A dozen wedding planners and a novel
IHAVE never been a great collaborator. It’s a gift that the gods never saw fit to bestow upon me. Even though football is the one sport I have been able to master, the sport I participate in the most is tennis. And I’m not talking about the doubles version. This is because I’m a notoriously sore loser. During my track days in high school I was that jackass who, after we came second in the 4 x 100m relay, was likely to mutter to the first runner of our team, “So, what happened? Did you not hear the gun? Did you slip?”
It is for this reason that, in the six years or so that I have been writing full-time, I have yet to collaborate in a writing project. I tried three years ago but the urge to tell my co-writers, “My ideas are the only sane ones here and you people are bringing me down,” was always lurking dangerously.
Well, I’m happy to report that this past weekend I was involved in my very first piece of successful collaborative writing. It was on Facebook. Let it never be said that social networks are useless avenues for procrastination. I wish I could take credit for the moment of brilliance but it happened quite organically (that is to say, by sheer accident).
At 9.45am on Saturday I posted the following message: “Right now there’s a bride who is still in her dressing gown, her hair is not yet done, but the wedding starts in 20 minutes. The groom is already waiting at the church grounds. He’s popping Heinekens with the groomsmen like it’s going out of fashion.” Anyone who has experienced a wedding up close will immediately identify with this scene. So did my Facebook friends. And boy, did they come to the party. Pun intended. What followed was one of the most vivid blowby-blows of a typical township wedding I have ever read.
Calvin Mabaso (a former student of mine from my teacher days) chirped immediately: “One of the bridesmaids hasn’t pitched up yet, while another is at a shoe store, trying on shoes that don’t fit.” This precipitated an avalanche of comments from other friends. Siyanda Ndawo (a medical doctor more commonly referred to as Dr Perv on Facebook) said: “The mother of the groom’s child is consulting her inyanga right now (ostensibly to cast a curse on proceedings, see).”
Nokwanda Mbatha described what any township wedding attendee has experienced many times. “There’s a nattily dressed guest in church going around asking other guests who exactly is getting married here.” I hope that last comment helps wedding venue owners understand how come township wedding guest lists are confirmed at 150 and yet 190 people pitch up. At my own wedding, a guest rocked up in a Toyota Quantum with about half-a-dozen of her cousins in tow. And experience has taught us to never politely point out that no arrangements have been made for the excess people because the retort will be, “Are you telling me I cannot attend my own flesh and blood’s wedding? That child is my own mother’s cousin’s brother-in-law on her father’s side, I’ll have you know!” By this point on the Facebook thread I was starting to giggle uncontrollably.
Mabaso weighed in with another township wedding gem: “The only person who came early to the wedding is umhlinzi (the chief cow slaughterer) and that is because he has never left since arriving on Thursday. And he’s still in the same blue overall he was wearing then.”
There are always two, sometimes three weddings taking place simultaneously on a wedding day and not just in church and the reception venue. Back at home there is another gig, complete with its own protocols, while the wedding party is busy at the “white wedding”. Umhlinzi, for instance, is standing over those huge pots (large enough to hide Khulubuse), minding the freshly slaughtered meat. Now and then he is seen bolting at full speed, wielding a bloody machete, in hot pursuit of the neighbours’ mutts, trying to make off with the cowhide. No one raises an eyebrow. It’s just part of the normal proceedings.
Thabani Madlala then adds: “And now a rumour starts. A delegation of Pinkie’s relatives (the mother of the groom’s child) is on its way to the house to confront the groom’s family about properly acknowledging the child. A pair of neighbourhood thugs, Matotoba and Bakithi, has been dispatched to cut them off at the nearest corner to avert a scene.”
I’m blessed to count among my friends people with such sharp observational skills and imagination. Who knows what we will end up creating? Together. As a team. Collaborating. A theatre play? A movie? All I know is that it will be good. Assuming we can finish the project without me discarding everyone else’s ideas.