Today I want to talk about my experiences as a Congolese Canadian.
Like most first-generation immigrants, our parents did a great job to teach us about our culture and give us a sense of pride in where we come from – While still exposing us to the Canadian culture. I never felt out of place at school and fit in well. I think it was easier for them because they spent years in Europe before coming to Canada, so there wasn’t a huge cultural shock. They didn’t struggle to integrate into a new country. They integrated well and we were raised “normally” and when they talked about tradition is wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. We opened gifts on Christmas eve, we ate our country dishes. We focused on our education. Pretty sure most immigrants/foreigners know that song and dance of education being drilled into your brain. Dating was a no-no because they wanted us to focus on education and to worry about boys later. The saying was, “Get the degree and your husband will appear at your front door”… Some Congolaise women are still waiting for that African prince to show up.
Anyway, it wasn’t until I came home with a boy that I found out about all the traditions in our culture that had been hidden from me. Well – Maybe not HIDDEN, but they hadn’t affected me in my youth and definitely weren’t explained, so we were blindsided. I would understand if I was raised in the Congo, I would have known what was expected of me because all my life I would see my friends and family going through the same thing – But when there’s no mention of specific traditions and it’s just sprung upon you when it affects you, it can be jarring, foreign, and ultimately feel arbitrary. I guess some families are really strict with maintaining their culture with their children and don’t want them to really integrate into society, mix races or marry from a different tribe, but that wasn’t our experience. I’m from a certain tribe in the Congo called the Balubas – So, without further ado, here are some of the bizarre traditions that I found out about AFTER I was engaged! NOTE – This is entirely “as I remember them” – I’m not an authority on our cultural traditions or the rules, I just know what I was told and what I experienced:
I came home to tell my parents that I was engaged and I was told that they wouldn’t recognize the engagement because, in our culture, his parents have to come to ask for my hand in marriage.
Once married my parents can’t visit us for a meal until someone else from their village comes to our house for a meal – we struggled with that one when we had events like the birth of our children or big milestones (baptisms, etc) and we had to ask my in-laws to host my family instead of us hosting them. How inconvenient.
Another one was – my uncle can come and sleepover if he is alone but when he is with his wife, they have to sleep in a hotel. We had an uncle that came to visit from the states and we had a spare room ready for him but he couldn’t sleep at our house so we had to find him a hotel. What a waste of money!
Married men can cheat but married women can’t. If a woman cheats, she will be cursed and risk the lives of her children or her husband. Meaning she may suffer recurring losses at birth or before birth, the husband may have bad luck or die. To remove the curse, the woman must admit what she did and then perform some ritual – or the husband kicks her out and remarries.
My wedding experience was a bit traumatic. My husband and I tried my best to go along with it and be cooperative to keep the peace. I was never the girl that dreamed about being married or having a wedding. If it was up to me or my husband we would just elope. I was the first of my generation in my family here in Canada to get married. As soon as we announced our engagement, we lost ownership of our wedding. It wasn’t our day but the family’s day. My in-laws cooperated and came to Toronto to ask for my hand in marriage – In our culture, we call it la dote (dowry). It’s a cultural wedding before the civil/religious wedding. So for us, it’s more important than a civil or religious wedding. There is no marriage recognized without la dote. It’s a way of honoring the family, the education given to their daughter, and some sign of respect for taking her away from the family. By taken, I mean she is taken from that lineage to belong to another man’s lineage… That’s why often, ethnic groups like to marry within themselves. At that point, I had never heard of or seen la dote before (or never paid attention to things) so that was new to me as it was my finance. We were learning this tradition together. For us, my fiancee was instructed to offer a firearm (for hunting – Or a cash equivalent), food (rice, oil, chicken, goats), and clothes for the family (my father and an uncle, and my mother and an aunt). Now I’ve learned that these requests differ from family to family, and ours was very simple. I have heard horror stories of the family asking for ridiculous stuff. I was getting my hair braided last night by a girl from South Sudan and she was explaining to me how her sister was impregnated by her boyfriend and the family demanded $10k as compensation – He paid, but they refused him their daughter’s hand in marriage because he was from another tribe and they don’t like him. I’m grateful my family accepted my fiancee – This poor couple that loves each other and the guy is jumping through the hoops but they still said no. Anyways, looking back, our dote was the best part of the whole process because it was an intimate event with both families and we got to know each other better and share food.
Everything after that was a small annoyance. Rehearsal dinner was done at the church because families lived out of town so we combined things on to make life easier for everyone. I had an aunt that came from Europe and she asked me why I didn’t have “wedding godparents” and I was like, “What!?” I didn’t know. We had a maid of honor and best man. Then she unleashed a verbal assault. I had no idea what she was talking about, and my family just stood by and watched – They didn’t intervene because in our culture the older sibling has authority. I was shocked and mortified. There are only a few times in my life that I’ve felt powerless, and this was one of those moments. I started to cry and I’m not a crier but it took everything in me to not explode. I didn’t make a scene and just went into the bathroom to cry. We ended up using my uncle and his girlfriend as our “wedding godparents” but that didn’t make sense because they weren’t married. I love them but definitely not an example of a couple that I want my marriage standard to base upon.
In our tradition, wedding invitations are delivered by word of mouth. We had over 300 people show up at our wedding, many of which we didn’t know or have table sitting arrangements prepared for. We were scrambling to set up extra tables and chairs. I was two hours late for my own wedding because I had to wait for all the elders to get their makeup done. The DJ was an asshole who refused our requests as the bride and groom because my parents hired him so he would only take requests from them. Honestly, it felt like a shitshow for my husband and me… But we’ve heard over the years that everyone else had a good time at least.
Anyway, I’ve been procrastinating about writing on this subject because it’s tricky on so many levels but it’s a topic that needs to be explored, especially for people that come from different cultural backgrounds. I love my culture – the music, the food, the country, and my heritage overall. The Democratic Republic of Congo is literally the heart of Africa(we are located in the center of Africa on the map), previously known as Zaire. So I guess where I’m going with this is – You can love and respect your heritage but at some point, I think traditions need to be reviewed and revised or removed if they are uncomfortable or toxic, or, in some cases, degrading or prejudice. It’s much harder when you’re young, but as an adult, you are the architect of your life. You may risk being a pariah to your cultural community, or even your friends and family, but you can start over and build your own family. It might be lonely at times, but sometimes I think it’s worth it.
Go live your best black sheep/sellout life!!!!!!!
Here is a video about us talking about our interracial marriage