In Secret, Polygamy Follows Africans to N.Y.

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

The New York Times


March 23, 2007
In Secret, Polygamy Follows Africans to N.Y.
By NINA BERNSTEIN

She worked at the Red Lobster in Times Square and lived with her husband near Yankee Stadium. Yet one night, returning home from her job, Odine D. Discovered that African custom, not American law, held sway over her marriage.

A strange woman was sitting in the living room, and Ms. D.’s husband, a security guard born in Ghana, introduced her as his other wife.

Devastated, Ms. D., a Guinean immigrant who insisted that her last name be withheld, said she protested: “I can’t live with the woman in my house — we have only two bedrooms.” Her husband cited Islamic precepts allowing a man to have up to four wives, and told her to get used to it. And she tried to obey.

Polygamy in America, outlawed in every state but rarely prosecuted, has long been associated with Mormon splinter groups out West, not immigrants in New York. But a fatal fire in a row house in the Bronx on March 7 revealed its presence here, in a world very different from the suburban Utah setting of “Big Love,” the HBO series about polygamists next door.

The city’s mourning for the dead — a woman and nine children in two families from Mali — has been followed by a hushed double take at the domestic arrangements described by relatives: Moussa Magassa, the Mali-born American citizen who owned the house and was the father of five children who perished, had two wives in the home, on different floors. Both survived.

No one knows how prevalent polygamy is in New York. Those who practice it have cause to keep it secret: under immigration law, polygamy is grounds for exclusion from the United States.

Under state law, bigamy can be punished by up to four years in prison,

No agency is known to collect data on polygamous unions, which typically take shape over time and under the radar, often with religious ceremonies overseas and a visitor’s visa for the wife, arranged by other relatives. Some men have one wife in the United States and others abroad.

But the Magassas clearly are not an isolated case. Immigration to New York and other American cities has soared from places where polygamy is lawful and widespread, especially from West African countries like Mali, where demographic surveys show that 43 percent of women are in polygamous marriages.

And the picture that emerges from dozens of interviews with African immigrants, officials and scholars of polygamy is of a clandestine practice that probably involves thousands of New Yorkers.

“It’s difficult, but one accepts it because it’s our religion,” said Doussou Traoré, 52, president of an association of Malian women in New York, who married an older man with two other wives who remain in Mali. “Our mothers accepted it. Our grandmothers accepted it. Why not us?”

Other women spoke bitterly of polygamy. They said their participation was dictated by an African culture of female subjugation and linked polygamy to female genital cutting and domestic violence. That view is echoed by most research on plural marriages, including studies of West African immigrants in France, where the government estimates that 120,000 people live in 20,000 polygamous families.

“The woman is in effect the slave of the man,” said a stylish Guinean businesswoman in her 40s who, like many women interviewed in Harlem and the Bronx, spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you protest, your husband will hit you, and if you call the police, he’s going to divorce you, and the whole community will scorn you.”

“Even me,” she added. “My husband went to find another wife in Africa, and he has the right to do that. They tell you nothing, until one afternoon he says, ‘O.K., your co-wife arrives this evening.’ ”

Men, in contrast, tended to play down the existence of polygamy, if they were willing to discuss it at all.

Dr. Ousseiny Coulibaly, 36, a gynecologist, was born in Mali and educated in France, where polygamy has long been an explosive immigration and women’s rights issue. Yet he said he was unaware of any cases among his West African patients at Harlem Hospital Center.

“I’m not asking,” he said. “I’m not even suspecting it. There might be so many things I don’t know.”

Don’t-ask-don’t-know policies prevail in many agencies that deal with immigrant families in New York, perhaps because there is no framework for addressing polygamy in a city that prides itself on tolerance of religious, cultural and sexual differences — and on support for human rights and equality.

Last summer, when a nonprofit agency in the Bronx surveyed the needs of the sub-Saharan immigrants in its child care and literacy programs, questionnaires asked about interest in marriage counseling, but not about polygamy.

“This is a very private community,” said Rose Rivera, director of Head Start at the agency, the Women’s Housing and Employment Development Corporation, which largely relies on the fathers to translate for the mothers. “They’re not really ready to trust us.”

Yet on Monday, two Gambian women with children in the program acknowledged, when asked by a reporter, that polygamy was a given in their lives. Both described themselves as “first wives,” married at 16, who joined their husbands in New York in the 1990s, never having attended school.

One, now 36, with three children, said her husband was betrothed to a second wife in Gambia whom he would soon bring to the Bronx. Protest was pointless. “They won’t listen,” she said. “Whether you like it or not, they will marry.”

Islam is often cited as the authority that allows polygamy. But in Africa, the practice is a cultural tradition that crosses religious lines, while some Muslim lands elsewhere sharply restrict it. The Koran says a man should not take more than one wife if he cannot treat them all equally — a very high bar, many Muslims say.

Ms. Traoré, of the Malian women’s group, cited two prosperous households in Bergen County, in New Jersey, that seemed to pass the test.

“They get along very well,” she said of the wives in one home, who married their husband in Africa at the same time. “It’s extraordinary. When they come to our celebrations they dress the same, the same outfit, the same jewels. The husband is completely fair.”

Still, since only one wife could have entered the country as a spouse, the other is probably more vulnerable to deportation, she acknowledged.

More typical, many immigrants said, are cramped apartments in the Bronx with many children underfoot, clashes between jealous co-wives and domestic violence. And if the household breaks up, the wives’ legal status is murky at best, with little case law to guide decisions on marital property or benefits.

Men, too, can end up in polygamous marriages reluctantly, driven by the dictates of clan and culture. That seems to be the case for the husband of Ms. D., the Guinean restaurant worker. Efforts to reach him for this article failed, but as Ms. D. Tells it, he insisted he was just as surprised as she was when his first wife, left behind in Ghana, showed up six years ago.

Their match, like many African marriages, had been made by their families before he left for New York. Years later, he met and courted Ms. D. In the Bronx, saying his relationship with his Ghanaian wife was over.

But a year after he married Ms. D. In Guinea and they returned to the Bronx, relatives arranged for a visa for his first wife to join them.

“In Africa, women accept things like that,” Ms. D. Said. “Here, the apartments are too small.”

She recalled terrible fights during the three months they all lived together. The conflicts continued after she paid for the first wife to move to another apartment. For eight months, the husband shuttled between the two, but he became abusive, she said. And when Ms. D was five months pregnant, he stopped showing up.

Like many West African women, Ms. D. Had been subjected to genital cutting as a child, making sex painful. The other wife had not been cut.

“It’s not life, your man sharing a bed with another woman,” Ms. D. Said. “You’re always thinking in your head, ‘does he love me?’ ”

Such stories of polygamy, New York style, are typically shared by women only in whispered conversations in laundries and at hair-braiding salons. With no legal immigration status and no right to asylum from polygamy, many are afraid to expose their husbands to arrest or deportation, which could dishonor and impoverish their families here and in Africa.

But Aminata Kante, an immigrant from Ivory Coast who found help for herself and Ms. D. At Sanctuary for Families, an agency for battered women, uses her own story to urge rebellion.

Wed at 15 in Ivory Coast, over the telephone, to a New York City taxi driver thousands of miles away, Ms. Kante was delivered to her groom on a false passport. She said she endured his abuse for years, bore three children, turned over her paycheck from work as a health aide, and tried harder to appease him when he sent two of the children to Africa.

But something snapped, she said, when he announced that he had taken a teenage second wife, also married, just as she had been, over the phone — a valid wedding in Ivory Coast. Ms. Kante left him. Relatives pressed her to return. Uncles warned that she would be branded a bad woman, and that the stigma would follow her children in Africa. Without papers, vulnerable to deportation, she ended up in a homeless shelter.

But now, at 30, she tells the story in the warm glow of her own living room, her children restored to her, and a green card secured, through unusual legal efforts by lawyers at Sanctuary.

“I know a lady who lives with her husband and another woman in one room, a two-bedroom, with 11 kids,” she said. “I tell her, she has to move — it’s not a life.” And her own husband? His second wife is 23 now, with three children. And recently, Ms. Kante said, he married a third.

[Kala]

Greetings Sis Olufemi
This article you have posted here is very interesting, and it brings alot of issues and controversey on multiple levels.

One of my concerns is the issue of what we concider "traditional" African practices. Is polygamy indigenous to Africa, or was it introduced by foreigners (i.e. Arabs and Islam)? We have to look at that.

Additionally, the argument given by many Islamic femists ( Arab, Afrikan, etc.) is that within polygamy there is suppose to be a balance in the way the man interacts with and treats the wives and children. They also argue that the first wife is to be consulted before making decisions about an additional wife. However, as we see within the examples given in this article that the social situation, here in the u.s. And in Africa do not support such a balanced construct. In fact, we have men taking advantage of women, and secretly making decisions w/o their wife's consent.

Which leads to my final point, which is: just because it's "tradition" does that mean it's good for African people? We have to look at what is economically, politically, and socially neccesary and feasable for us- whether in the u.s. Or on the continent.

Sis Olufemi, I look forward to reading your thoughts on the polygamy issue, and I appreciate the posting on this very interesting, and real concern affecting African men, women, and families.

[smiley=sankofa.gif]

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

My thoughts on polygamy is that even though this is a generations old practice,it should be outlawed. My views are that one man should have one woman,not multiple women because it will cause great stress on the children who were created in this environment. Also,polygamy will affect a woman's self esteem, because if a woman cannot conceive, it will make her question her self-worth because of a genetic flaw,and it will cause extreme jealousy & implant negative thoughts about herself, the other woman and her husband. Also, a woman should have the right to walk away from a polygamious marriage if she is unhappy,and voice her opinion on bringing another woman into the household. An African woman must never be submissive to a man, but stand beside him as her one and only Queen.

[maat_free]

Uhuru sasa, queens.

i was reading the post and i felt saddened by it because the sisters really seemed to be suffering. I know the children are ultimately the victims of it all.

however, i don't think we can blame this on the arrangement of a man having co-wives. It seems like these men are jerks on their own.

i just don't think being a co-wife is a bad thing at all. Not at all...

i quite like the idea of having a big blended family where the women share in upholding the honor of *being queen mother and beloved wife to a balanced, ethical, dynamic kingman.

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

So..you're saying that you would get involved in a polygamious marriage? Why? To me, its wrong for a woman to share her husband,especially if there are children involved. Children do not know what polygamy is.

Originally Posted by akua maat free

uhuru sasa, queens.

i was reading the post and i felt saddened by it because the sisters really seemed to be suffering. I know the children are ultimately the victims of it all.

however, i don't think we can blame this on the arrangement of a man having co-wives. It seems like these men are jerks on their own.

i just don't think being a co-wife is a bad thing at all. Not at all...

so please think twice before we issue a world-wide ban on the practice of having big blended families where the women share in upholding the honor of being queen mother and beloved wife.

[maat_free]

To answer the question, yes i would have a co-wife and/or be a co-wife.

notice how our people routinely subject their children to all forms of pathologies and psychoses in the home starting from nutricide all the way down to mental rape from the idiot box and no one seems to rally that cause anywhere near as emphatically as the notion of the blended african family with an upright kingman balancing his life and legacy between two queen mothers, all of them raising their well-cared for children.

not to mention that people who think on this level have most likely disconnected themselves from the pervading culture of the west and possess the tools to develop an independent, self-determined family constitution that starts with the best three words i ever did hear: do for self!

but again, this is just theory. I know plenty of people living it, but i never did, so i can't speak from first hand experience.

i know of a specific situation dealing with a brother who chose to sneak around behind his wife's back rather than man up and be honest about wanting to take another wife.

interestingly, both the first wife and the next sister felt that they were being treated very well. The second wife knew about the first but of course not the other way around. He did treat both sisters with the utmost concern and respect, outside the fact that he was deceiving them viciously. Not only was he lying to his first wife on a daily basis, he had also promised the second wife that he would inform the first wife about his decision to expand the family.

both sisters believed that this was their intended mate and both sisters are now living in an open co-wife situation. They reside in different houses within the same complex. But they get along and realize that although their man was well intended, he lacked the self-determination to fully accept his divine right to be the kingman of his entire family, regardless of what other people would say.

matter of fact, i think his thing was that he feared what the children might say at school since he worked as a teacher in a public elementary where his youngest child attended. That was what he used as his reason for not telling the first wife, knowing that their child would run the risk of blabbing to the faculty and other students.

keep in mind that all these people practiced african traditions, but no one was initiated being that there was no shrine house in their town. I think that was the biggest problem. No accountability.

even though i believe i could thrive in such an arrangement, it's the lack of accountbility that poses a major hinderance for why i do not advocate it broadly. There is a major lack of polygamous (yucky word) accountability outside of specific religions like islam and the hebraic.

when it comes to pan-africans and those who belong to the general cultural communities, i think it's self-defeating for a sister to try polygamy unless she has a stable, dependable protective mechanism to address impropriety.

however, i really hope the years to come bring about a new interest in blended co-wifery within more shrine houses. It is here that we could get clarity and instruction straight from the abosum as to how they would want us to carry it in these days and times.

besides, we never know what they will say unless we ask.

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

So, what are you saying is that there is more stability in a polygamous relationship than a monotonous relationship? I don't see how there any kind of balance in that kind of environment. Again..I express my concerns for the children created from such a marriage. The problem with the enslaved brothers today is that they'd rather have more than one woman,and keep it a secret from both of them,not even considering their emotions. What if the man sleeps around with another woman,only to discover that she has infected him with a deadly disease,then sleeps with one of his wives,and infects her? In any relationship,polygamious or not, trust is the key to its survival,or otherwise it's nothing but pure lust.

[maat_free]

Sister where do you get the idea that a brother is going to come home and infect his wives with a deadly disease?

i don't remember saying anything about polygamous relationships being more stable than the monogamous ones.

you should see if you can pick up this really good little book by edward wilmot blyden called african life and customs.

it was written in 1908 and the thing i don't agree with is that in some ways, blyden sought white approval from his research & observations. That should never be the point of anything we do.

but the good thing about the book is that he discusses polygamy in traditional african communities-- specifically communities that have not been tainted by white anything.

he goes on to say that the un-colonized african living in the interior of the motherland around 1900 were absolutely emphatic about their responsibility to be fruitful and bring forth many offspring.

there were no women perpetually spinsters (single till old age). None at all.

in fact, mwalimu baruti say in his book complimentarity that it is completely un-afrikan to have a single parent household and that no person was allowed to raise a child by themselves.

so now you tell me. Do you think i am so odd in saying that we should go back to what has always worked for us?

this other thing is a direct result of accepting someone elses paragigm.

not a good look. Not a good look at all.

fahodie!!

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

The point that i'm trying to make is that just because polygamy is a generations old tradition from Afrika ,does not mean that women should just stand by and have no voice in their treatment. Our sisters must be treated as Queens & never take the abuse from their husbands. They should have the right to walk away if they are not happy or abused in any way. We have been abused enough by the oppressors; we should not be oppressed by our own men!