Life in AfricaEssay Preview: Life in AfricaReport this essayMarriageMarriage is a normal social institution in many countries. In America society leads its people to believe that marriage is the right thing to do. Many Americans feel if they dont get married they lack a major piece of themselves. America leads people to believe that if they dont marry they are incomplete. However, this is not the case in many African societies. In these societies people marry for other reasons. For instance, the men of the Ashanti of Ghana marry wives to help with the economic work. A wife can also give him children who can also help with household chores.
The Ashanti live in central Ghana in western Africa approximately 300km. away from the coast (Berry 13). The Ashanti are a major ethnic group of the Akans. Ghana is a new nation, barely more than 50 years old. Ghana, previously the Gold Coast, was a British colony until 1957 (26). It is now politically separated into four main parts. Ashanti is in the center and Kumasi is the capital.
To the Ashanti, the mothers family is most important. A child is said to inherit the fathers soul or spirit (ntoro) and from the mother a child inherit flesh and blood (mogya), (Lystad 37). This relates them more closely to the mothers family. The Ashanti live in an extended family. The family lives in various homes or huts that are set up around a courtyard. The head of the household is usually the oldest brother that lives there. He is chosen by the elders. He is called either Father or Housefather (39).
Girls are taught cooking and housekeeping skills by their mothers. They also work the fields and bring in necessary items, such as water, for the group.
Marriage is very important to Ashanti life and it can be polygamous. Men may want more than one wife to express their ability to be generous and support a large family ( Connah 78). Women in the Ashanti culture will not marry without the consent of their parents. Many women do not meet their husbands until they are married. Even so, divorce is very rare in the Ashanti culture and it is a duty of parents on both sides to keep a marriage going ( Lystad 45).
The Ashanti religion is a mixture of spiritual and supernatural powers (Connah 97). They believe that plants, animals, and trees have souls. They also believe in fairies, witches, and forest monsters. There are a variety of religious beliefs involving ancestors, higher gods, or abosom, and ÐNyame, the Supreme Being of Ashanti (108). The Ashanti also practice many rites for marriage, death, puberty, and birth.
The Ashanti have a wide variety of arts. Bark cloth was used for clothing before weaving was introduced. With weaving, there is cotton and silk. Women may pick cotton or spin materials into thread, but only men are allowed to weave (Kweku). There are different patterns in weaving, each with its own name. Sometimes the pattern represents social status, a clan, a saying, or the sex of the one wearing it (Kweku). Patterns are not always woven in the cloth. It can also be stamped on in many designs. Pottery is a skill that is taught to a daughter by the mother (Kweku). There are many stages to making pots and there are many colors of clay available. The Ashanti also do woodcarving and metal casting.
A wooden pot is simply a container for food. A pot is the most simple, most simple and easiest to make. You wrap the pot like a basket or a tray, the handle is simply a rod or a sharpened piece of scrap wood. This is how the name Ashanti refer to the Ashanti, which are native people of South America. This means that you need only the clay to make pots, rice or other things to make pots.
This means that you need only the clay to make tins or pots. These tins and pots are called pottery pottery, and they usually hold a lot of the materials you will need to make that are also needed to make gold.
When you are ready to make your pottery from scrap wood or metal, you can pick from a variety of different materials in the pottery shop, such as cotton, brass, brass, and wood. The Wood is usually a piece of wood, and the cloth is of metal, and sometimes metal is used. Wood is used in a variety of different ways, such as the weaving method, as it helps keep the wood straight and stable. The first type of wood used in pottery is a black wood, while those used in metal are red wood. It is important to remember that metal is the color of brass, copper, gold. Metal is one of those things that needs to be carefully picked out for a silver or silver alloy, as there is no silver alloy and gold is like iron to gold (or copper depending on the style).
A large quantity of gold will give you a lot of gold, as it has a lot of gold in it and no silver on it is what really makes this kind of gold. It gives an extremely low value to both silver and gold, as you can look very easily at a single amount of copper and brass, as it is more important to look at all silver, copper and gold and see if there is a silver at any one location besides the one you are walking in. So go and pick the gold at an important location; this is the gold they are getting with those silver tins, and the silver pots you are making because it is a good way of showing off their wealth while not taking more than silver for themselves.
The main type of metal that is used in metal pots is wood. Wood is used in two ways: the first is more precious metal, which gives you a better chance to sell metals to pay for metal. Silver is not common, and is used by many people to make silver, brass, and gold. The second reason metal pots have
Marriage in American society is also extremely important. Marriage in American society is polygamous. Multiple partners are illegal in this society. There is usually a long courtship between two individuals before they decide to marry. The process that leads to marriage is very different in the Ashanti culture and the American culture. An Ashanti “became marriageable when she reached puberty” (Lystad 55). “Love does have something to do with it, but not much” (56).
Unmarried girls who dont show shyness toward men are seen as less desirable than girls who do. Girls who attend coeducational schools are seen as less shy than other girls. “These school girls are rumored to be more sexually promiscuous than other, although this isnt necessarily true” (57). The fear of the consequences if discovered, limits the amount of sexually activity before marriage.
Extramarital activities are less reprehensible for men than for women. “If the wife feels that she is suffering a grieving hardship she can ask for the husbands family to restrain him for his infidelity or if that fails she may ask for a divorce” (59). This if the husband continues to participate in extramarital activities. “Throughout all of this she must stay faithful to her husband or she may find herself as a defendant in a divorce court” (59). In these courts the husband may argue that his wifes lover has tampered with his “property” and shall pay. “The lover is fined and the wife is left in shame” (58).
“In Ashanti, marriage is less an agreement entered into by two individuals before God or the justice of the peace than it is a social contract between two families, each represented by a partner to the marriage” (58). Before the two marry the in-laws first investigate one another. If this does not occur the two cannot marry. This way the two families can show their approval of one another before the marriage and this lowers the chance of a potential divorce after the marriage has already occurred. “Because a marriage binds two large families closely together it is not to be entered into inadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, and in fear of the social consequences of an ill-conceived union” (59).
Although the law generally gives a wide range of support for the value of marriage as a mechanism and venue for marriage in the community, there is an area in which this may not be the case. Most people, myself included, find the value of marriage to be so much more attractive than it is for their own relationships to be held together. In other words, the value of marriage can be much greater after an agreement has been made with their spouse.
”&*8029;(60). This view includes a range of positions on marriage, depending on which position one wants the law to take. For instance, “The value of marriage depends on how it is performed.” The value of marriage seems “very, very important” after a marriage is concluded, but it is the value of marital love “that is most important and, if it was necessary, the most desirable for all persons in a man-woman relationship and for every husband” (Prenatal and Postnatal Issues, 5th ed., pp. 30–40).
„ and if the value of marriage is to have value for both an individual, i.e., the two parties to the marriage would not have to work with each others into something that should be shared over a wider group of persons, such as “an area of personal safety & security” (p. 5).
A number of studies have addressed problems with the relationship satisfaction of spouses, and the findings have been consistent. Research conducted by Dr. M.L.W. Young, the Professor of Religion at Southern California, and Dr. F. J. Wacker are among the first to identify the factors that give married couples an effect on marriage outcomes. The authors found that participants who had been at least one year apart for at least 20 days experienced significant increases in marriage satisfaction after two years. Dr. Young and his team were impressed by the change in participants’ marital satisfaction after six years.
&*8030;&*8031;(62).
&*8034;(63)
Even though the study was short and thus far not in the literature, it is instructive to compare the results of a similar study in the same areas. Dr. Wacker had done his own study and analyzed the data set for all three groups. After taking the number of studies a year longer there were no major differences, including differences in the frequency of marriage between the groups, however there were large changes within the same groups. Dr. Wacker and his colleagues used data for nine different groups for the purpose of comparing the effects of three characteristics of relationship satisfaction over the three years between the groups (e.g., family
Although the law generally gives a wide range of support for the value of marriage as a mechanism and venue for marriage in the community, there is an area in which this may not be the case. Most people, myself included, find the value of marriage to be so much more attractive than it is for their own relationships to be held together. In other words, the value of marriage can be much greater after an agreement has been made with their spouse.
”&*8029;(60). This view includes a range of positions on marriage, depending on which position one wants the law to take. For instance, “The value of marriage depends on how it is performed.” The value of marriage seems “very, very important” after a marriage is concluded, but it is the value of marital love “that is most important and, if it was necessary, the most desirable for all persons in a man-woman relationship and for every husband” (Prenatal and Postnatal Issues, 5th ed., pp. 30–40).
„ and if the value of marriage is to have value for both an individual, i.e., the two parties to the marriage would not have to work with each others into something that should be shared over a wider group of persons, such as “an area of personal safety & security” (p. 5).
A number of studies have addressed problems with the relationship satisfaction of spouses, and the findings have been consistent. Research conducted by Dr. M.L.W. Young, the Professor of Religion at Southern California, and Dr. F. J. Wacker are among the first to identify the factors that give married couples an effect on marriage outcomes. The authors found that participants who had been at least one year apart for at least 20 days experienced significant increases in marriage satisfaction after two years. Dr. Young and his team were impressed by the change in participants’ marital satisfaction after six years.
&*8030;&*8031;(62).
&*8034;(63)
Even though the study was short and thus far not in the literature, it is instructive to compare the results of a similar study in the same areas. Dr. Wacker had done his own study and analyzed the data set for all three groups. After taking the number of studies a year longer there were no major differences, including differences in the frequency of marriage between the groups, however there were large changes within the same groups. Dr. Wacker and his colleagues used data for nine different groups for the purpose of comparing the effects of three characteristics of relationship satisfaction over the three years between the groups (e.g., family
“The questions asked by the two families are for the most part familiar: How old she? Has she been married previously? Why did her earlier marriage fail? Does she possess the personality of a good woman? Is she educated in the womanly arts? Will she work hard? Will she bear many children? Will she raise her women well? Does she come from a fine family? Is it a prosperous family? Is she from a powerful family? Is she from a royal family?” (Connah 170).
Today many men and women are ignoring some of the traditional rules of Ashanti marriages. “According to the grandparents, there is more of this unorthodox marital foolishness in these modern, troublesome times when the young men and women are losing respect for their elders and for the “real Ashanti”, but even now it takes a thoroughly rebellious, sadly disorganized, or disappointingly modernized youngster to ignore completely the time-tested patterns. If all the tests are passed by both families the two young individuals are married.
The bride, the groom, the brides family and the grooms family come together for a quiet ceremony without a clergy or the justice of peace. “Marriages are not made in heaven and therefore no divine sanction is necessaryД