Day 13 - Love and marriage

Thursday 21st April





I walked through the school today and heard, as I often do, the sound of bollywood music blaring out of someone's radio or laptop. Bollywood films are very popular here, for reasons that are not clear to me. Maybe the Lebanese community introduced them?





I have been asked more than once whether I plan to marry an Indian girl. My response that I have no particular bias for or against Indian girls is perpetually met with surprise. "Ah! But Indian girls are all very very beautiful! I want to go to India so I can walk in the streets and see all the beautiful women!" My suggestion that the attractiveness of Indian women may vary from individual to individual is met with flat denials!





Contrary to what the title of this blog post might make you think, the climax of this post won't be the revelation that I have fallen in love with and got married to someone in Sierra Leone! However people I talk to are typically surprised that I've managed to get to the grand old age of 29 without having had any children (and they're not afraid to say it - thanks folks!) Typically a man in Sierra Leone will probably have fathered a couple of kids by the time he reaches his early twenties (not that most people born in the villages know their age).





Also in the provinces it is still common for a man to take multiple wives. The site manager of EducAid Lumley told me that his grandfather had 9 wives. They would all live in one hut which was connected via a corridor to another hut where his grandfather's room was. The wives would get summoned to his room one by one according to a set rotation.




Kumba (Mohamed's girlfriend) told me that men are told they are lazy if they only have one wife. This is particularly true in the military, where it's common for a man to get a wife, and then be posted away for a few months and come back with another wife. Her father had four wives, but apparently there was a pretty good sense of harmony among the siblings and half-siblings who all viewed each other as siblings. Apparently this level of family harmonyh does not always arise.