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Raju and Goldie marry today. Many, many family members and friends loaded up in a coach early yesterday morning and headed to Nairobi from Kisumu. This evening, they return, tired but happy, bringing Goldie with them. To her new home. She'll stay here two weeks, then following tradition her father will come from Nairobi to collect her and Raju. They'll stay with her family in Nairobi for a week, then she'll return to Kisumu to live with Raju and his family forever and ever. She'll return to live in Kisumu, to build a life with people she doesn't yet know, to bear children and raise them in Kisumu for the rest of her life. Just like Mrs. Ruprah did 35 years ago.

At 9pm, Mrs. Ruprah calls to me through the open windows of my little house. I dress hurriedly and we go to the party across the street, where Indian rap music is already directing our feet, to meet the new bride. She remains upstairs until it's time to cut the cake. When she appears, she is very shy, looking down, throughout the cake cutting and while dancing with her new husband in front of this crowd. Everyone feeds the new couple tiny bits of cake. Couples sandwich the bride and groom, feeding them simultaneously, then step aside for the next two people to step up and put cake in the newly-weds' mouths.

Goldie is bedecked and bedazzling in her jewelry and ornamentation. Everyone wishes them happiness, forever and ever, in their upstairs room in this Kisumu hamlet by the shores of Lake Victoria in the heart of Africa. Happiness forever and ever, for their children and their children's children.