African Traditions

The Zoula People

Not much has been revealed about the Zoula people of Africa. In fact, there’s hardly much information available on them as they do not interact much with the people around them. There is however, a particular custom associated with them that involves a girl’s father beating up any prospective son-in-law that declares interest in his daughter. If the young man can take the beatings, he is considered man enough to marry the girl; else, he is seen as irresponsible and unfit to be a husband. If he takes the beating and is consequently accepted by the girl’s father, he has to give up his left ears as a sign of undying love for his bride.

The Latwoka People

Another tribe in Sudan and Zaire, known as Latwoka also has an interesting marriage tradition. When a young man wants to marry a girl, he sets off to kidnap her. He then asks the elderly people in his family to go to the girl’s father and inform him of his intentions. If the father agrees, he beats the groom as a sign of his acceptance and if he disagrees, the groom goes ahead to marry the girl by force. So once the girl is kidnapped, she’s as good as married. Did we all think courtship was important?

The Dinka People

In Africa, it is important for every man to produce male offspring. A man that dies without leaving any male children behind is seen as one who has left the earth completely without a single trace or legacy. All hopes of becoming an ancestor is lost. The Dinka people of southern Sudan have developed ways of preventing this from happening. If a boy dies early and is unable to take a wife, his brother or any close relative will take a wife on his behalf and in his name. All the children born of the wife will be ‘his’ children, despite the fact that she may not have known the boy while he was alive.

If a man however dies before his wife has children, his brother or any close relative will take over from the man. All the children borne by her through this will bear the dead man’s name. Another usual practice that occurs in this same region is that whenever a husband dies, his wives and cows are inherited by his sons. A similar culture also exists in the eastern part of Nigeria, where a woman whose husband is dead is allowed to marry her dead husband’s brother. The Dinka people of Southern Sudan are also known for using bracelets made from coiled gold and silver wire round their arms and legs so tightly that the flesh around that area swells around the coils. The men also wear beaded corsets around their waists in order to increase the size of their buttocks, make it more pronounced, and to emphasize their small waists. The colors of the corsets are normally determined by the wearer’s age. In some parts of Africa, plugs made of ivory, metal or bones are used to make ear and lip plugs. These plugs are inserted into the ear lobes or lips, making these areas of the skin stretch disproportionately. Most people believed that these lip plugs had the power to ward off evil spirits. The bigger the plugs, the more beautiful the wearers are believed to be.