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BAI KUKE, CAMEROON – Frida Nembe, 61, is actually an enthusiastic eloquent and you may smart lady into the Bai Kuke, a town of the Balong group during the southwestern Cameroon. Several years ago, she became good “female partner.”

She claims that their merely child together with her later partner passed away, and she was don’t able to get pregnant. Thus she turned a husband herself, a female husband.

“As i had partnered on my late partner, We provided delivery to one youngster whom died many years afterwards,” Nembe claims. “It is hence that we partnered my partner thus one to she’s going to sustain a child who’ll inherit my personal property whenever i die.”

Nembe says she did every antique rites that a man would would so you’re able to marry a lady so you’re able to get married their own partner, who had been from a unique Balong village.

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“I decided to go to their particular town, came across their anyone and you may paid their unique complete dowry,” she says. “However brought their back at my home to call home beside me and you may incur youngsters inside my title.”

She claims that Balong tradition lets female so you can wed with other feamales in cases where ladies are barren otherwise haven’t any college students. Even ladies who want a lot more students but they are Date AsianMelodies struggling to consider them could possibly get wed other women.

Nembe states the feminine comply with old-fashioned gender spots. This new childbearing lady gets the newest partner on the marriage, due to the fact almost every other woman will act as a lady spouse.

“My spouse try supposed to stay-in the house, generate people for me personally, help me when you look at the cleaning and you will farmwork,” she states. “The woman is supposed to suffice me personally such as for instance a spouse is always to suffice their own husband, and that i tend to therefore get rid of their particular such as a partner would be to reduce his spouse. I am meant to get obligations off their own means.”

Each other wives as well as their female husbands have the freedom so far men away from marriage. However, Nembe states you to definitely a respectful wife shall be choosy on new men whom she dates along with likely be operational on the them with their own feminine partner, who can end up being the “father” of any children that come from their wife’s extramarital relations.

“Female married along these lines have the versatility to choose people people which they respect and have now expecting,” she states. “However,, such women need not share with the new guys it bed with this he could be responsible for new pregnancy, in case it conceive, because youngster can be the baby out of their own [female] partner.”

She states any guy just who states end up being the father off a child have to take on which culture. Children make the surnames of the female fathers.

“If the for any reason a guy turns up so you can declare that like an infant try their,” she states, “he has got to pay back the whole dowry of your woman alarmed.”

“My spouse concerned family and you will told me she’s going to maybe not have the ability to stick with myself,” she says. “She advised she desires return to her some body. We let her go, however, I do not think she is nonetheless my wife while the she is no longer in my house, and you may the woman is bringing students at random inside her town.”

Nembe states that she will not believe those individuals pupils since hers once the her former partner provided birth in it outside their household which have unfamiliar men. She states she regrets marrying her.

“I will provides examined well before getting married compared to that girl,” Nembe states inside the a decreased tone. “I will features obtained hitched to a woman that will admiration me at each and every provided time. I feel dissapointed about falling to the completely wrong hand.”