People of Africa I

This couple have been married a week! Edy and Carin are friends of our friend Bombyck. We were in an area near their shop and had a break between appointments. Bombyck was very excited to see them. He lives on the other side of Kinshasa so contact is probably rare. Friendships are very important here. They became acquainted when Edy was an LDS missionary in Cameroon, Bombyck's home.

They are standing in from of their shop where they sell a variety of hardware, light bulbs, grinding wheels, flashlights, batteries, screwdrivers, and electrical equipment like outlets and sockets. At night they close the front of the booth, lock it and walk across the street to their apartment.

In order to marry, Edy had to pay a dot (pronounced dote) to Carin's family. All of her family, including aunts and uncles had the right to demand goods from Edy so that he could marry her. He paid 1,000 dollars, bought new pots and pans for her mother, a vest for her father, two men's suits for other relatives, and assorted tools for the rest of the family. It took Edy one year to raise the dot. This includes asking friends and acquaintances for help. When he finally turned everything over to the family, they were culturally married -- that was the ceremony.

The dot makes it hard for young people to get married. Often men marry much younger women because it is so hard to become financially stable enough to pay off the family. Paying the dot makes it hard to start life together with even the bare necessities. Of our small acquaintance, three Congolese men are working to earn the dot. The flip side of this tradition is that if anything happens to Edy, his family can take everything back and Carin and any children can be left with nothing.