A question of culture
A few weeks ago a cousin of one
of my colleagues died, he died young from an unknown cause, not very
exceptional in Africa. A few days later I have learnt that the family is
planning to marry one of his brothers to another wife so she could have
children which will be named after the dead brother, so the dead person will
have ‘children’ to carry on his name. I was a little bit confused and very
curios and I just had to ask about 15 hundred questions. I didn’t really fully
understand, but this is culture, so I have been explained. And it is not just
that, there are many aspects that are exceedingly different, especially in
regards to marriage and family life.
Apart from marrying a women to the name of
a deceased, if a person dies and he already has a wife, his brother will marry
his wife or wives. In some tribe the wish of the women will be considered, in
other it is meaningless. These kinds of customs come from an entirely different
state of mind, where marriage is not based on things like love, companionship,
reciprocal feelings and mutual affection, rather, a marriage is based on an
agreement of each side role in the family and a woman is purchased into the
husband family. Girls are bought from their parents with the price of anything
between 7 goats to 210 cows; the price apparently is higher the younger the
girl is and in some tribes - taller.
Then the girl will move to the husband family were she will be
responsible for all the domestic work, as well as working in the field and of
course bearing children. Naturally the richer the man the more wives he can
afford; no limits in numbers and often no minimum age of the girl. The wealth
of a person is in fact measured by the amount cattle, wives and children he
owns.
One of the collogues asked me what
is the price of a wife in my country, I tried to explain that you don’t pay
anything, it didn’t go so well as the reaction was ‘really?! women are for
free?’ it was difficult to explain that in my culture women are not a
commodity, they are equal to men and that marriage is not an exchange ‘market
style’ between families. They were not to impresses, asserting that if there is
no payment, the marriage has no value.
As I was sitting with my
colleagues discussing all this interesting new information I started thinking on
of all these differences. I promised myself not to criticize, but in my head I
did a whole lot of judgment; about the society who treats women like a
commodity, about how ridiculous it is to get some poor girl pregnant just so a
dead person will then have children that are not even his. But all these
critical thought made me realize something, there are many ‘family planning’
related practices in my culture which I have never questioned before. In my society
there are single parent families, gay couples can now be parents, and women can
freeze their ovaries so they could have children in a later age, or even let
another woman carry their child for 9 months for them. I grew up to these
changes and always thought it is just normal, if it makes you happy why not?
Obviously, as I raised these
points in front of my colleagues they were to say the list - horrified, baffled
by my attempts to explain the lab procedure that allows another woman to carry
someone else’s fetus, or why I don’t think gay people are sick. They absolutely
did not see my point. So I guess my point is that I really can’t judge, as a
woman I would still like to see a stronger stand for women all around the
world. But different custom and practices are a question of culture.
