WUNRN
Mali, officially the Republic
of Mali is a landlocked nation in Western
Africa. Mali is the seventh largest country in Africa, bordering Algeria on the
north, Niger on
the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte
d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania
on the west.
MALI -
Hawa's Story - Ethnicity +
Education Key for Girls
Traditions as Endogamy in Marriage
My name is Hawa Niangado. I am 23 and an International Relations major student at
the Michigan State University, working as an intern at the Women’s World
Summit Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland.*
I was born in Bamako, capital city of Mali. and after my high school
graduation, I went to the USA to continue my education.
My ethnic group is called “Diawando“ and back in Mali people commonly call us
“Djokaramin.” There are so many different cultures in Africa and that’s what
makes its beauty. Through cultures and traditions we identify ourselves and we
should be proud of them. However, certain practices question this pride. My
ancestors came from Ethiopia as nomads and traders looking for a better place
to feed their livestock. Certain practices such as ‘endogamy’ are alive
in our tradition, which is the practice of marrying within the same social
group or tribe.
Most of the time we marry our cousin and sometimes our first-degree cousin and
some of the brides are below 18 years old. A few of them could be as young as
12. I know girls who got married at 15. Some didn't even know how to cook
or clean so their husbands sent them back to the family so that aunties and
mothers could teach them household tasks. A 16 year old girl got married and
because her husband wanted to have the marriage legalized, they falsified her
birth certificate and made her look like 18. Her husband was 35 years old at
the time of the marriage and she is his second wife and has one child.
As a young girl I wanted to know why such a practice existed. I asked to know
the reasons why we practice endogamy; and I was told that it's a way of keeping
the wealth within our family. Our ethnic group believes that people would want
to marry us only for the money due to our reputation of being wealthy and then
divorce. The strange thing about this is that boys must marry their cousin as
their first wife and then they can marry a girl from a different ethnic group
if they want to. I was told that this is a way to keep our tribe flourishing
because we were a minority in Mali. When people marry, not only in Mali, but
also almost everywhere in Africa, the children are given their father’s last
name.
So if a “Diawando“ girl marries someone from a different tribe, her last name
will not be carried by the children, but the children will have their father's
name and the girl’s name would no longer exist, causing the ethnic group to
diminish. But if a boy from our tribe marries a girl from a different tribe all
the children will carry his last name. From this point of view, we can see that
the girls are being discriminated against because they don't have the same
freedom to choose a partner that they love like boys. Another reason why girls
are married at a younger age is the parents’ fear of them learning things they
are not supposed to know, or the girls refusing to submit to their decision to
marry a cousin.
Boys usually marry girls that are imposed on them by their family whether they
like her or not. Later on they marry a girl they love and take her as a second
wife. Usually the parents of the boy reject his choice at first, because of
family ties with the first wife’s family (who is his cousin), but they will
approve it after all because his first wife is from our ethnic tribe, which
matters most in the family.
After the wedding, some girls face physical abuse and nothing is done about it
because it happens in the same family and the abuse often goes unreported. At
times, it ended with the girl’s death. I do believe in change and I know that
these practices need to be changed and should be stopped. With education being
key to freedom and choice, learning about human rights and in particular the
rights of the child, can assist young girls to know their rights and decide on
their own future.
*WWSF Women’s World Summit Foundation, an international
not-for-profit, humanitarian NGO, working for women and children’s rights,
based in Geneva, Switzerland - http://www.woman.ch - July 2007
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