The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu
MARRIAGE is undoubtedly every girl’s wish and having a “white” wedding is an icing on the cake. However, events leading to this white wedding including a kitchen party is one of the interesting things to look forward to.
A kitchen party aka kitchen tea aka bridal shower aka hen party, is usually held in preparation for a wedding. This party is strictly for women.
The essence of this party is to give the bride advice on how to live happily with her husband and his clan but interestingly arguments have been thrown on why kitchen parties seem to be taking over the roles of aunts as marriage counsellors who prepare their nieces for the challenges that come with marriage life.
Proponents of African culture claim that kitchen parties are a purely Western concept that seeks to abdicate the role of the aunt with the long term effect of wearing and tearing the moral fibre that binds a family together.
“We as elderly aunts are no longer consulted. You are just told that your niece has been married. They are now teaching each other at these kitchen parties. We have now been pushed to the periphery by modernisation.
“Unfortunately they will be usually of the same generation and most of them will be strangers to each other. After kitchen parties they do not come for proper marriage lessons and this has led to the split of so many marriages,” said an elderly woman Gogo MaNcube from Makokoba.
Most of the kitchen parties involve friends and usually the mother of the bride does not attend as there will be sessions where her daughter is taught about sexually satisfying her husband.
Kitchen parties, as they are popularly known, involve invited guests bringing gifts ideally for the kitchen in the form of kitchenware that will be used by the bride to be.
The long and short of kitchen parties is to educate the bride on issues such as personal hygiene, how to clean her home, care for her husband and also how to treat the family and relatives of the husband-to-be, a role traditionally believed to be that of an aunt.
This may be done in various ways. In other parties invited guests are made to write down one tip for the bride-to-be and these are read out and explained to her for future reference. Others simply give the guests a chance to give advice and so on.
This way of giving advice to the bride-to-be has been applauded by many people as she gets a variety of tips from the guests.
Kitchen parties can be catergorised into two. Some take a more laid back approach where there is advice sharing and sex talk is done in private by the aunts.
Others take the wild side with guests dressing skimpily and much of the advice is uncensored especially when it comes to sex. Guests also give themselves a party name that is usually obscene. Popular social commentator and marriage counsellor Mrs Lucia Gunguwo popularly known as Amai Gunguwo has taken it upon herself to educate women about confidential issues such as sex. She said it was true that kitchen parties were taking over the role of aunties but emphasised on the result.
Amai Gunguwo said there are many reasons for the invisibility of aunts and kitchen parties were filling in the gap, death being one of them. She said many families have been robbed of aunts by HIV and Aids. As a result young girls will remain with no counsellor.
She, however, urged families to make use of aunts. She said through her sermons she has become an aunt to many as she is confident and blunt when speaking about bedroom issues. She said the success of the party depends on the person teaching the bride-to-be.
“What is key is the person who will be teaching on that day. You can have a very interactive MC who is clueless on what should be taught. The MC needs to be a person who has had exposure in various arenas and be able to give sound advice.
Some MCs think that teaching the bride-to-be about cleaning the home and cooking is what makes a kitchen party but the bride will do more than cooking and cleaning. Their level of understanding in issues to do with marriage and sex life has to be exceptional,” she said.
Amai Gunguwo said nowadays successful kitchen parties are those that are wholesome that touch on various issues surrounding people.
“A kitchen party today should include things like empowering the girl child because she will go into that marriage and expect to be taken care of but she has to realise that economic participation is not only for men but for women too.
“We play an active role in ensuring that the home is functional by empowering ourselves as women. Women must know that they have the capacity to hold high posts in companies and should not be restricted to being housewives,” she said.
She said she was frustrated when the bride and groom-to-be are separated when it comes to being advised. She said this leads to problems as a woman leaves her parents’ home well equipped with information from kitchen parties while the man has little or nothing from their bachelor’s parties which are usually characterised by drinking alcohol.
“If possible, the two have to be advised together so that they are well equipped in these issues.”
Women obviously have more information as advice is found in many places such as the church, funerals and other social gatherings while the men have limited avenues,” said Amai Gunguwo.
“You find a couple, both employed, their salaries have to cater for rentals, school fees, clothing, food, healthcare and many other things and yet they cannot think about having a garden where they can grow vegetables and avoid buying them with their salaries. Grow a lemon tree in your home so that when you get a cough you pluck from the tree unlike running to the market to buy a lemon. Some of these things are taught at kitchen parties,” she said.
She said kitchen parties should have meaning and not present a chance to women to drink beer, dance and talk about sex only.
Divorce was mentioned as another factor. When parents’ divorce some completely separate themselves from their family relations and ties are broken such that the aunts think they have no role in the lives of their nieces and the whole purpose of advice sharing is completely destroyed.
Culturalist Mr Pathisa Nyathi said there was a need to counsel both parties so that they do not blame each other when things go wrong. He also said long ago both parties were called and taught how to lead new lives as couples but that has changed.
“Both the man and the woman need to be counselled together so that none of them blames the other for not having been counselled about marriage. It has to be equal participation during counselling and long ago it did not delve much on sexuality as there were appropriate people for that. Usually this counselling was done by the uncles and aunts but that has changed as their role has been shadowed by the changing world,” he said.
Mr Nyathi says the concept of the family unit has migrated to a more individualistic one where people feel they do not need other people in their lives so people are relying more on themselves than other supporting family members which he said leads to social conflicts.
