Sister Wifes?

Monday, February 14, 2011
Today is Valentine’s Day and Dave and I are having dinner with John and Carol in the special occasion dining room. It will be a nice change from the regular meals we eat every day on the ship but the ship food has all been good as far as I’m concerned. Too good! I’m sure I have added a few pounds even though I try to watch it and I go on that elliptical machine for half an hour every day we are at sea even though I hate it. Yesterday we had a tour of the kitchen. It is immaculate. We were told the ship always gets 100% when it is examined by the officials and I can see why. We were told we will get a tour of the provision room too. At the start of the voyage we had 500 lbs. of peanut butter on board.

This morning Dave and I were both proctors for the students taking a test for global studies. Just had to check the students in and watch so that no one cheated. Easy job!

I have been to my class on Domestic Violence twice since we left Ghana. I was asked in class to tell about our home stay experience. When I told about the sisters in the house, they asked if I was sure they weren’t sister wifes. Now I’m confused and want to go back and talk to them again but Dave says no way. The more I think about it the more I think that might be the case that they are sister wifes. I can’t believe I didn’t realize this when we were staying there. It is definitely a man’s world in Ghana. When a man takes a wife he pays the wife’s family a bride price of a cow or cows and money or whatever. Once they are married the man feels he owns his wife and can do what he wants to her. If a woman doesn’t produce a child within two years he is able to take a new wife. With all of the religious signs around that country it is hard to comprehend all the polygamy that goes on there. I guess it is part of the culture and everyone looks the other way. Some students from my class went to a maternity hospital. There wasn’t a man in sight except for a doctor. Women were lying in labor and women were lying in pools of blood after just giving birth. Our guide had told us that women went to the hospital to have babies and used pain killers for delivery these days, but it seems that is the exception. I think most women in the villages have no access to doctors and medicine and a midwife comes to the village to help deliver babies. One of the students asked where the men were and they were told they don’t come to the hospital with the women. Some women have to get on a public bus six hours after giving birth to take their baby home. Supposedly abortion is against the law in Ghana but it is performed in the hospital those students went to. On to South Africa and their problems.