Before the colonialists came, our marriages were a blend of two families. The man's family came in full force. The wife's family cooked and cooked. They wined, they drank, and they got to know one another. Their events became our events, and we were bound together.
Then we got educated. We became Christians, and we Yorubas started calling our traditional marriage the engagement. The colonialists called it marriage by native law and custom. We did worse. We called it "engagement".
Yet we seemed to maintain the crucial parts of the ceremony. We sang, we danced, we ate, we met one another. Our families became one. I personally handled a few of those events for a few family members. It was an intimate experience.
Then, something happened. I don't know how. Maybe we became scared of one another. I don't know. All I know is that we seem to have yielded the essence of our marriage events over to strangers. They call them alaga iduro and alaga ijoko. These are usually perfect strangers who seem to have only one purpose: to make as much money as possible for themselves from the participants at the event. The two families, sitting at opposite ends, like people at war, the alagas sing unnecessary songs, create uninteresting distractions, and pass around their bowls for money. The money that used to go to the "wives" in the families now goes to these strangers.
The reason that the families use a spokesperson is a throw back to our original culture, where the suitor could not go directly to the girl's family, but had to go through a trusted person known as the "alarina".
Much as we should keep this aspect of our culture, we must be careful not to debase the event to where there is little or no interaction between the families.
I have nothing against people who have to use strangers, but the essence of the event must not be lost. Our culture is what makes us who we are. It is what makes our loved ones do what they can to see to the success of our marriages. It is what creates friendships that last a lifetime.
If we throw our culture away and try to be "educated" and become like other people, no matter how much we try to be them, we are still imitators, fakes.
Let us value and preserve what is ours, or we lose ourselves, forever.
