A note about polygamy

Shaka’s father got married Thursday night. He took, or shall I say bought, a second wife from a nearby village. To marry a woman, you must pay a dowry to her father’s family. So when a man finds money, many of them will chose to marry again. It’s someone else to do the dishes and the laundry, which is why the first wife never really objects, and you’ll have more kids to carry out your family name. I never really understood why all of the textbooks say that poverty hits women and children the hardest, but now I know. Men are not obliged to give anything, ANYTHING to their wife or children. The food is the woman’s business and responsibility. Any profit the man makes is for himself. Moriba, Shaka’s father, recently bought a motorcycle and had a wedding, but could not give Shaka $3 to celebrate Easter in Kati, or to his wife Dafine to go to her uncle’s funeral in Bamako. He is not one of my favorite men. I once was chatting at night at his home, looking up at the stars and asked philosophically if he would ever want to go to the moon. He snapped back, “How can I ever go to the moon! I’m poor, I’m from Mali, only your people ever go to the moon. You give me money and then I can go to the moon.” Geez, it was just a question.
All this considered, I was a bit worried about what this second wife’s life was to be like. How much choice did she have in this wedding? She’s barely 17, younger than Moriba’s oldest son. And when I asked about her reputation and personality, my host family was quite hesitant. They weren’t real sure about this one.
She arrived in a train of motorcycles and the women came to dance and sing wedding songs. But the acrobats were performing again on the other side of town, so the turn out was low. “We^ll do it again tomorrow night,” they decided. How would I feel, I’m thinking, if I arrived at my wedding, the crowd was low, and they just decided, hey, let’s do it another day.
But the number of people was the least of the brides problem. The whole night she sat in the corner, crying. Crying while the older women teased her. Perhaps they were trying to welcome her, but she did not want to be welcomed. Moriba is kind of a scary guy, and I can’t imagine she is truly in love with him, or that she is here on her own will. I feel for her, and want to befriend her, but I am also bound in this culture now that totally accepts that this is the way it is.
“I didn’t like that” I said as we returned to our concession, “she was crying.”
“Aminata,” my host mother replied, “every woman cries. She’s crying because she’s thinking of her family. She left her father and her mother for good. Even I cried on my wedding day.” She cried? But her an her husband are in love, they are very happy together.
“American women don’t cry.”
“Why not?”
“They are happy to be with their husbands. They love them.”
“Oh and we don’t love our husbands?”
Somehow, I doubted that this new young girl was in love with this bitter middle aged man. But the women I asked said she was. And the next morning she was doing the dishes, and greeted everyone with a warm smile. She fits in well around here and the family seems to be getting a long fine.
Polygamy is tough because it means men are always on the prowl. Even if they are married. Even if they are content with their wives, even if they aren’t really looking for romance. “I got two wives but I’m looking for a third,” my buddy from Tomba Yaya Coullibaly tells me, completely innocently. “If you have three wives, you can reeeelllaax. And if you got a lot of kids, so be it. Allah will feed them.” I chuckle and shake my head. Irene once explained to me that polygamy was necessary here because there are a lot more girls than there are boys. “Believe me- I’m the matrone, I give births, I know!” I’m not convinced. But it’s the system. It’s unbreakable thus far. It works for the men, and for the women, unfortunately, they hardly have a choice.