Rant of the Week: I paid 100 goats for my wife

I met Emma in 1999 when I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. We hung out a few times and I got an address and phone number from her before I left the country later that year. In 2001 in the middle of obtaining my graduate degree in International Development, I found myself returning to Kenya with an internship with UNEP and a Fulbright Scholarship. I kept Emma’s phone number and gave her a ring. A few months later we were dating. I had to leave Kenya in 2002, and leaving Emma turned out to be an extremely painful experience. Emma obtained a fiancé visa and we were married in my back yard in Salmon, Idaho in June 2003.

I had not met Emma’s parents before we returned to Kenya in 2006. It was quite a cool thing for her father John to let his daughter fly to America for some white dude he’d never bet. But he trusted her and I’m glad he did. When I talked to him on the phone before the wedding, he said “You have my blessing. We can take care of those other issues later.” I knew he was referring to the dowry.

Although at first glance some Americans might think dowry is a sick way of purchasing a woman as though she is some object, it's actually a complement of a woman's worth to her family. (Actually, the proper term in this case is "bride price." The formal definition of a dowry is where you pay the groom’s family to take your girl as a wife, like in India. This IS a very harmful cultural practice IMO, as it devaluates women and girls because they are a cost/liability not a benefit/asset. If anyone knows how/why this custom developed, I would be interested to know).

In pre-colonial days in Africa, Kenyans lived together as large extended families. When a girl got married, she would leave that family to live with her husband's. This was a significant loss in terms of labor contribution to her original family. The main function of the dowry is a compensation for that loss. Think of a family like my in-laws, where they had six children, all girls. Once all those girls were married and moved away, Emma’s parents could be stuck in poverty, without adequate labor to farm and make a living. But with the dowry system, they would be "wealthy" with livestock, which provides security and retirement once they’re too old to work. Additionally, there's a cultural value in building that relationship between the two families by the exchange of gifts over a long period of time.

Despite things changing rapidly in Africa the last 50 years, dowries are still very common. Emma's parents are quite "progressive" and live in Nairobi. However, her father still requested a dowry. So when Emma and I returned in 2006, we worked it out. Usually, the men in my extended family would come to barter with my future in-laws on my behalf for a fair bride price. This meeting would begin with (feigned) aggressive bickering and once a price was agreed upon, end with some good old fashioned male bonding, i.e., getting soused together on moritina, the local homebrew. However, since I had no extended family present, we didn't do the full-blown dowry negotiations. I was relieved. The only thing I was worried about was that I didn't want to get charged a higher dowry because I was white. (It's is sometimes common to charge more based on the wealth of the groom's family, or if the groom is a different tribe or race. Education level or other attributes of the bride are also taken into account, with an educated, beautiful woman fetching more). So we decided to settle on the same amount the groom paid for one of Emma's sister: 100 goats. Although dowries are rarely delivered in livestock anymore, the terms are negotiated in livestock, then paid in cash over time.

Each goat was valued at 2,000 Kenyan shillings for 200,000 KSh total. That was around $2,700 at the time (now it's over $3,000 due to the plummeting dollar). We were actually a little worried about number at first. We like to send her parents money throughout the year anyway, you know a few hundred dollars a time as "gifts." We were concerned that addressing a $3,000 dowry would not allow us to be able to send those gifts. However, her father was very clear that a dowry should be paid over a long period of time. In fact, to pay a dowry all at once can be seen as insulting. Like I said before, it is supposed to signify a long term relationship between the two families. In fact, just this year, Emma’s father completed his dowry Emma's mother's family, and they've been married nearly over 30 years. I plan on shipping John 10 goats a year for 10 years.

The dowry “negotiation” and subsequent celebration was a neat and interesting experience. Emma’s family held a dowry ceremony in 2006 and invited all the friends and relatives. There was tons of food, women dancing and singing, men drinking beer, all that good stuff. I also made an initial, separate payment before that ceremony. That signifies all the gifts my family would have provided the bride’s family before the marriage ceremony (a suit for the father, a dress for the mother, a cooking pot, blanket, beer, a ram to slaughter, etc). Once I complete my dowry payments, there’s another celebration. I’ll let you know how that goes in 2015.