{{About 100 people were witnesses to a most unusual wedding in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
The bride was 61 years old and the groom was an eight-year-old boy.}}<\/p>\n
Even more unusual, both families were present at the wedding and the bride\u2018s husband and her five children were also at the wedding. <\/p>\n
The boy\u2019s 46-year-old aunt explained why the wedding took place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boy was named after his late grandfather who never had a white wedding, so the ancestors told the boy to get married and he chose Helen to be his bride.\u201d<\/p>\n
{{Bride}}<\/p>\n
The family took his desire to get married seriously. They paid for the bride in March last year and spent a lot on the wedding because they believed it was what the ancestors wanted.<\/p>\n
The bride is married and has five children of her own, but she had to respect what the ancestors wanted. It is a ritual.<\/p>\n
The young groom said: \u201cI told my mother that I wanted to get married because I really did want to. I chose her because I love her and I\u2018m happy that I married her, but I will go to school and study hard. <\/p>\n
When I\u2018m older I will marry a woman my own age.\u201d<\/p>\n
{{Kiss}}<\/p>\n
The bride\u2018s longtime husband said he never had a problem with her marrying the boy because he too, knew that it was what the ancestors wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy children and I are happy. We don\u2018t have any problems with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, some community members said they were shocked.<\/p>\n
One woman said: \u201cHow can a family go this far for the ancestors? It shows that people do take messages from the ancestors seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was a not a legal marriage. It was only done for ritual purposes. The happy couple sealed their marriage with a kiss.<\/p>\n
Standard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{About 100 people were witnesses to a most unusual wedding in Zimbabwe. The bride was 61 years old and the groom was an eight-year-old boy.}} Even more unusual, both families were present at the wedding and the bride\u2018s husband and her five children were also at the wedding. The boy\u2019s 46-year-old aunt explained why the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6141"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6141"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}