Aloso's village got ready and then sort of paraded to the village of the girl he was marrying. The women wear lots of bells, extra beads, and many buy socks and shoes in town to wear for these fancy occasions.
This is my Toposa mother, Regina, who is wife #1. She borrowed my rain boots for the celebration. I asked her if she was happy that her husband was getting another wife and she said it was very good. Toposa women and girls work very hard to tend their gardens, fix their houses and prepare food for their families, so more wives means there are more people to help with the work. Happiness and love are not part of the marriage equation here.
Many people wear animal tails just above their elbows. They are sort of like tassels and the women will throw their elbows up to greet others during the celebration.
Basically there is a lot of running around, blowing whistles, jumping, singing, and general chaos for several hours. The people of each village group together and have a dialogue back and forth in the form of yelling, chanting, stomping, etc. Part of the dialoge is the bargaining for how many animals the man will give the woman's family.
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