Dancing in Kyrgyzstan at an Afghan-Turkish wedding!

Yesterday standing outside the Uzbekistan embassy, a fantastic opportunity came up, and I had to admit that SOME good comes out of visa applications. In Kazakhstan in the hell that was trying to get a Chinese visa (for Liam) during the Olympics, (or rather trying to get into the Chinese embassy to get a Chinese visa during the Olympics... which proved just as impossible), we made friends with a very nice Australian/British couple who are cycling from London to Australia, and met up with them lots while in Almaty for coffee, drinks, dinner, and chats.

The man I talked to outside the Uzbek embassy was from Afghanistan, but he and his entire family had lived in diverse places like Germany, India, and Australia for over 15 years. He himself lived in Germany for 9 years, and Kyrgyzstan for the last 4, and hopes to go to Australia. I'm not exactly sure what relation he was to the bride and groom (presumably groom, as the groom was Afghan), but he was in the closer circle of the few hundred people at the wedding and just randomly invited me as we chatted outside the embassy. I mentioned that I had 2 friends, and so he invited them too!

Zaymai picked us up at 5, and then we drove around "looking for the wedding". Since we got to the stan's, and even in Olgii in Mongolia, we have seen a ridiculous amount of weddings, it is obviously the season for this sort of thing (wouldn't fancy a winter wedding in this neck of the woods!). Weddings are especially conspicuous cause people drive around town in a big chain of cars decorated with colourful streamers, balloons, flowers etc, honking their horns alot!

Zalmai didn't know where the wedding was ... at that moment... it turned out it hadn't started yet, we drove out to the Turkish district a bit out of town and joined the wedding from the beginning. At first we loaded into a mini an with our own travelling band, playing loud beaty Turkish music with some kind of flutey horny thing, and a drum...we arrived at the grooms house drank some vodka outside, and nibbled on some food laid outside the door, and then out came the groom and everyone started dancing outside the door (at this point the party was maybe 15 people including us).... then we walked down the road and women from the brides family, including her mother were walking to meet us and dancing along the road .... all the while the band was playing and walking... and we all walked behind... back to the brides home... I think we seemed to pick up a few people as we went too, as by the time the bride came out of her house, we were about 10 cars loads... one of which was a limo, the rest followed behind, honking and yelling all the way back into town...
we went to a park for photos, and then the band started playing again and the women of the brides family started doing a dance...fingers linked and kind of going round in a circle... then the men started dancing, and my, they were AMAZING! (blushes) ;)

Randomly we stopped again, danced again, and they pulled a briefcase of flat fried bread and a whole chicken from the limo which was shared around, everyone getting a small bit of chicken and bread... tried to find out the meaning of the tradition... something to do with a good marriage.. ? ! :).
By this stage Lenore and I had been pulled up for a women's dance, liam and I randomly got made to dance around too (I was having a laugh cause they pulled Liam up to dance on his own and the next thing I know I'm pushed in myself!... Thank goodness Zalmai and his girlfriend came and danced with us too!).
Then Liam had a bit of a dance off with this guy whose name was told to me but I;ve forgotten... anyway this guy was definitely cool! He was a fantastic dancer and had been dancing since about 5:30, full on leaping around and jigging it to the band when we were waiting for the groom and walking around the neighbourhood even no one else was dancing!
Liam did a pretty good job too :)....
Anyway, by this stage our uncertainly about whether there would be alcohol at the wedding (being Muslims) had been answered, the vodka shots were flowing and when we arrived at the brides home again it was packed with around 200+ people sitting at long tressle tables in a tent in the backyard. The tables were covered in food and strategically placed bottles of soft drink and vodka... The food we were informed, was not dinner though.... (salami, cheese, bread, fruit, sweets, biscuits, chicken)...
There was a stage in the middle of the tables and people danced alot... when the women danced people came up and put money in their hands which was all put into a suitcase at the end of each song... presumably to give to the happy couple... who did not dance at all while we were there (we had to leave at midnight... but the party was just getting started then!)
When the bride and groom came out they enacted some kind of story, the bride had a big veil on and wouldn't remove it, and acted all upset and made crying gestures, and the groom did this dance with knives around her... then all these people came up and gave money and when there was enough money she took off her veil, but then she stood there while people danced around her and more money flowed in (given to the dancers) and eventually they went together to the special table on the stage for them... with a huge cake, but it looked lonely up there to me!

All in all it was an amazing experience... The music was Loud, 'BIG', Turkish sounding, and all live (more musicians now, and keyboards and singers too... the dancing was cool, I felt very privileged to share the experience! In the end we got up on stage and said a few words in the microphone and the we had to dance, but the music they put on for us was this wierd pop, and I had no idea how to dance to it, (couldn't do the whole pseudo turkish dance we did before!)... after a few awkward minutes we were joined by some of the younger crowd... phew! (you feel very exposed up there on the stage!)

We left at 12 as our guest house had a curfew (of 12), which we were late for, oops, but the party was just getting rolling... the Plov had only come out at 11:30 and it was delicious, as was the beautifully spiced meat soup we had at around 10:30-11... It had been cooking since 5:30 when I saw they lady putting the meat into four huge (and I mean huge) woks, each with it's own fireplace beneath it. They killed four goats so I presume one wok, one goat!

Zalmai was beyond driving (shooting 40% vodka does that to you, needed the soft drink chasers for these!), and we asked to get a taxi, but the family got a guest who was a taxi driver to drive us home as a favour, which we paid for, but it was a very nice thing to do as he had to come all the way back afterwards. Probably for this reason, he hadn't been drinking (much at least), which I was gald of, as I was starting to wonder how Zalmai was going to drive us home!

So yeah, that was my awesome, bizarre party evening last night at an Afghan-Turkish wedding in Kyrgyzstan (although I suspect it was more Turkish as the brides family organised the wedding but Zalmai said many traditions overlapped).