Love abroad
A good friend of
mine started a long-distance relationship between Europe and Africa where they
for over a year communicated over the phone, via email and many other means
professing love for each other.
I was wary, simply
because my friend had spent more than half his life in Europe; fundamentally
there was no cultural affinity between them apart from a geographical space.
Outlooks had changed due to his integration into another culture, community and
society, but who knows?
When it appeared
things might not work out, I thought he had invested too much in that
relationship that the least he could do was go and meet with the family of his
love interest and make up his mind after that.
Checking in
We went shopping for
gifts and all sorts of arrangements for an introduction and he travelled over
to meet the family. When he met the father, they appreciated his interest, took
the gifts without as much as a thank you and then gave his companion a printed
wedding list that read like greed of the world in objects and payments that
baffled the mind.
There was nothing I
could do but seek the wisdom of my mother, she sounded a very cautionary tone,
to the effect that there was nothing in that relationship than an opportunity
to milk and bilk my friend, in the end he cut his losses and ran – the event
was scripted in 6 blogs that I titled, “Opening the mouth of the Father.”
Breaking the bank
The wedding list had
that one item that caught my eye amongst that many other ridiculous things that
I distributed in a narrative of derision and incredulity. My friend at the
wedding ceremony would only be able to get the father of the bride to speak by
shelling out 50,000 Naira, whilst the whole list came to over half a million
Naira and that did not include the cost of the wedding ceremony and the bride
price.
The Bride Price App
Which brings me to
the topic of the Bride Price, because yesterday I came upon a web-based
application that claimed to calculate the Bride Price of a prospective wife based
on a number of attributes, achievements, looks, diction and status of the lady.
When I first
clicked through the application, I commented on Twitter that it spoke to the
ridiculousness of the things we place value on.
However, as people
discussed the issue, it got to a point where there was a broad spectrum from
views from the misogynist, sexist and objectification of women through to
risible levity maintaining no seriousness to it apart from jocularity and
laughter.
A friend then
engaged me in private conversation on Twitter about the Bride Price Calculator
and then persuaded me to consider putting my thoughts in a blog. Which started
as the following Direct Messages on Twitter.
My views
Asking about my
views on the Bride Price App, he said, “I've seen it being misrepresented as sexist
and objectifying women. Be honest, is this true?”
I answered back as
follows:
“There
are many angles to this, looking at it with Western eyes it is sexist and
objectifying women, however, not in Nigerian eyes.”
The point I am making here is the danger of
conflating different cultures and then using an unrefined standard to assess
another culture without first accepting there is an issue to be properly
reviewed before making comparisons.
“The
fact is the bride price is an unscripted reality in Nigeria that borders on
greed and the ridiculous.” As evinced by my introduction to this blog.
The Bride Price App simply put online what
in many cases people think when giving away their daughters and the cultural
construct that feeds into making those demands without second thoughts. To see
the bride price so illustrated in almost an atrociously vulgar manner was
upsetting but not divorced from Nigerian reality.
“We
must have an honest discussion as to how the cost of marriage harms the
institution of marriage in the name of tradition.”
The question is what really determines the
bride price traditionally and how have things changed to accommodate not only
modernity, but the need to keep up with the Joneses and attempt to outdo
others?
“However,
many of these traditions have no cultural significance they are new fads of
hedonism and ostentation.”
This feeds into the previous comment, we
have to ask whether paying up for the bride and the wedding is of greater
significance or giving the newly married a firmer foundation on which to build
their marriage
“The
Bride Price App is a mirror on ridiculous female statuses we use to place value
on women is as marketplace objects bought for marriage.”
If we are to be honest with ourselves, a
number of the options in that App have informed how the bride price is
determined and what kind of wedding is planned for.
Unintended consequences
The dilemma of the
bride price is summed up in Part
2 of Opening the mouth of the father, “It appeared I was to be sold a woman for a
slave rather than being given a lady for a bride.”
The unintended
consequence of a high bride price makes the pain of cost dampen the required
utility of love in a marriage, a certain threshold can be breached where cost
begins to determine ownership when love should mature partnership – I would not
even delve into what might result from the former.
Critically, we must
have an open honest discussion on the issue of the bride price, the wedding and
most importantly the marriage, the first two are easy, usually a question of
means; marriage requires work, patience, love, perseverance and with it would
come joy, pain, happiness, sadness, togetherness, distance and whilst many
would be at the wedding, only two can really be in a marriage.
You make it work or
make it fail, hopefully not because of the cost of the bride price or the
ostentation of the wedding, if you want the marriage, you probably can make it
work against all odds. The Queen celebrated her diamond
wedding anniversary on the 20th of November 2007.
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