The choice of a woman is much more stable ( Archived) (4)

Ladies, read the article below, and then pick your man, he can`t say no.


Where women alone choose whom to wed


A young couple holds hands Jan. 7 on the island of Orango, off the coast of Guinea-Bissau.


ORANGO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate of steaming fish in front of him.

Like all men on this African isle, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart pounding, he lifted the aromatic dish, prepared with an ancient recipe, to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl.

"I had no feelings for her," said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her."

In this archipelago of 50 islands off the western rim of Africa, it's women, not men, who choose. They make their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil. Once they have asked, men are powerless to say no.

To have refused, explained Nananghe, remembering the day half a century ago, would have dishonored his family — and in any case, why would he want to choose his own wife?

"Love comes first into the heart of the woman," he explained. "Once it's in the woman, only then can it jump into the man."

But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that long kept outsiders from these remote islands are no longer holding back the modern world. The young men of Orango, 40 miles off the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, are finding jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the archipelago's more developed islands. Others collect palm oil from the island's abundant trees and sell it on the mainland.

They return with a new form of courtship, one their elders find deeply unsettling.

"Now the world is upside-down," complained Cesar Okrane, 90. "Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them."

For a man to go so far as to openly propose marriage is dangerous, say traditionalists on this island of 2,000 people.




"The choice of a woman is much more stable," explains Okrane. "Rarely were there divorces before. Now, with men choosing, divorce has become common."

Records are not readily available, but islanders agree that there are significantly more divorces now than in the years when men patiently awaited a proposal on a plate.

"I had no feelings for her," said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her."

I want some of that too.