HiddenMysteries: Islands where marriage is an offer that no man can refuse

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI ON ORANGO ISLAND, GUINEA-BISSAU

UNDER threat from increasing contact with the outside world, the world's only surviving culture in which men have no say in who they marry is proving surprisingly resilient.

In the Bijagos archipelago of 50 islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau in west Africa, it is women, not men, who pick their partner. They make their proposal public by offering their groom-to-be a dish of fish, marinated in red palm oil.

Carvadju Jose Nananghe was 14 when the girl entered his hut and placed in front of him a meal made to an ancient recipe.

Like all men on the islands, he knew what it meant. Refusing was not an option. He lifted the steaming fish to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl.

"I had no feelings for her," says Nananghe. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her."

To have refused, he explained, would have dishonoured his family - and in any case, why would he want to choose his own wife?

"Love comes first into the heart of the woman," explains Nananghe, now 65. "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 Island. They find jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the archipelago's more developed islands; others collect oil from the island's palm trees and sell it on the African mainland. They return bringing with them a new form of courtship, one which their elders find unsettling.

"Now the world is upside down," complains 90-year-old Cesar Okrane. "Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them."

He explains: "The choice of a woman is much more stable. 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 there are significantly more now than in the years when men waited patiently for a proposal on a plate. They then 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 beach to use as poles, cutting blankets of grass to weave into roofs and shaping the pink mud into bricks. Only once the house was built, which took at least four months, could the couple move in and their marriage be considered official.

That things are changing is evident in the material chosen for the island's newest house: concrete. It was erected by paid labourers, 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.

Marisa de Pina, 19, says: "When I get married it will be in a church, wearing a white dress and a veil."

She says the Protestant church she attends has taught her it is men, not women, that should make the first move, so she plans to wait for a man to approach her.

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 favoured by some older women. She, too, attends church. But she does not see why these trappings of modern life should alter the system of courtship.

More than two decades ago, she went to the beach for the ingredients with which to propose to the man she loved.

She dug in the wet sand for clams, collecting them in a woven basket. She could not afford a proper meal of fish and could only offer her groom-to-be what she could gather with her own hands. After preparing the dish, she placed it in front of him, then ran and hid behind a tree, peeping 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.

WHERE WOMEN RULE THE ROOST
ALTHOUGH western imaginations have always been fired by ideas of islands populated by societies of Amazons, or early cultures worshipping a mother goddess through her priestesses, the Orango islanders may be the only real example of a matriarchal society.

However, there are many matrilineal societies around the world in which women have traditionally been the property owners, with inheritance passing down the female line.

The Mosuo people, who mostly live around Lugu Lake in the Yunnan province of China, have matriarchal elements to their society. Women tend to head households and control family businesses and commerce. Descent and property are passed down the female line, but men tend to hold the political power.

The Iroquois tribes of the American north-east were an example of women living in communal groups, related through the female line. Men were largely seen as outsiders who belonged to a different family line.

The Iroquois were ruled by a council of 50 male chiefs or Sachems. When a Sachem died his replacement was nominated by female members of that family.

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Islands where marriage is an offer that no man can refuse

Monday, February 05 2007 @ 04:09 PM CST