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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2009
The blessed and the unblessed
In the old days, women would not leave their husbands because they would have been blessed (ku-haswa) at their marriages. This is like being given an oath, for if a wife did leave her husband for another man, she would die or would never be able to have children. But nowadays many marry in a Christian church and so do not get blessed, and that is why more women leave their husbands.
This view of a changing situation was expressed by an old man raised in the cattle area but many years resident in the coastal palm belt, who saw the difference between the two areas as responsible for the change: with traditional marital stability still a characteristic of the pastoralist west, and recent instability that of the farming east.
From the cattle area cases are given which provide another perspective on blessed marriages: a man who follows the customary procedure of approaching a girl's parents for her hand and whose father takes a gift of palm wine for preliminary negotiations concerning bridewealth(hunda), has a fruitful marriage which becomes blessed in the course of the customary bride wealth payments; another man who simply chooses a girl from a group of dancers at a funeral but does not consult either his own or her parents, does not have a blessed marriage and so remains childless.
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