Bride Price.

Ever heard about it?

Buying a wife?

What's this??? 

Well, we've spent the last 25 years living in a country where paying the Bride Price is alive and well.  It works like this.  When a man finds a woman he would like to marry, he, along with a handful of his relatives, visit the girl's family.  They sit down together and discuss the fact that this man wants to marry that lady.  Important questions are asked.  If in the end, everyone is satisfied with this man, they agree to give their daughter (niece, granddaughter, sister, whatever) to him in marriage.  At the same time, they present him with a list of things they want for the Bride Price.  This list can contain anything from a new motorcycle, to a pair of shoes, to some African material, to a new cooking pot, to you name it.  Literally anything can be on that list.  And the monetary value can mount into the thousands (U.S. dollar equivalent that is). 

Now one could take issue with the bride price.  Call it selling daughters.  Declare it is just plain wrong.  Encourages couples living together without marriage.  (And one can make a very valid argument for that position.)

Or one could take the opposite position.  The Bride Price shows the value we put on our women.  And so on.

It's pretty hard to find a verse in the Bible to stand on.  There's no "Thou Shalt Not" or "Thou Shalt".  And over these last 25 years we've watched the Bride Price go though the upper stratosphere.  Couples are indeed living together without marriage in alarming numbers.  Things have gotten completely out of control.  

So the President recently stepped in and took control. The law now states that no Bride Price can be in excess of 150,000 F (around $300).  This price is attainable for any man, no matter who he is.  He goes to the extended family, and each one makes their contribution.  In no time at all he can raise 150,000 F.  It's an excellent law.  

But mankind being who he is, numerous families are rebelling.  They tell the man who wants to marry their daughter that it is the government who has put the limit on the Bride Price.  Here in their family, the Bride Price is some outrageous amount.  Like it or lump it.  As with anything, change comes slowly.