The Kaguru are a matrilineal people from East Africa. Norms concerning kinship and marriage stem deeply from tradition. Kinship continues to play an enormous role in Kaguru life. Marriage is considered essential and polygyny is legal, though it is declining. (Meekers, Dominique, Franklin & Nadra, 1995) Women continue to be considered subordinate to men. (Gablert, 2001) Kaguru men and women, respectively, have their own, very different sets of rules and norms.
Kin and household relations are at the core of Kaguru social relations. (Beidelman, 1971) Children are drawn into society through the rewards and punishments they receive for doing right and wrong things at home. (Beidelman, 1971) In addition, a feeling of trust develops between family members. Deep loyalties are formed in families. When family members eventually leave home, they use these emotional ties as a way of securing individual advantages. However, those same loyalties that hold a family together may drive some families apart. (Beidelman, 1971) For example, during times of crisis, a son might have to choose between aiding a sister or a brother. The sister and brother would compete against each other for the aid. Thus, though kinship may provide an avenue into broader economic, social, and political security during prosperous times, it can be a source of tension during trying times.
Blood, both in the physical as well as genetic sense, is considered very important to the Kaguru people. Blood represents matrilineal inheritance. (White, 1994) The Kaguru believe that a child is formed out of its mother’s blood. The father contributes semen and bone to the conception of the child. (White, 1994) Kaguru men and women regard the idea of adoption with surprise and disgust. The blood bond between children and their mothers is very strong. Adoptions have no such blood connections, thus they were regarded in a negative manner.
Both boys and girls greatly depend on people from their families before and during the marriage process. A boy would depend on his mother or a senior kinswoman for food, water, and the fetching of firewood. (Beidelman, 1971) In addition, an unmarried man cannot manage his domestic affairs without a wife, so he would typically copy the actions of his uncle or father until he married. (Beidelman, 1971)
Though all boys grow up believing that they will one day marry, bachelorhood is important for some men. Such men postpone getting married until their late twenties. They drink in clubs, seduce girls, and travel before they settle down. (Beidelman, 1971) In addition, in recent years men have been postponing marrying until they are finished with their education. (Beidelman, 1971) However, education serves as a double-edged sword because on one side the educated man needs help with cooking and chores, but on the other side he has an unfair advantage over the local men seeking wives.
Women are more fully under the control of their elders than are men. Families expect their girls to be married off shortly after puberty. Girls are confined at the first menstrual cycle. They are secluded for several weeks. During these weeks they are taught about proper sexual conduct, clan legends, and proper behavior. A celebration known as the “igubi” is held for women at the start of a girl’s seclusion period. A girl is usually married after her emergence ceremony, or “mlao”. Both ceremonies must come to pass before a girl can marry. (Beidelman, 1971) Though girls often do not know what to expect from their husbands, they enjoy the small freedom they have from their families after they marry. (Beidelman, 1971) Formal rules of Kaguru society support male authority. However, education and economic independence give women slightly more power in marriage.
Marriage arrangements are initiated by the kin of the man and woman. Sometimes such arrangements occur when the girl is a child, or not even born. Actual marriage arrangements are made by middlemen, or “sungula”. (Beidelman, 1967) Men have more difficulties in obtaining a spouse than do females. This is because a woman who is unattractive will still get married; her brideswealth will simply be less than that of an attractive, healthy woman. (Beidelman, 1967) A brideswealth is a combination of money, livestock, and services that a man must pay to a woman’s kin in order to marry her. In the past, young men depended on economic and political aid of their elder kin, specifically uncles or fathers to pay the brideswealth for their first wife. Today, however, some young men secure their own brideswealth as a result of education. (Beidelman, 1971) The brideswealth gives a man numerous rights over his wife. He gains sexual rights over her. In addition, the brideswealth gives a man the right to household labor and authority over her children if he chooses to take it. (Beidelman, 1967) Polygyny, or the act of men having more than one wife, is legal and was quite popular until recently. The more wives one had in the past, the more social power he received. The Tanzania Marriage Act of 1971 prohibits polygyny for Christian marriages. Women are prohibited from having multiple husbands.
Though wedding arrangements are usually arranged by the couple’s kin, there are several ways of circumventing the elders’ wishes of marriage. A boy might elope with a willing girl if one set of parents did not agree to the marriage. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) However, in the past, he would be killed if he were caught. Today, a fine would be charged but the overall brideswealth would be lower for the man. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) A couple might also elope so the man could avoid paying the brideswealth. A common method to gain the consent of marriage from the kin would be to get the girl pregnant. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) In most cases both families permit the two to get married.
A Kaguru marriage is not considered complete until a child is conceived. The mother-child bond is the most important value tie in Kaguru society. (Beidelman, 1971) Two separate bloodlines are fused through children. (White, 1994) In colonial times, the relationship between spouses was not based on any personal affection but primarily on the union of lineages through the children. (Gablert, 2001) Children provide social and economic prestige for the mother. It is very rare for females to have any social or economic prestige at all because husbands try to limit their wives in any way they can. Thus, women take special care in raising their children properly with a large set of morals and values. (Beidelman, 1971) The husband does not have legal authority over his children; such authority is given to the mother. However, the husband may try to seize the legal right to the children to advance his own social and economic prestige. Nevertheless, even if the father does seize legal control of his children, he will probably pass on the responsibility for caring for the children to another of his wives. This is because a man’s biological children are not essential to his lineage, and thus he may not feel he is required to care for them. (Beidelman, 1971)
Divorce is permitted in Kaguru culture. Either the man or the woman can initiate the divorce. If the woman initiates the divorce, then the brideswealth must be returned to the husband. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) Kin are often reluctant to return brideswealth, and discourage the woman from divorcing. If the woman proceeds with the divorce, kin can prohibit her from living with them because she acted against their interests. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) Thus, women who wish to divorce often try to give their husband a reason to initiate a divorce. A woman who is discovered to be having an affair with a man other than her husband would be a suitable reason for a man to divorce his wife. However, men do not typically initiate divorces; they “solve” unsuccessful marriages by marrying additional wives. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994)
It is becoming increasingly more popular in recent years for women to postpone their marriages or not marry at all so they can be free of male domination. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994) Women rarely remarry, because of the perception that the second marriage can be as bad as the first, and that the husband would not care for children that were conceived during the first marriage. Some women might continue to have children with various lovers for social prestige purposes, and such acts are accepted by the Kaguru people. (Meekers & Franklin, 1994)
Numerous norms exist concerning marriage, kinship, and descent patterns among the Kaguru people. Some such norms, including brideswealth and polygyny are ebbing with each subsequent generation. However, other norms such as male dominance, divorce, and wedding arrangements continue to be quite important in Kaguru culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Biedelman, T. O. (1971). The Kaguru: A Matrilineal People of East Africa. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Biedelman, T. O. (1967). Kaguru. The Matrilineal Peoples of Eastern Tanzania . London: International African Institute.
Gablert, Wolfgang. (2001). Social and Cultural Conditions of Religious Conversions in Colonial Southwest Tanzinia. An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology 40, 4.
White, Luise. (1994). Blood, Brotherhood Revisited: Kinship, Relationship, and the Body in East and Central Africa. Africa 64, 3.
Meekers, Dominique, Nadra Franklin. Women’s Perceptions of Polygyny Among the Kaguru of Tanzania. Ethnology 34, 4.
