Friday, September 11, 2015

6 bizarre and unusual customs from different cultures in Africa

In the UK we lead quite a sheltered life, with not too many rites of passage or traditions to stick to in our lives apart from perhaps weddings, christenings and funerals. However we know from our work in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana that Africa is a huge continent filled with thousands of communities that each have their own way of living, and hundreds of completely different cultures can be found in just one country.

We decided to see if we could find what we thought were the most bizarre and unusual traditions from Africa, and what follows is what we found! Feel free to comment below if you know of any more.

1. Lobola is a custom in Southern Africa where the groom has to pay the father-of-the bride in order to compensate for the 'loss' of the man’s daughter.

2. Members of the Maasai tribe in Kenya and Tanzania spit on newborn babies, in the belief that if they praise a baby it will be cursed.

3. In the Ethiopian Hamer tribe, young boys must jump over and run over the backs of bulls in order to prove their manhood.

4. Male children in the Songo tribe from North Angola are sent to live with an uncle on their mother’s side to be raised as his son when they reach the age of 5, as chiefs inherit their position through the maternal line.

5. Some Mauritanians associate being fat with being rich. But it’s not the fatness of the man, it’s his wife’s. Mothers take their daughters tofat farms’, as they believe that the fatter a woman is, the richer her husband will be.

6. In Sudan, the Latuka tribe has a tradition that when a man wants to marry a woman - he kidnaps her! 

Sources of facts and photos:
Alysha Bennett Web Developer
