That'll Be Three Cows, Please.

 (Part 1 of 2)

 

One of the questions I'm surprised I haven't gotten in your emails, etc., is this: How much does it cost to marry a 14-year-old Toupouri girl?  Here's your answer: 100,000 cfa and three cows.

 

I found this out a couple weeks ago.  One of the guards in the compound recently started coming on a bike, and he explained to me how he got the bike even though I didn't ask him, which in turn led to a mini life history.

 

Antoine, the guard, has had three wives and at least eight children, four girls and four boys.  Before he was a guard, he worked at the pharmacy at the hospital, and for whatever reason, he stopped working there.  (Whenever leaving a job at the hospital here, the story is always a little hazy.)  Since he didn't have a job, two wives left him, and somewhere along the line he picked up the third one, or maybe the third one was always there.  Either way, right now he has the guard job, one wife, and at least eight children.

 

Some guy who goes to university in N'gaoundéré but is from a village near Lagdo apparently saw Antoine's 14-year-old daughter at last year's Independence Day (May 20) parade in Lagdo, making her most likely 13 at the time.  This guy, a college student who is at least 22 or 23 (conservative estimate), was apparently so smitten by this girl that he finally asked Antoine if he could marry his daughter.  Antoine says that his daughter, not really him, readily agreed to the marriage and to voluntarily quit school.  Antoine got 100,000 cfa (approximately $200) and three cows from the university student.  He gave the 100 mil to his daughter to buy whatever she needs to start life as a housewife, while he went and sold one of the cows at the Ngong market for 200 mil.  He used the 200 mil to buy a horse that he'll use for his plow and to buy a bicycle.  He still has the two other cows and seven children in the house, while his daughter is at her husband's village in Bessoum on the other side of the dam waiting for the husband while he's at school.

 

Stories like this don't really surprise me anymore, but they're still shocking if only because they sharply contrast just about anything that would pass as sociably acceptable in the Western world.  Just the age of the girl raises two issues in an American setting: First, this situation is technically rape; second, it's illegal in the States for her to quit school.  Here in Cameroon, a lot more common in Northern Cameroon and rural areas than the Grand South, girls are constantly married off as teenagers and very rarely aren't forced to quit school if they're attending.

 

Another issue that this raises is that as PCVs in the North/rural villages, we're surrounded by wife beaters, statutory rapists, and polygamists – some men are the trifecta – and what can we really do?  Who am I to start preaching?  (Missionaries have been ignoring that rhetorical question since the late 1400s.)  It seems that a PCV's role is more subtlety than soapbox.  For example, PCVs do projects that encourage girls' participation and empowerment and family planning, even if the message goes in one ear and out the other with some audiences (boys, men, males, dudes, etc.), but we don't actually say, "Stop what you're doing, asshole."  That's something communities have to work out for themselves, in addition to being prodded by Westerners of course. 

 

 

(Note:  Polygamy is more common in the Northern part of the country, not limited to Muslims, and almost unheard of in some parts of Cameroon.  It seems that the more educated the population is, the more polygamy is looked down upon.  The Grand North is also the area of the country where women are the least educated, possibly another example of the correlation between the perceived modernity and economic level of a place – oil-producing countries the exception – and the educational level of girls.)