"(AP) <!-- sphereit start -->He was
14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate
in front of him containing an ancient recipe.
Like all men on this African isle, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew
exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart
pounding, he lifted the steaming fish to his lips, agreeing in one
bite to marry the girl.
“I had no feelings for her,” said Nananghe, now 65. “Then when I
ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her.”
In this archipelago of 50 islands of pale blue water off the
western rim of Africa, it's women, not men, who choose. They make
their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of
distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil. It's the
equivalent of a man bending on one knee and offering a woman a
diamond ring, except that in one of the world's matriarchal
cultures, it's women that do the asking, and once they have, men
are powerless to say no.
To have refused, explained the old man remembering the day half a
century ago, would have dishonored his family — and in any case,
why would he want to choose his own wife?
“Love comes first into the heart of the woman,” explained Nananghe.
“Once it's in the woman, only then can it jump into the man.”
But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that have long kept
outsiders out of these remote islands are no longer holding back
the modern world. Young men are increasingly leaving Orango,
located 38 miles off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, a country in West
Africa. They find jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the
archipelago's more developed islands; others collect oil from the
island's abundant palm trees and sell it on the African
mainland.
They return bringing with them a new form of courtship, one which
their elders find deeply unsettling.
“Now the world is upside down,” complained 90-year-old Cesar
Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. “Men are running
after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them.”
Standing in the shade of a grass roof, he holds himself upright
with the help of a tall spear and explains that when he was young
he took extra care to maintain his physique, learned to dance and
practiced writing poetry — all ways in which men can try to attract
women, without overtly making the first move.
In recent years, young men have become increasingly bold, going so
far as to openly propose marriage — a dangerous turn, say
traditionalists.
“The choice of a woman is much more stable,” explains Okrane.
“Rarely were there divorces before. Now, with men choosing, divorce
has become common.”
With records not readily available, it's unclear how many divorces
there were earlier, but islanders agree that there are
significantly more now than in the years when men waited patiently
for a proposal on a plate. They waited some more, as their
brides-to-be then set out for the eggshell-white beaches encircling
the island, looking for the raw materials with which to build their
new house.
Women built all the grass-covered huts here, dragging driftwood
back from the ocean to use as poles, cutting blankets of blond
grass to weave into roofs and shaping the pink mud underfoot into
bricks. Only once the house is built, a process that takes at least
four months, can the couple move in and their marriage be
considered official.
There are matrilineal cultures in numerous pockets of the world,
including in other parts of Africa, as well as in China's Yunnan
province and in northeastern Thailand, says anthropologist
Christine Henry, a researcher at France's elite National Center for
Scientific Research, or CNRS. But the unquestioned authority given
to women in matters of the heart on this island is unique — “I
don't know of it happening anywhere else,” says Henry, who has
written a book on the customs of the archipelago.
That things are changing is evident in the material chosen for the
island's newest house: concrete. It was erected by paid laborers,
not local women.
Although priestesses still control the island's relationship with
the spirit world, their clout is waning, as churches sown by
missionaries have taken root.
“When I get married it will be in a church, wearing a white dress
and a veil,” says 19-year-old Marisa de Pina, who strikes a modern
pose under the blond grass of her family's hut, wearing tight Capri
pants and sequined sandals.
She says the Protestant church she attends has taught her that it
is men, not women, that should make the first move, and so she
plans to wait for a man to approach her. To make her point, the
teenager pops into her hut and returns holding a worn copy of the
New Testament, its pages stuffed with post-it notes, letters and
business cards.
It's a decision that has caused strife inside the mud walls of her
family's house.
Like her niece, Edelia Noro wears store-bought clothes instead of
the grass skirts still favored by some older women. She, too,
attends church. But she says she doesn't see why these trappings of
modern life should alter the system of courtship.
More than two decades ago, she set off for the closest beach
looking for the ingredients with which to propose to the man she
loved.
Noro waited for the tide to recede, then dug in the wet sand for
clams, collecting them in a woven basket. She was embarrassed, she
said, that she was too poor to afford a proper meal of fish and
could only offer her groom-to-be what she could gather with her own
hands. So after preparing the dish, she placed it in front of him,
then ran and hid behind a tree, peeking out to see his
reaction.
“He did not hesitate and ate right away. I could see the love
shining in his eyes,” she said, a glow spreading across her
cheeks.
Although the island's unique customs may be fading, there are still
pockets of resistance. Often, it's women that lure men back into
the fold of ancient ways.
Now 23, Laurindo Carvalho first spotted the girl when he was 13. He
worked in a tourist hotel, wore jeans, and owned a cell phone and
thought of himself as modern and so he thought he could turn
tradition on its head, asking the girl to marry him. With the wave
of a hand, she rejected him.
Six years passed and one day, when both were 19, he heard a knock
at his door. Outside, his love stood holding out a plate of freshly
caught fish, a coy smile on her face.
Carvalho still wears sandblasted jeans and flip-flops bearing the
Adidas logo, but he now sees himself as embedded in the village's
matriarchal fiber.
“I learned the hard way that here, a man never approaches a woman,”
he says.<!-- sphereit end -->
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My lecturer brought up this article today and it
reminds me of the traditional match making days back in China and
traditional practises in parts of the world today that are similar
to the one mentioned in the article ( In Sri Lanka, every girl upon
entering adulthood has to marry a man chosen by her relatives )
Love unconditionally and to cherish everyone
as much as they cherish you.
