Nuba Courtship - Otori and  Heiben Tribes

 
 

Nuba Courtship - Otoro and Heiben Until they were ten or eleven years old the daily life of boys and girls were quite similar, but when the girl’s breasts began to fill out and the boy’s pubic hair began to grow their ways diverged. About this time the girl’s commenced spending their nights in the girl’s huts, called luru in Heiben villages and kur in Otoro communities. The girls themselves, well before their first menstruation, decided when they would start sleeping in the girls’ hut. Five to eight girls occupied one hut and neither they nor their lovers seemed to mind this lack of privacy.  After receiving the visits of their various lovers or fiancees in their hut, the girls became engaged.  S.F. Nadel said, “The prospect of receiving these visits and indulging in sexual play which forms part of courtship is indeed the acknowledged reason for this segregation of girls. Shame forbade them to receive their lovers in the parents’ house, while in the kur they were free from all supervision.” Virginity was very vaguely appreciated. The life of young men didn’t change much. At about 11 they graduated from the age-grade status of nyare or boy and began to bear the name of the first age group dongoro or novice. They also began to live in the boys’ huts. Another change was in the choosing the adult name of his fancy. Boys of thirteen to fifteen looked around for a bride among the eight to twelve years old girls. They got to know one another out on the fields or at the various dances and ceremonies which united people of different communities. When the couple found one another they kept the arrangement private for a couple of months. The boy visited his girl at night in the girls’ hut where she slept for chatting and sex play. The conventional petting included squeezing the breasts, even when undeveloped, of the girl, and what the Otoro call ‘petting of the pubic apron’. He gave her small gifts of beads, ochre or scent and the girl responded by giving him gifts in return. At dances she singled out her new lover and at tribal sports she watched him proudly. At big gatherings they would disappear into the bushes and when the boy returned with a streak of ochre on his chest, his age mates made good natured fun of him. Otoro and Heiben boys were not constant lovers, if their advances were not reciprocated within two or three months, or if he was jilted, he turned to someone else.   There were many dances of young men and girls, which formed an essential part of Nuba social life during the dry season. At some dances, boys wore war paint, the novice painting their entire body white. Girls danced with boys who sing age-grade songs. At sunset the dance broke up and the boys returnd to their hut to drink beer and eat corn gruel and curd. Girls also had parties at their huts, timed so that boys and girls feasts coincided and visits could be made between the huts.  To marry his girl, Otoro boys first recieved the consent of the bride-to be, and the approval of his own parents. The boy would then ask the girl’s permission to speak with her parents. He then carried on negotiations over a period of a few months with the girl’s father. He made informal visits and eventually broached the subject. The father signified his agreement by accepting a gift from his future son-in-law. The initial present was followed by a second gift, which was considered part of the bride price proper. This transaction established the marriage contract and the man and the girl were considered formally betrothed.  Engagement meant more than a conventional contract and marriage less than final consummation, which took place as the girl matured. The engagement symbolized by the first bride-price payment established exclusivity to sexual intimacy. Before the engagement girls were free to bestow sexual intimacies freely on many friends. Girls sometimes objected to boys petting her in the girls’ hut if there had been no engagement, and if she did so, the would-be lover would have been required to stop and her lover could do nothing. Once engaged if the bridegroom found her with another boy he was within his rights to fight and beat up the interloper. Once the engagement was formal he was entitled to beat her until she submitted to sexual intimacies. By custom he was not supposed to engage in intercourse until after the marriage ceremony, but it sometime happened that the girl became pregnant. Otoro and Heiben girls were all familiar with ways of preventing conception. If she did become pregnant, the parents hurried up the marriage and pressed for the remainder of the bride price to be paid. As girls married as soon as they were mature, pre-marital pregnancy was not a common problem.  The time between engagement and formal marriage was filled by a series of payments and gifts over a two to five year period which made up the bride price. The final criterion for fixing the time of the marriage ceremony was judged by the development of the girl’s breasts. When the groom felt his girl was mature, they proceeded with the ceremony. Nevertheless, the social recognition of marriage was only realized two or three years after the marriage ceremony, usually with the first pregnancy. In Heiben communities the last step of courtship took the form of a ritual capture of the bride. The girl continued to sleep in the girls’ hut until the day of her capture. Her mother warned her and she knew just what to expect. On the day of her capture, the bridegroom collected four or five friends, all young unmarried men and went out to kidnap the bride. The bride, accompanied by her girlfriends fought tooth and nail and resisted as best as she could. Eventually the men chased away the other girls and carried the kicking bride to the house of her future mother-in-law. There she spent the day being ‘convinced’ and finally agreeing, returned to her mother’s house on the same evening, from which she would be married.  All of these rules of courtship applied  only to young or youngish men. Older men who may have been marrying their third or fourth wife rarely bothered to woo their future wife. The marriage was arranged between the suitor and the girl’s father and courtship was reduced largely to financial transactions. The girls often, but not always, repudiated engagements of this kind, whereupon the disappointed bridegroom sued her family for return of the bride price.  Source Nadel, S.F. 1947. The Nuba: An anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan. London: Oxford University Press

Graphics Copyright 1947 Oxford University Press

Index

Primates	Victorian England	Azande-Congo	Hill Maria-India	Nuba-Sudan
Nuba-Otoro	Nuba-Koalib	Marquesas Islanders	India: Child Marriage	Irish Village