June 9, 200 Bill, 4:00 p.m. : Going to see the weaver this morning was very interesting. I rode in the back of the pick up and bounced around a bit. Half of the ride was through bumpy dirt streets in downtown Dapaong and half through smoother faster country roads to the village. Trash litters the city, but the country is quite clean. People remain friendly, but there are the occasional teenagers and street toughs who don’t seem too welcoming. Susan says that Dapaong has changed a lot since they first came.
Gangs have begun to move in. Girls are wearing pants. And the city is growing. Almost whenever Susan goes to town now, she hears a few people call her “yoo-hoo”. It means “white dog” and is similar to calling somebody [ the N word] in the US. It’s very upsetting to her. Even so, she says that the vast majority of Togolese want white people here. They bring money and to discourage that would be detrimental to their own employment. Even so, Dapaong is a far cry from a tourist destination.
*Polygamy in Togo. Susan also explained that when a man takes multiple wives in Togo, it’s usually for the purpose of raising children to work on the farm. Children usually nurse for 2-3 years and marriage relations are forbidden from the time the woman is pregnant until the child is weaned. Hence, if a man wants more than one child a year, he needs to have more than one wife. But, it’s less common now than it used to be.
This is an issue that the Lutheran church has discussed here and their approach is to allow men who become Christians after taking multiple wives to keep their wives. But, if they want to become pastors, they are strongly encouraged to discontinue relations with all but their first wife. I’ll have to ask Glenn for more details.
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