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BAI KUKE, CAMEROON – Frida Nembe, 61, is actually a keen eloquent and smart lady in lien appropriГ© the Bai Kuke, a community of Balong group inside southwest Cameroon. Several years ago, she turned an effective “feminine partner.”
She says you to definitely their simply child together with her late husband died, and you can she is actually not any longer able to get pregnant. Thus she became a husband by herself, a lady partner.
“When i had married on my late partner, We provided birth to a single child who passed away a couple of years later on,” Nembe states. “It is for this reason which i partnered my partner thus you to she will sustain a baby who can inherit my personal property while i perish.”
Nembe states she did all traditional rites you to a guy do perform so you can marry a female so you’re able to get married their particular spouse, who was simply regarding a separate Balong town.
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“I decided to go to their unique village, found their own anyone and you can paid down their unique done dowry,” she claims. “However introduced their unique on my domestic to live with me and you may bear students inside my term.”
She says one Balong tradition lets feminine so you can wed to other feamales in cases where women are barren otherwise do not have students. Also women that need additional students but they are unable to consider them will get wed almost every other feminine.
Nembe says your female follow old-fashioned gender opportunities. The new childbirth woman will get this new wife about marriage, just like the almost every other lady will act as a female spouse.
“My wife is actually supposed to remain in the house, generate youngsters for me, help me inside the housework and farmwork,” she says. “She’s supposed to suffice myself eg a wife is to suffice their unique partner, and i also have a tendency to consequently remove their own such a partner is to cure his partner. I’m supposed to simply take obligation of their own means.”
Both spouses as well as their women husbands have the versatility up to now guys beyond your relationships. However, Nembe claims you to definitely a respectful spouse can be choosy throughout the the latest men whom she schedules together with be open regarding all of them with her women partner, who will become the “father” of any pupils you to definitely originate from their unique wife’s extramarital affairs.
“Women partnered similar to this have the independence to determine people man that they respect and get pregnant,” she says. “But, this type of women need not tell the new men they bed thereupon he is accountable for the brand new maternity, however if they get pregnant, once the child becomes the child from their [female] partner.”
She claims one guy which claims to be the dad from an infant need contend with it traditions. Pupils grab the surnames of their feminine fathers.
“If for any reason a guy comes up so you can claim that such an infant is his,” she claims, “he has to expend right back the complete dowry of your woman concerned.”
“My spouse concerned home and you can informed me she’ll not have the ability to stay with me,” she says. “She told she wants to return to her anyone. I allow her to go, however, Really don’t consider she actually is nonetheless my wife because she is no longer in my home, and you can this woman is taking people at random inside her community.”
Nembe claims that she will not imagine those individuals people due to the fact hers due to the fact their unique former wife gave beginning in it beyond their domestic which have not familiar guys. She claims she regrets marrying their particular.
“I will has investigated well prior to getting hitched compared to that girl,” Nembe states during the a decreased tone. “I should has gotten partnered to a woman who’ll esteem myself at each and every given date. I feel dissapointed about shedding into incorrect give.”