Read on Twitter
Doing research for book idea & interviewing relatives on zoom. About a great grandmother, I'm told she lived in x village in Abiriba. Later I'm told her husband lived in y village. "Were they divorced?" I ask. Silence. Then: " their concept of marriage was different then"
Later, sister in law tells me about trying to map her grandfather's many wives & how long they were married to him. Says her father kept using the phrase: "ya zohu" very roughly ="she upped & left" in relation to the wives. Was it divorce, separation? No neither it seems..
Now this is as recently as the 1930s/1940s because my dad born in 1937 knew some of these relatives. So how did the missionaries change our concept of marriage so completely and so quickly in just 30 years or so. Because by 60s, current concepts had taken over?
Part of this probably linked to matrilineal aspects of Abiriba culture. Although patrilineal heritage respected in certain aspects of life, matrilineal more significant generally. So question of who is father of this child less important as child regardless belongs to ikwu nne
Also hear Abiriba's matrilineal heritage & thus power of women stemmed from original group of founders of the town who migrated from upper Cross River. Apparently the group included only a few women who were thus able to dictate terms of relationships with the men....fascinating
My takeaways : 1) Much we still don't know about our precolonial societies 2) Much we still don't understand about how & why they were so rapidly obliterated from memory 3) Could some of these models be more useful? Do what you can to fill in these gaps- ask your grandparents
There seems to be very little about this in the published academic literature which is a great shame. I suspect there will be a lot of useful material in undergraduate & postgraduate dissertations from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka but difficult to access ...
Throws into bold relief the conversations I had with @KirstieKwarteng @elsie_owusu & others at the @Facebook & @AFFORD_UK #Digitaldiasporas event this week. Watch here https://twitter.com/AFFORD_UK/status/1321543295403761666?s=19
Also interesting how my interviewed relatives have no qualms talking about great grandfather's 7 wives but are much more reticent in exploring great grandmother's 4 husbands. Wonder if this was colonial Victorian missionaries' influence?
Even what we think we know about classic polygamy more complex than I thought. So trying to map difference in age between siblings, my mum just casually said, "he must have been 6 years younger because there were 3 year gaps between pregnancies then" Me: there were?....
Yes. So one wife would go out to uzu (trading base town in our Abiriba community way of speaking) & when pregnant return to Abiriba to have baby & wean). Then at about 3 years would return to uzu while other wife now pregnant would come back to have her own baby...
