Marriage and Kinship

Although descent is matrilineal, the wife goes and lives with the husband after marriage, and this makes wives strangers among the husbands village. When a male reaches maturity he goes to live in the village of his mother’s brother (uncle) so as to get a mate form there and this way the matrileage is kept intact. The fact that the affiliation ideas of the islanders are established on the matrilineal theory that everything descends through the mother. She is entrusted with the real guardianship of her family which remains not with herself, but with her brother. This can be generalized into the rule that, in each generation, woman continues the line and man represents it; or, in other words, that the power and functions which belong to a family are entrusted to the men of each generation, though they have to be transmitted by the women.

It is believed that spirits are the ones that cause women to get pregnant and so while the father enjoys a good relationship with the children the mother’s brother is legally responsible for them and their mother. Love spell are believed to work to cause one to fall in love with a lady or a male and they are believed to make a person beautiful even though they are considered ugly.