New percentage from bridewealth occupies a significant updates from the wedding procedure all over ethnicities in the north Ghana, and additionally Dagaaba, Frafra and you may Builsa countries. One of many Dagaaba, the fresh bridewealth, kyeuri, mostly comprises such points because libi-pe?le (cowrie shells, look for Profile step 1), fowls, cigarette smoking and you can cola nuts. Occasionally, the level of cowrie shells need to be commensurate with whatever are purchased the brand new bride’s mom. Various other times, bonds off solidarity amongst the family or settlements of your own bride to be and you may bridegroom lead to a reduction in the latest commission, of course, if the newest bride’s agnatic kin influence one previously brand new groom’s household members energized a top brideprice for a wedding, they are planning to and additionally insist on an excessive fee. Still, there are also standardised marriage repayments over the Dagaaba configurations. Today, typically 2000 cowries, otherwise bucks equivalent, are usually acknowledged because the bridewealth in Serekpere and its own environments. It count means good grave prevention away from an amount of 20,000 and you may a lot more than cowries that was approved in identical urban area about 1990’s. Within the context of neoliberal monetary procedures, and you will diminishing agricultural yields levels within this sensitive environmental zone, the correspondence that have gatekeepers revealed that brand new cutback toward count out-of cowries is meant to generate wedding affordable. That it lack of the fresh new bridewealth diverges from the kГ¤y linkissГ¤ extremely commercialised costs claimed inside the towns when you look at the Ghana and you may someplace else (Shope, Source Shope 2006; Posel & Rudwick, Site Posel and Rudwick 2013). Notably, this new percentage is not contingent through to the facts of your fiance, that is, whether the bride-to-be is highly knowledgeable, divorced, has considering beginning or not while the said somewhere else (Borgerhoff Mulder, Reference Borgerhoff Mulder 1989, Resource Borgerhoff Mulder 1995; Anderson, Reference Anderson 2007). The fresh new traditional norms ruling the practice of bridewealth are set away if negotiable aside from the newest bride’s socio-economic updates or perhaps the number of rights transmitted.
The former and additionally pleads for the groom’s kinsmen in the event that brand new bride’s family unit members are seeking in order to costs an inflated brideprice
Typically, a married relationship liaison is a man regarding the groom’s town whom has many relations throughout the bride’s payment. The brand new dendeo prospects this new groom’s members of the family towards the bride’s agnatic kin, basic to help you officially require their turn in matrimony in order to pay the brideprice. New interactions of the dendeo to the bride’s family unit members indicate that the latter was careful on groom and his kin. While the bridewealth might have been gone to live in and you will accepted because of the bride’s kin, the wedding relationship is made and you can legitimated.
The brand new bridewealth among the many Dagaaba, as the across societies in outlying north Ghana, was a complicated process of deals amongst the agnatic kin regarding the groom and bride and you may, generally, a 3rd party, called a dendeo, a wedding liaison
Normatively, new yirdandoo, the head of your own family relations, as opposed to the dad of bride to be, ‘s the custodian of cowries lead because relationship payments. On a group discussion within the Nator, close Serekpere, exhibiting the newest part of your own direct of the clan, Mwinyella, a report participant, informed me, directing in order to his paternal cousin who is the head from his clan, that: ‘that it people try dad and so as i get married they would-be his responsibility in order to [spend the money for bridewealth] for me’. Yet ,, for household without tips designated once the bridewealth, the brand new groom with his agnatic kin are responsible for increasing they. Anderson ( Resource Anderson 2007: 159) reports you to definitely within the setup all over Africa, the marriage percentage try normatively increased because of the groom’s ‘dad, father and you will dad’s brothers, in accordance with mother’s brothers while making quick contributions’. That it changes, to some degree, in the Dagaaba membership exhibited here. But really it resonates having bridewealth means among particular Frafra congeries, where normatively the fresh new groom’s dad and you can father’s brothers are responsible for paying the bridewealth and in which he or she is not able to improve it the latest groom transforms so you’re able to his father’s or mom’s brothers for service.
