Marriage the Aembu way

 By Filex MurIithi

Embu,Kenya:Like the diamond ring, the symbol of courtship and engagement in the western world, tobacco or mbaki was used by a man to propose to a woman

This writer recently did a story on the Aembu community’s deep belief in their culture, origin and marriage and explained Mwenendega grove as the place where their ancestral parents Ndega and Nthara inhabited.

The story attracted the attention of many people, both locally and in the Diaspora who called to find more about their respected rigorous series of rites of passage — mostly the marriage rite of passage among the Aembu.

In the community, it was not easy to find a woman and ask for her hand in marriage, let alone marry her. There were cultural rites a man had to follow to legitimately call a woman his wife.

The popular bongo music artiste, Z-Anto from Tanzania, sang “Sijui kubembeleza (I don’t know how to woo).” In the Aembu cultural rites for courtship and marriage, one had to learn how to woo a woman.

It all started with a man finding a lady who suits him. He would then do everything within his power to have a secret rendesvous with her, to court her until she accepted his marriage proposal.

“Even if the woman has accepted the proposal, a man was barred from walking into the in-laws’ homestead until he gave mbaki (tobacco) to the woman he intended to marry. She later took the mbaki to her parents and explained where it came from,” Anisia Mbeere, 84, says.

Mama Mbeere says the commodity must have been prepared by her respective murata’s (lover’s) father to show that he was desperately in need of a wife.

“When our daughter brought us mbaki, we knew she had found a man. We then asked her to tell us more about the man and advised her. We were careful to investigate whether they were from the same clan,” she says.

Not good for her

Mama Mbeere says that if they understood that the man was not good for their daughter, they refused to okay the relationship and if it happened they were of the same clan, they carefully explained the fact to their children who would be forced to look for other marriage partners.

“We investigated whether he was from our clan or he if he was a hardworking man. Marrying from the same clan was taboo; a curse left by our ancestors. It is no different from marrying from the same womb which is also taboo,” she adds.

The soft-spoken elderly woman says men had a unique technique of finding their best marriage partners; they had to go searching for a woman who was likely not to give them pain in future.

“I remember how my late husband lingered on a pathway near my father’s farm. I didn’t know he was looking at the way I work... if a woman sat down in the garden, left behind weeds as she dug, or kept going back and forth between her home and the garden,  it meant that she was lazy and no man would be interested in her,” Mama Mbeere explains.

Sneeze loudly

She reveals that if a man brought mbaki to a woman, he would stand at the gate and sneeze loudly to announce his arrival.

Immediately, a child, even as young as seven years old, would be sent to see who he was. As embarrassing as it was, the man had no choice but to tell the child of his intention to marry.

“After a man was given mbaki by his father, he would send the child to his girlfriend’s parents. From the gesture, her parents understood that their daughter was ready to get married. And as the suitor sneezed at the gate, he was not supposed to stand on the path on which the family’s head (his girlfriend’s father) used when going or coming back home,” Mama Mbeere tells Kikwetu.

The suitor’s father would then seek some elders, prepare njovi (alcohol) and visit the woman’s family to plan the next stage; a ritual called uthoni, the traditional marriage ceremony.

If the relationship was approved, the girl would start visiting the man’s home to help his parents with house duties as a test of whether she was ‘wife material’.

Elders then drafted the payment of dowry, which was paid in terms of goats, honey, bulls and a sack of sugar, among other things. One did not have to pay everything at the same time and it was open to discuss and agree on the payment intervals. A man would stay with his wife as he continued to pay the dowry.

Breaking rules

Mama Mbeere told Kikwetu that a newly-married woman was not supposed to call her in-laws by their name and the in-laws too were not supposed to call her by her name. Breaking this rule by either party would be considered as disrespect and the only remedy was cleansing through the slaughter of a bull or goat without blemish.

“In-laws were respected as they gave either the bride or groom a helper. When our sons were marrying, the brides’ parents provided us with names to call them. When my first born son Rufus Njiru, 60, married, the parents of Ann Njura, his wife, gave me a name which I call her to date. ‘Gitambi’ is the name I was given. It means that she has moved from their home place to another place,” she adds.

Forgotten promises

Mama Mbeere says that a man must pay all what was agreed at the dowry negotiations. It was believed that he would suffer a series of misfortune if he stayed for a long time without taking something to the in-laws.

“The in-laws may think ill of you if you appeared to have forgotten the promises. It could bring about sickness in the family; last born children were the mostly affected. Too, cia muthoniwa itithiraga (you can’t complete dowry payment),” she says.

This means that even if you take everything you have been asked to, you must keep taking something to your in-laws for you cannot buy somebody. Instead, you marry.

“If your in-law dies before paying dowry, he may order that you tie a goat or a bull where his body was buried,” she says.

She adds that it is taboo for a father to spend his daughter’s dowry if he had not paid dowry for his own wife. Instead, he should receive it and directly take it to pay his wife’s dowry without keeping anything for himself.

Mama Mbeere says although this culture is still followed in some areas of Embu, nowadays it is difficult for parents to control the type of woman their son marries since many lovebirds meet in urban areas and marry without following the procedure of visiting the in-laws or getting to know each other’s’ backgrounds.

“This is the key reason many men are being beaten-up by their wives. We even have cases of people marrying relatives and that is why they have children with problems. Spouses were highly respected in our time. We toiled to get them,” she says.