Africans don't 'buy' wives

[eccentricyoruba]

I promised to x-post this a while ago.


I really wish this guy a happy married life and such, but I'm not happy with this article he wrote for the BBC entitled; How I bought my South African bride. There's so many things wrong with the article that I can't even begin to name them, however I take issue with his using 'bought' in reference to his African bride. The truth is I wasn't able to stomach reading the entire article, I only read up to the first paragraph, but I believe he is talking about the customs that form part of marriages across Africa in which a prospective husband pays his bride's family. We call it the 'bride price' in English, a term which is quite problematic because it indeed suggests that the bride is bought, and it usually involves all sorts of money, livestock, fabrics, services and in my region, religious emblems.

I personally have no problem with this practice because it is part of my culture. I also know that this payment doesn't mean that any man has actually bought me. That's absolute BS. The act of paying the 'bride price' is entirely symbolic. The show of wealth is a means of insuring the bride's parents and family that the prospective husband has enough wealth to take care of their daughter. Where I'm from, the 'bride price' is usually shared among the bride's family members. Furthermore, a part of the 'bride price' is given to the bride so that she has something with which to support herself even in her marital home.

Sugabelly wrote a really excellent and informative post on the practise in Igboland;

...Bride Price refers to an indeterminate amount of wealth (in material goods, cash, and services) that the groom-to-be gives to the family of his bride-to-be as a symbol of his estimation for his bride.

It is NOT (as the Western media would have you believe) the purchasing of a woman. In fact, like many many gross misconceptions about our culture, 90% of the reason why people think this is because the British who reported about the custom with their limited understanding of it labelled it Bride PRICE (as if the Bride is a product at a supermarket that you can buy for a certain Price). Not only has this cast negative aspersions on this aspect of our culture, but the general misinformation about it has also emboldened men with little understanding of the culture to misinteprete it and use it as an excuse to abuse their wives...[ ]

On the surface it would appear that every woman should be the fierce opponent of bride price, especially considering how it has been portrayed in the world media and the way uneducated (and even educated) Nigerian men view it but to be honest, I think it is a beautiful part of our culture and should be practised PROPERLY rather than twisted and abused...[ ]

In Igbo culture, no matter how high the [bride price] a groom gives, it is always considered as exactly half of what he intends to give. One half is given before the wedding, and the other half is given upon the death of his wife. The idea is that the first half is a material expression of his esteem for his wife, with respect to her family for their combined efforts and care which turned her into the person that she is, and the second half is again an expression of love and esteem for his wife, in gratitude for the opportunity to live his life with her as his wife and to cover her burial expenses (as an Igbo woman is always buried with her people - well at least that's what's supposed to happen although modern inconveniences might mean this is not always possible). Read the entire post

Comments

[tree]

thank you for posting this. i find it extremely ironic that it's the british who are guilty of promulgating the idea of a 'bride price' in other nations when it wasn't so long ago that a woman's dowry was often the most important aspect of her her marriage prospects in britain.

[eccentricyoruba]

I never thought of the practice and importance of dowries in England while writing this! Ironic indeed.

[the_future_modernes]

I never thought of dowries either. Its astonishing what power a carefully guarded narrative has to influence what is considered reality!

[la_vie_noire]

Thank you so much for posting this!

[eccentricyoruba]

You're welcome!