27 March 2014

SFL Journal #11


To read all of the posts from my SFL class, click here!

This week we've been talking about Africa. I never really thought about how HUGE Africa is!
One thing I thought was very interesting and we discussed a lot was the marriage tradition in Africa. They use something called a lobolo which can be translated to mean bride price. Many of us may be more familiar with the term dowry. This is an agreed upon sum of money that a husband pays his future wife's family as compensation for taking her away from the home. This is so hard to do financially that many no longer do so which results in many cohabitation and children born outside of marriage.
I struggled with this concept because when you think about it, cohabitation takes the daughter away from her family so it's no different for the parents than marriage. When we discussed this in class me professor pointed out that this is an example of a culture being so strong that they cannot do away with a tradition like this.


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