A Drummer's Testament

Chapter III-24:  How a Husband and Wife Separate

How Dagbamba divorce; causes of divorce; examples of three divorces

• Paragraph outline and links
• Proverbs and sayings
• Dagbani words and other search terms

Contents outline and links by paragraph

Introduction

• 1.    Alhaji Ibrahim can speak from experience

Importance of knowing a woman before marriage

• 2.    men do not think before marrying a woman; does what he wants
• 3.    man should try to know the character of a woman
• 4.    important to know the parents; how Dagbamba find their wives

Lack of children

• 5.    stress and gossip if a couple is childless; from woman's friends, not parents
• 6.    frustration leads to quarrels; separation begins

How the separation proceeds; wife returns to her family

• 7.    woman to her father's family, husband will follow; she returns but further quarrels
• 8.    woman to her uncle; husband will follow; the separation is decided
• 9.    several month before collecting the wife's things; then the separation becomes final
• 10.  children remain with father if they are walking; infants will return to father when they walk

Quarrels among wives:  jealousy

• 11.  when a new wife arrives, senior wife may become jealous and leave
• 12.  senior wife may abuse new wife; no blame if the new wife leaves
• 13.  husband needs to be strong and refuse to choose; threaten to divorce all of them

Quarrels among wives:  childbirth

• 14.  if a new wife gives birth, a childless wife may leave
• 15.  if senior wife with girl children and new wife with boys, senior wife may make medicine
• 16.  especially with chiefs and rich people; other wives will not like a wife who has boys
• 17.  some women with girls will leave on their own when new wife has boys
• 18.  the senior wife can put medicine in food to kill the boys or kill the new wife
• 19.  medicine can ruin a person's life, so the new wife may leave the house
• 20.  the senior wife's strength will overcome the love of the new wife and the husband
• 21.  the husband may send boys away to be raised, or he may divorce the senior wife
• 22.  wives cannot refuse each others' food; they will fear to use medicine; other ways to repair it
• 23.  exception:  wife may like the one with boys, thinking she will also get that luck

Quarreling in a house

• 24.  too much quarreling, man will divorce all the wives; he has “bought his life”
• 25.  a house with constant quarreling is vulnerable to medicine and witchcraft
• 26.  story of a witch giving medicine; find people who “don't want themselves”
• 27.  someone who quarrels “does not want” himself or herself

The response to jealousy

• 28.  new wife comes, refusal and bad examples from senior wife; husband has to complain
• 29.  sometimes the wives will use sense to live together better
• 30.  after husband talks, each wife will decide if she will leave the house or live with the other
• 31.  when wife leaves, husband should not mind whatever story she tells her family

Why a woman leaves a man

• 32.  the man can be at fault; a useless man can drive a woman away
• 33.  a woman can also leave on her own choice; counting the faults of the husband
• 34.  husband doesn't care if the wife is sick
• 35.  husband does not greet the woman's family
• 36.  husband does not perform funerals in woman's family
• 37.  husband does not buy clothes for the wife
• 38.  husband tries to account for how the wife buys food
• 39.  husband becomes impotent; or woman does not want to sleep with man
• 40.  husband has bad habits the wife didn't know; husband beats the wife
• 41.  husband has lied to court the woman
• 42.  cowives will abuse the woman
• 43.  husband's mother doesn't like the wife and will abuse her; doesn't want to share
• 44.  some families are descended from slaves
• 45.  some women will leave if they find that the husband is from a slave family
• 46.  a family arranges a marriage, and one of the couple does not like the other

How Alhaji Ibrahim divorced three of his wives

Gurumpaɣa

• 47.  in mother's house after giving birth; became pregnant by another man
• 48.  pregnancy from another man is dangerous to an unweaned child
• 49.  Alhaji Ibrahim sent people to the mother's house, but Gurumpaɣa did not return to him
• 50.  Gurumpaɣa refused to return; the conversation about the pregnancy
• 51.  Alhaji Ibrahim went himself; they refused to identify the other man
• 52.  Alhaji Ibrahim brought a case against his in-laws in the chief's court
• 53.  suing in-laws is unusual and against custom, especially if there has been birth
• 54.  Alhaji Ibrahim explained about the pregnancy; the court summoned Gurumpaɣa and her mother
• 55.  the court asked Gurumpaɣa's mother about the pregnancy, and she refused to say
• 56.  Gurumpaɣa explained her relationship to the other man; he was joined to the suit
• 57.   how the court charged the mother and the other man
• 58.  the judgment and fines; Alhaji Ibrahim accepts the judgment of the court
• 59.  Alhaji Ibrahim sent people to end the marriage; later he collected his children from Gurumpaɣa, but not the other man's child
• 60.  in Dagbon, a father can give his pregnant daughter to a chief; such children have spoiled chieftaincy

Ʒɛnabu

• 61.  continually quarreled with Alhaji Ibrahim's other wife, Fati

Alima

• 62.  did not group herself with the other wives
• 63.  did not tell Alhaji Ibrahim about her uncle's sickness and death
• 64.  ignored the other wives at the funeral
• 65.  Alhaji Ibrahim wrote a letter to Alima's family to come for her
• 66.  her family collected her things; no one knew why
• 67.  did not visit her former cowife in hospital who was taking care of her children
• 68.  did not attend the cowife's funeral; people understood
• 69.  why to confront or not confront someone who does bad to you; conclusion

Proverbs and Sayings

If you haven't done something before, and you want to talk about it, it will be difficult.

Everybody knows to his extent.

When it comes to taking a wife, a man is like a crocodile.  When a crocodile sees water, whether it knows the water or not, it will enter it.

When you see a horse standing somewhere, and the horse has thrown somebody down and come to stand there.  If you don't ask and you come to take the horse, it will also throw you down.

If you see a horse standing in the bush, you should ask before you ride the horse.

The mouth that is washed, they don't blame it.

If you have said something, you don't deny it later.

Their noses will be smelling at one another.

If your wife runs away, you have to follow her legs.

You don't take a woman and leave her things in another man's house.

Somebody can die in all, and somebody can die and still be alive.

Health is everything,

Without health, you are a dead body.

To die is all is better than to die and still be alive.

If a man has wives and the women are dying in his house, it's not sweet.

When somebody's heart is removed, you cannot find it again.

It is the heart that is a human being, because where your heart points to, that is where you point to.

To us Dagbamba, and even to God, if you have women and they are as many as a hundred, if they all go out from your house in one day, it is better than if a woman dies in your house.

If a woman dies in your house, no one knows its pain, except you, and God.

You can take your friend's dance, but don't get the way of living of your friend.

Her mouth is sweet.

Not fearing trouble and not having sense, we take both of them to be one thing.

You take lies to find a women and you take truth to hold her.

However strong you are, if many people group against you, they will defeat you.

As for tradition, it doesn't finish.

A family or a line doesn't have anything to do with change.

There are no slaves again, but there are still lines of slaves; and those who bought them before, their lines are also there.

You don't dig a hole for your dog, and the dog will sit down.

A snake will not lie down for you to compare its length with the length of a stick.

Sometimes you won't want something but you will say you want it.

The river is full.

If there is a small pond by the side of a river, when the river is flooded, it will come and fill the small pond, and they won't call the small pond by its name again; they call it by the name of the river.

If you want to see the ears of a snake, you will become tired.

If you have seen something yourself, it is better than if somebody had seen it and come to tell you.

If you've given birth to children with a woman, it shows that you have become family.

When you have eye sickness, you don't have to tell anyone.

If somebody does something bad, and you see it because you are with the person, you may say something against him; by then, others who have not seen it will be finding your fault or talking against you until it comes to a time that everybody sees it.

If I am with somebody and the person does something bad to me, if I ask him about the thing, it means that our friendship is going to last.  It is because I want him and me to stay together that I will ask him.

Dagbani words and other search terms

• Chiefs and elders
• Yaa-Naa
• Naa Abilabila
• Prophet Muhammad

• Names and people
• Abdulkadiri (Ibrahim)  (child of Alhaji Ibrahim and Alima)
• Abibata (Ibrahim)  (child of Alhaji Ibrahim and Alima)
• Alhassan  (a soldier)
• Alima [Alimatu]  (wife of Alhaji Ibrahim)
• Aliyu (Ibrahim)  (child of Alhaji Ibrahim and Alima)
• Fatawu (Ibrahim)  (son of Alhaji Ibrahim and Marta)
• Fati  (waljira of Alhaji Ibrahim)
• Fatima (Ibrahim)  (child of Alhaji Ibrahim and Alima)
• Gurumpaga  (Gurumpaɣa) (wife of Alhaji Ibrahim)
• (Alhaji) Ibrahim
• Maalam Ibrahim  (uncle of Alima)
• Mahamadu (Ibrahim)  (child of Alhaji Ibrahim and Alima)
• Zhenabu  (Ʒenabu) (wife of Alhaji Ibrahim)

• Miscellaneous terms
• cedis
• chieftaincy
• cowife, cowives
• Dagbani
• housepeople
• mogli dibem  (mɔɣli dibɛm)
• pito

• Towns and places
• Dagbon

• Cultural groups
• Dagbana
• Dagbamba
• Gurunga  (Guruŋa)
• Gurunsi, Gurunsis