On the porch, the girls tease each other about having to marry an old Imam or being the third wife of a fat, ugly man. They all adamantly insist that they will marry for love and must be the only wife. Although Fantu offers a timid rebuttal when the girls tease her that she will be the first to marry an old man and be his third wife, in private she tells me it will probably be true. One afternoon, when Fantu was 14, a group of girls were sitting on my porch with a neighborhood woman discussing this woman’s desire to have a husband. We were laughing and joking but the discussion
was clearly serious. Out of this conversation, Fantu wanted to know if a 14- year- old getting married was “child marriage.” The neighbor woman said it was not and I said it was. Fantu has said several times in the past that if she leaves school she will have to get married, but now in 2013, at 16 years of age, Fantu knows that she is
undoubtedly of marriage-able age. We had the following conversation in 2013: 38. Jordene: And when your mama got married, how old was she? 39. Fantu: My mother? I don’t know.
40. Jordene: young girl or old lady? 41. Fantu: Not old.
42. Jordene: Young. 43. Fantu: Yes.
44. Jordene: Ok and what about your aunties?
45. Fantu: (sighs) She is not old. She is also young.
Fantu knows that her mother and auntie were likely her age or younger when they got married. Neither of them went to school at all so for them schooling was not a reason not to get married. Fantu’s time to get married is approaching.
In her culture, Fantu is technically a woman ready for marriage. She has been through the initiation and had her clitoris cut. I do not know if she went to the bush for the full bondo initiation. I am guessing that she might have because of her family’s continued residence in the village. One day in 2012, again on the porch of my house, the girls who were gathered asked me about “mommy-daddy business” (sex). I talked about mating habits of dogs and other animals, which they all knew about and had witnessed many times. When I asked if they had learned anything about human reproduction in school or at home, they said that they would learn about it in senior high school. I asked if they had learned anything about mommy-daddy business in the Bondo ceremony and they all shook their heads no. Fantu said that she was too young to know for sure but that she remembered that there was a lot of pain and she got to eat special foods. She must have been very young. I now regret not
pushing the girls for more details but they had their own agenda and the conversation moved to whether or not it was better to raise goats or chickens.
For Fantu, school is what keeps her out of marriage and a life raising goats and chickens. In 2013, I asked Fantu about leaving school:
46. Jordene: What will happen if you leave school? 47. Fantu: I will be suffered more.
48. Jordene: Yeah? (pause) How? How will you suffer? (long pause)
49. Fantu: Because my father will not have enough money to give it to all of us. And I will be suffering more.
50. Jordene: So your father will not support you if you do not go to school? 51. Fantu: Yes.
52. Jordene: Wow, ohhhh, ok. Will he make you get married? 53. Fantu: Huh?
54. Jordene: If you don’t go to school will your father make you get married?
55. Fantu: Yes (firmly).
(We discuss who will choose the future husband, then I return to the school-marriage connection.)
56. Jordene: So to stay in school, no husband. That’s a good reason to stay in school?
57. Fantu: Yes! (We both laugh)
58. Jordene: Unless maybe you want to get married? Maybe you want to get married?
59. Fantu: No!
In this conversation, I can see that I am balancing being a confidant and an
interviewer. Clearly, I support her staying in school; I am paying her school fees. Yet I want to allow her the opportunity to contradict me and let me know that she might prefer to getting married than over staying in school. To me, Fantu does not appear ready for marriage. She is not one of the girls who notices boys as we walk through town, or grooms self-consciously to look good. Although she is fully developed and has the appearance of a woman, she still carries herself like a girl, unaware of her beauty, and with a childish gait rather than a womanly sway.
As far as I know, none of Fantu’s close friends or schoolmates has a boyfriend but at sixteen years of age, everything can change in a few days. My own principle is
to consider relationships that originate between the young man and young woman are somehow more authentic than arranged marriages. I try not to influence the girls with my beliefs. Indeed, they are influenced by much more than my conversations alone. ‘Love matches’ as they are called are seen by the girls as more modern and educated than arranged marriages. Fantu is on the edge in her family. Her classmates and society encourage love matches but her family may not allow this as a viable option. I am not sure that Fantu feels it is her choice to make. In the middle of the conversation presented above, we discussed who would choose her husband:
60. Jordene: Ok so, Ok so, ok if you stop going to school -you get yourself husband?
61. Fantu: Yes.
62. Jordene: So ok, who is going to pick your husband? 63. Fantu: Mme?
64. Jordene: Yeah? Who is going to decide this man is for Fantu? 65. Fantu: No one.
66. Jordene: No one? 67. Fantu: Yes.
68. Jordene: Will your father say, eh “This is a good man, Fantu. I want you to marry him.”
69. Fantu: (pause) I will! 70. Jordene: Huh?
71. Fantu: Yes.
72. Jordene: Yea? What will you say? 73. Fantu: I too will accept.
74. Jordene: Because you are the daughter? 75. Fantu: Yes.
76. Jordene: Ahmmm
In this small segment of conversation, I see Fantu rocking back and forth between her desire to pick her own husband and the reality that it will probably be her father who decides when and to whom she will be married.
Perhaps because her future is not hers to decide, Fantu does not spend a lot of time thinking about it. Some of the girls have elaborate scenarios that they imagine for their future—, who they will marry, what kind of house they will have, or what food they will cook. But Fantu does not talk about much about her future. The one thing that she is clear about is that she wants to go to America. In 2010, she wanted to be a nurse and then later she wanted to be a bank manager. Now she wants to be a lawyer. She does not know why she wants to be a lawyer but she imagines that it will take her far from Sierra Leone to America.
77. Jordene: Thinking about your future? What are you thinking—- this is your past, na so? What are you thinking about your future? (na
so?=means isn’t it?)
78. Fantu: If I through with my education, I want to be a lawyer
79. Jordene: Do you know what kind of lawyer? Why do you get this idea to be a lawyer? Where did the idea come from? Did you meet a lawyer?
80. Fantu: No. 81. Jordene: No? 82. Fantu: No.
83. Jordene: You don’t know any lawyer? (We discuss the hand cream we are putting on)
84. Jordene: So you want to be a lawyer (pause) and sit in an office/ 85. Fantu: /Yes.
86. Jordene: /and carry a pocketbook. (Jordene laughs) Do you want to stay in Kono or go to Freetown, Makeni, or Kabala? What are you thinking?
87. Fantu: I want to go far away from, far away from Freetown. 88. Jordene: Far away from Freetown?
89. Fantu: Yes.
90. Jordene: You, don’t like Freetown? 91. Fantu: No. (No that isn’t the reason) 92. Jordene: Have you been to Freetown? 93. Fantu: No.
94. Jordene: but you don’t know Freetown, but you don’t want to go there? Why?
95. Fantu: I want to go there but I want to go far. 96. Jordene: OK.
97. Fantu: Want to go more than Freetown. 98. Jordene: OK.
Later in the conversation, she confirms that her dream for the future is to go to America:
99. Jordene: When you finish your education, you become a lawyer. What will your (pause) what are your dreams?
100. Fantu: Huh?
101. Jordene: What are your dreams? What are the things you imagine for your future?
102. Fantu: (pause) Like something you imagine in your dreams? 103. Jordene: Hmhmm.
104. Fantu: (7 second pause) I do not dream that one yet.
105. Jordene: Hmm. You don’t sit in class and think to yourself oh, when I’m a big woman I’m going to (pause) I don’t know—- have a big house or have two husbands or/
106. Fantu: (laugh) 107. Jordene: (laugh)
108. Jordene: You don’t think about that?
109. Fantu: I only think- … if I say- … if I am learning, I want to go to America.
110. Jordene: Ahh that is a good dream. (I change the subject to the day we met)
When Fantu speaks of her dream as coming to America, I am a bit surprised. She is so shy that I cannot imagine her standing in front of the visa council but she does not really know what it would mean to come to America. She has no idea of the visa, the money, and the reality of the situation but I had asked her for her dream, not what she expected to happen. I do not know if this would have been her dream if she had not become close to me and if her friends did not talk about the idea of coming to America.
Fantu would probably not tell her family that she wants to come to America because she does not know their reaction but she does know that her family wants her to get an education. If she continues to go to school, she will be the first person in her family to complete high school. She has an uncle on her mother’s side that who went to junior secondary school class II (eighth grade) and an estranged uncle on her father’s side who went to senior secondary school and may or may not have finished. Fantu is the first female in her family to graduate from primary school and enter
junior secondary school and with the exception of one uncle; she may be the first person to graduate from senior secondary school. Despite this, her family is not actively invested in her learning. Her parents do not go to school meetings, do not spend the money to get her report card, and do not play any part in her achievement. But they do provide a house, allow her to go to school rather than work, and make it clear to her that they want her in school.
111. Jordene: Does your father say to leave school and sell the vegetables in the market? It would be nice for/…
112. Fantu: But he says the time for holiday if I tell him, because he do come with market if I ask him for some to sell he says no. When I ask him why. , he says nothing.
113. Jordene: What do you think he’s afraid of? 114. Fantu: I don’t know.
115. Jordene: What would your father say if you told him you don’t want to go to school anymore?
116. Fantu: He would be very unhappy.
117. Jordene: What will he say? What will your father say? If you say I’m done with school, papa. I just don’t want to go to school anymore. It is too difficult. I have to walk far. I don’t want to go.
118. Fantu: He have to send you to the village. Go and stay in the village because if you say you don’t want to go to school, go and stay in the village. And if I tell him to find work for me to do- , He will say no—- only school.
In this way, by denying her the opportunity to make money and help the family, her father is confirming his investment in her education. He is making it very clear that her education comes before helping the family earn money. When I have asked Fantu’s father about his commitment to education, he recites the radio jingles about the importance of girls’ education. Yet, Fantu’s father is also confirming that the minute she leaves school, she will be sent to the village to stay. Going to the village is something that Fantu wants to avoid.