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In the years since independence, African women have discovered that although they have gained the right to vote and to seek positions of leadership, the rigid customs and dictates of their tribal societies have not kept pace with the times. The nomadic Turkana women of East Africa still perfume their bodies over fires of scented wood. The Hausa wives of northern Nigeria still amass huge fortunes in the form of thousands upon thousands of Japanese-made enamel bowls, which they cram into their huts, causing at least one Hausa husband to complain bitterly: "I don't even have enough room to pray."
"The main stumbling block for women in Africa," says a Ghanaian professor, "is the adaptation of customary law to modern society. The tension is over how and why old customs should be obeyed." Many tribes still practice clitoridotomy, or female circumcision, as part of the initiation into adulthood. A few tribes stitch together the labia of girls at puberty and unstitch them only after marriage. Tribal inheritance systems can leave a wife with little or nothing when her husband dies. A bride price ranging from about $40 to as much as $4,000 is still exacted from a prospective bridegroom by the bride's father, but the custom is slowly declining. Tanzania's new marriage code will permit a young man to pay the bride price after the wedding on the installment plan. The Christian
Council in Ghana has tried to set the fee at a modest and uniform $35, but many parents feel this is much too low for their family's pride and their daughter's honor.
Black Europeans. Most controversial of all is the widespread practice of polygamy, which most of the young women of the cities vehemently oppose. "If my husband took another wife, I would hound him to death," says one Nairobi university graduate. "But anyway, he wouldn't." A surprising number of educated women seem to disagree. Reasons Grace Onyango, Kenya's first African woman to be elected to Parliament: "If a man can handle 15 wives at one time, he can probably lead a nation." In any case, few African males favor abolishing the practice. As a Kenyan chauffeur puts it: "A man with one wife is like a man with one eye."
The emergence of African women has caused little discernible reaction among African men, although the males often discuss the relative merits of traditional girls and modern girls as wives. Joseph Oduho, a Southern Sudanese rebel-organization official, recently married an educated woman after his tribal wife died. He says: "My former wife couldn't read or write. She spent her time in the kitchen with the children. She would choose a new wife for me, and she knew how to cure me if I was sick. I could lie to her, and it didn't matter. She was simple, but she understood me. My new wife is a college graduate. She won't let me have another wife. I can't lie to her because she knows when I'm lying, and she is not afraid to tell me so. Part of her life is her own. My old wife devoted her entire life to me."