 [AFRICANEWS] Gents, this is your big chance! If you do own a cow and you don't own a nubile young African girl, deals are just waiting to be worked.
Child marriage is increasing in parts of war-torn South Sudan and drought-hit Kenya as parents swap their daughters for cows and goats to survive, campaigners said on Wednesday.
"Okay, Ndebbi! This is our big chance! Get yerself scantily clad! You get a 72-year-old husband and we get a cow!"
"A cow! Oh, mummy, help me get undressed! Do you think these coconut shells..."
"Forget the coconut shells. Leave 'em as hanging fruit!"
Africa accounts for nine out of the 10 countries with the highest rates of underage unions globally, advocacy group Girls Not Brides said, with girls marrying due to tradition, family ties, the stigma of pregnancy out of wedlock and poverty.
"Mom, me and Mbuddi wanta get married."
"Mbuddi? But yer only fourteen!"
"And knocked up."
But long-running wars and climate change are now leading factors too, activists said, highlighting a rise in marriage among girls under the age of 18 in South Sudan to 52 percent from 40 percent in 2010, according to United Nations data.
See, if you taught 'em sex education in the schools like they do in the U.S. that wouldn't happen. Would it?"
“The conflicts just worsened the situation,” Dorcas Acen, a gender protection expert at the charity CARE International in South Sudan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Where do you go to get a Gender Protection Expert's license?
“Majority of the parents wish to give up their girls and marry them off because of the economic hardship. They are looking at how to reduce the number of mouths they need to feed.”
And increase the number of mouths somebody else has to feed. That makes sense. Of a sort.
Despite a global decline in child marriages, there are still some 12 million underage girls married every year, often with devastating consequences for their health and education.
Ah, the joys of the age of exploration! When hormones were rampant and self control wasn't!
South Sudan has been gripped by civil war since 2013, pitting forces loyal to President Salva Kiir against rebels linked to former vice president Riek Machar, and millions are going hungry amind rampant inflation and declining oil output.
The animists and Christians of South Sudan traded the oppression of Khartoum for oppression of their own.
As the conflict drags on and hard currency loses it lustre, parents can now receive up to 300 cows in bride price, or dowry, when their a young girl weds, up from about 30 cows during peacetime, Acen said.
Whoa! 300 cows? A whole herd for one girl? She must have one hell of a body!
“When there is a girl within the family ready to get married, people will come and present the number of cows,” she said on the sidelines of a global conference on child marriage in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
"Back off! You think you own me!"
"Got my receipt right here."
"Oh. Okay then."
“Basically it’s just bidding – whoever bids with the highest number of cows will take the girl,” she said.
The homely ones bring the fewest cows. One girl was so bad she went for a chicken. Mom and Pop thought about her every time they ate an egg.
Across the border in Kenya, many semi-nomadic Maasai and Samburu herders exchanged their daughters for livestock during a severe drought last year that killed large numbers of animals, said Millicent Ondigo of Amref Health Africa.
"Is that a goat?"
"Yeah."
"Trade you my beautiful daughter for it!"
“Since the number of goats has decreased, parents rather sell their daughter for four (or) five goats for marriage,” said Ondigo, a project officer for the Nairobi-based health charity.
"Say! She ain't all that beautiful!"
"That ain't the best lookin' goat I've ever seen either!"
"Throw in a jacknife and you got a deal!"
"Daddy!"
"Bye, Punkin! Write to let us know how you're doin'!"
Families often marry girls off at earlier ages during drought as this earns them dowry and increases the girls’ chances of being fed by wealthier husbands, experts say.
"Say! You sure this girl's been weaned?"
Ondigo is working to convince parents that sending girls to school would bring them longer-term economic benefits.
Makes sense on the surface. But if you have an empty stomach and a taste for cabrito today, the thought of sending the child to school for ten or twelve years, paying for her meals, paying for shoes and school clothes, an instrument for band, the class trip to Nairobi, maybe paying tuition and for school uniforms, just doesn't look cost effective.
“(We told parents) when she is done with schooling, she will get a job and she will be able to buy you more than those four goats,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"Of course, you'll have starved to death by then."
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