Marriage in Cameroon (BY Nanche Billa Robert )

Marriage in Cameroon
BY
Nanche Billa Robert
Douala Cameroon

Today the search for glamour and high profile husbands has destroyed the institution of marriage in Cameroon. Girls always think of a dream world thereby detaching themselves from their own reality. In Cameroon, especially in Douala where about 80.5% of the population lives in poverty, only very few people get married
47.5%, 31.7%, 5%, 5.4% and 4% of the population of Douala are married, single, divorcees, engaged, cohabiting. Those who are married are those having prestigious and high salary jobs. Most single people work in the informal and private sectors are students and unemployed. The more prestigious ones job is, the higher the likelihood that one will be married and the reverse will mean that one is single and is cohabiting.
Those who are affected are those <30-40 years old because they are seriously crushed by poverty.48% and 50% of those between 30-40years earn about 24,000-75,000frs and 75,000frs -125,000frs respectively which is far beyond the poverty-line of 177,000frs.Only 8%of those below 30 earn above the poverty line.
This is an indication that marriage is more of interest than sacrifice. Very few people will find a wife that will accept them with little or no interest. Your wife accepted and supported you up to what you are today. I hope that will be a lesson to our self-centred sisters. It is difficult to find a lady who will like to marry someone without having an ulterior interest. whenever there is money, one will be the best husband on earth and they will often say: “what will I have been without you” If in the course of their cohabitation or marriage, suffering strikes, she will make life miserable to the man and it is very common to hear utterances such as “You dirty man. What have you ever done for me? It is better to live in my father’s compound than to suffer here. When I took the decision to marry you I thought life would be better but I didn’t know that I was a fool». She will say over and over again “This marriage you want to contract with me will not work because we are not compatible”. Must compatibility be determined by money? That is the major reason why people especially men want to have a good job before engaging in a legal marriage. Very few women are willing to work together with their spouse in order to build together. They want to marry men only when the storm is over. I know of a lady who asked her partner to pay her for all the domestic works she had done for the time they had been together. You know what she gave him a bill of two million and said her month was worth 60,000frs. Where in Cameroon does a housemaid earn that sum? The child they had had she changed her name to her father’s name forgetting all what had happened in the past.
How is it possible for one to get married when ones partner doesn’t identify herself with what one is doing? Whenever one does something positive she thinks it is for oneself and not for the family as a whole. When she welcomes and treats her family members better than she will treat her partners’. Even when they are legally married some women still fail to identify themselves with their husband’s home. One still hears other saying that they have delivered children for their husbands as if the children are not theirs as well. It is only when women identify themselves as part of their husband’s home that we can have a stable marriage. When they feel for each other, when they hear each other heartbeat, when they share the joyful and timorous events of their partner’s life then can we have real blissful marital home. But when they continue to say “your mother” “your father” “your sister” instead of our mother, father and sister” there will not be veritable peace in the household. The Bible says when two people get married they become one therefore people must stop using discriminative words. What belongs to Adam must also be Eve’s. They must be together for what God has united nobody should put asunder
Young girls will prefer to go out with people who are older than their parents not because they love them but because they are sure that their daily bread and other needs will be guaranteed. You certainly know of the cases of mboma at our state universities. Prof Chinje: a Sociologist said, in the western world, in the first year university students observe each other and in the second year they approach each other and may even end up getting married to each other. It is the reverse at our state university where girls will prefer older persons than their own classmates certainly because their classmates having got the wherewithal. Today our sisters want to get married to albinos (whites) at all cost: they send them pictures in which they are stake naked. This is because they think they will have a better life if they are married to them. When they fail in their attempt to get what they want, they then desperately look for someone to hang on. However, there are a few women who are selfless and are willing to support whatever situation to make their marriage work. This category of women, who are difficult to come by, must be encouraged.
For marriage to be successful in Cameroon, we need a change of mentality: money can provide everything we need for our comfort but marriage is much more than that. Love should be the core of marriages and not money because of the vicissitude of life It needs people who understand each other and are ready to work together to achieve a common goal. Since the youth of our country is entrenched in poverty, very few engaged themselves in marriage. Less than four out of every ten young people in their thirties are married.