Feature: Did Love Kill marriage

THIS IS AN IMAGINARY SCENARIO FROM AN EARLY GHANAIAN MARRIAGE:

One cold evening a handsome young Ghanaian pre-historic man saw a beautiful young cave woman from a distance. In order to avoid being digested, he looked left, right and up and down to make sure that there were no hungry dinosaurs looming around. He then jumped up and down to make sure that he was not standing on one. In those days, even though we saw ourselves as humans in the eyes of the dinosaurs, depending on what time of the day they saw us, we could be breakfast, lunch or supper. Children served as snacks for dinosaurs. After making sure of his possible nutritional status he continued to follow her. At a corner he hit her with a big stick which left her unconscious. After looking around to make sure that they did not become a two course meal, he carried her into his cave. As far as the custom of that day and age was concerned, the cave in which the woman regained consciousness became her marital home; the first man she saw became her husband. This was how folks got married in pre-historic Ghana. The brides parents would safely assume that she, together with the other missing girls have become a source of protein for a dinosaur.

END OF SCENARIO.

Over time, in a crude stone-age style, the couple developed love for each other and have as many children as the length of their fertile lives would permit.

This system of acquiring life partners continued for at least ten million years. The era of 'knock-to-unconciousness' marriages came to an abrupt end with the mysterious disappearance of the dinosaurs. Parents began to thoroughly search for their missing daughters from cave to cave. The excuse that they had been eaten by dinosaurs no longer held up to scrutiny.

As time went by, like the rest of the world, we began to develop an agrarian society mainly because the threat of the dinosaurs became a thing of the past. Organized systems of employment had not yet developed so the need for more farm hands made procreation the one and only reason for marriage.

These agrarian based marriages led to polygamy in our culture. Love as a condition for marriage was still centuries away. Divorce was not even thought of as a possibility-marriage was for life. There was still no link between love and marriage. All marriages were arranged - most of them between perfect strangers.

During the colonial days most, if not all, marriages were arranged between families, clans or stools for economic or social reasons. Children had absolutely no say in marital matters; the decision was in the domain of the elders. Our forefathers and 'foremothers'

believed that the decision as to who the marry was too important to be left to superficial children who had no experience. The wisdom of the parents always prevailed because divorce, even if it occurred, was very rare indeed. Before these marriages were arranged there was extensive pre-nuptial investigations by both families. In their investigations they looked out for signs of particular pre-existing conditions in the families concerned. Anomalies like madness, criminal behavior, infertility, chronic diseases and other bad habits in the chosen families were investigated. At this point in our history love as a condition for marriage was seen as ridiculous and naive.

Suddenly times changed and the next generation of children mistook the industrialization of the west for civilization. Ghanaian children began to resist arranged marriages . They did not understand why they should be forced to marry partners they did not love or even know. Education, cinema and radio opened our eyes to other cultures. Children began to read love stories like "Romeo and Juliet" and 'discovered' the essence of love as a condition for marriage. What they did not realize was that Romeo and Juliet died because they refused to accept an arranged marriage by their families. Moreover Romeo and Juliet were probably teenagers who might have divorced a few years later if they had lived long enough. Looking at the depth of their love for each other this scenario is unlikely but not impossible.

In the end the youth won the battle so love as a condition for marriage was etched into our culture.

Unfortunately with the birth of love as a condition for marriage came the inevitable afterbirth-divorce.

Love is a private matter but once it goes beyond that and develops into marriage the whole society is affected in one way or the other. It is children from these unions (and other undocumented ones) that give us presidents and priests as well as armed robbers and rapists. If we really care about our society we cannot take marriages for granted because they affect us in several ways. Even an argumentative couple could give neighbors insomnia. As a nation we have to find ways to make sure that prospective couples understand what they are about to get into if and when they decide to embark on the rough and endless journey called marriage. The armed robber who came invaded the privacy of your home yesterday probably had a colorful outdooring as a baby. We cannot control the future of every child but probably, some couple, who believed they understood love made an ignorant decision, divorced somewhere along the line and gave us a criminal. It is a scientific fact that children from broken homes or brought up by single parents are more likely to become career criminals. A country of weak marriages is a weak country. Nations disintegrate one loveless family at a time. Our forefathers knew that love was too fickle to hold a couple together for life.

The genie is already out of the bottle we cannot go back to the proverbial good old days and allow our parents to choose our partners. The million-dollar question is : What are we supposed to do in order to save those marriages which were supposed to be based on love but are now disintegrating before our very eyes. The vow was "...till death" but it seems one of the couples heard the fiscally related homonym-"...till debt"

We cannot control or do anything about that illusive thing called love because no one understands it the way it was meant to be understood by the 'cupid'

powers that be. It starts relationships but how long it stays is a matter of opinion. Since we cannot cure a disease that we neither know exists nor understand let us leave love alone and examine other factors that we can understand and control. This was how the wisdom of our ancestors worked- they saw love as a process not an event.

The legal age for marriage should be changed for both sexes. At sixteen a girl may be physically developed enough to have a child but not emotionally or mentally developed enough to undergo such stress. A child should not be legally compelled to have a child before she is legally permitted to vote. How can she be made to add to the population without having a say in the choice of who leads the population? In some countries that kid will still be in high school. Setting the age of consent at sixteen implies that, as a society, we have very low academic expectations from girls. Is this the future we want for our future mothers? The age should be raised to twenty-five for boys and at least twenty-one for girls. This will give both sexes more time to mature emotionally and economically.

I am not advocating for a totalitarian society, those who find this age limit absurd should not be denied the right of procreation but should be made to prove their readiness to society. The department of social welfare will have to develop a marital course structure which prospective brides and grooms will have to pass in order to be allowed to tie the knot.

The final examination could be oral or written.

Students can also opt for it in our local languages.

Experienced marriage councilors will teach these courses. Anyone who fails will not be given the option of trying again-they will have to wait till they reach the legal age. Examinations are not foolproof but sitting down and watching our marriages collapse without doing anything is a foolproof way of creating broken homes.