New Family
My new Gambian family, by UK standards, is huge! It took several days to meet everyone and even now I'm still not 100% about who was family and who was not! It sounds bad but as soon as we arrived the compound was constantly full of kids and visiting adults. It made getting to know family members a bit difficult! One day my mum asked my father-in-law which of the children running around the compound were his. He looked around at the children and concluded that none of them were his!
My new family is also a little unconventional in UK terms. I now have a father-in-law and 2 mother-in-laws. It is fairly common practice in The Gambia for the men to have more than 1 wife and many, many children! I have approximately 15 brother/sister-in-laws! The eldest sibling is in his late 30s and the youngest is a toddler. Some of the children in the family are 'adopted' relatives who live with my husband's family.
From what I understood there were a number of reasons for this -
1. their families may have been less financially able to support them
2. they wanted to attend school and gain an education
3. the young women were able to help cook and bring up the younger children
I think these were the 3 main reasons for 'relative swaps'. I thought it showed a great deal of consideration, dedication and extremely strong family ties. Those who were ‘adopted’ worked incredibly hard for their keep, but I firmly believe that they were lucky, having educational opportunities placed before them that others may not have received.
My 2 mothers-in-law would walk many miles every day to an allotment area where they grew rice, peppers, and many other vegetables. The land was hard to work in places. My husband’s mum showed me an area completely grown over with long grass and trees, and the ground was uneven and covered with rocks. She then pointed to her neat and tidy, well irrigated rice patch and told me that it had once looked just like the overgrown area. She had worked the land herself, removing all the grass, trees and weeds in order to plant rice to sell and provide for her family. The area was large. The idea of such a small lady doing all that work was astonishing and made me realise again how physically easy my life in the UK is.
So to end today’s blog entry I would like to express my ultimate respect for all those hard-working Gambian ladies who really opened my eyes to just how different our cultural lifestyles can be!
My new family is also a little unconventional in UK terms. I now have a father-in-law and 2 mother-in-laws. It is fairly common practice in The Gambia for the men to have more than 1 wife and many, many children! I have approximately 15 brother/sister-in-laws! The eldest sibling is in his late 30s and the youngest is a toddler. Some of the children in the family are 'adopted' relatives who live with my husband's family.
From what I understood there were a number of reasons for this -
1. their families may have been less financially able to support them
2. they wanted to attend school and gain an education
3. the young women were able to help cook and bring up the younger children
I think these were the 3 main reasons for 'relative swaps'. I thought it showed a great deal of consideration, dedication and extremely strong family ties. Those who were ‘adopted’ worked incredibly hard for their keep, but I firmly believe that they were lucky, having educational opportunities placed before them that others may not have received.
My 2 mothers-in-law would walk many miles every day to an allotment area where they grew rice, peppers, and many other vegetables. The land was hard to work in places. My husband’s mum showed me an area completely grown over with long grass and trees, and the ground was uneven and covered with rocks. She then pointed to her neat and tidy, well irrigated rice patch and told me that it had once looked just like the overgrown area. She had worked the land herself, removing all the grass, trees and weeds in order to plant rice to sell and provide for her family. The area was large. The idea of such a small lady doing all that work was astonishing and made me realise again how physically easy my life in the UK is.
So to end today’s blog entry I would like to express my ultimate respect for all those hard-working Gambian ladies who really opened my eyes to just how different our cultural lifestyles can be!
Labels: family, farming, Gambia, garden, school, Women, work
posted by Computer Tutor :o) | 08:02
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