The other night, the power at home went out for the first
time since we got here, which turned our standard chit chat over dinner into an
awesome story telling opportunity. And since we have the good fortune of having
a homestay dad who both a gifted storyteller and a kiswahili professor at home
as well as work, we got to hear the story of how he and our homestay mother met
and married all while learning the major distinctions between a few
not-so-very-different-sounding words. In kiswahili, the verb “to marry” is ku-oa…but it’s used only for men. For
women, the very is ku-olewa, or the
passive form of the first verb to marry which would translate directly to “to
be married”. When he and our mama got married though, wali-oana, which is the reciprocal form of the verb meaning that they
married one another. Though that last form exists, people rarely seem to use
it. The point he was making (or one of them anyway) was that to oana is to have equality in a marriage,
to have respect for one another and to approach life from the wedding on after
as a mutual undertaking with each party having an equal say, despite societal
norms that dictate otherwise. This philosophy, I can dig :)
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