A Drummer's Testament
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Problems of being a bachelor; why Dagbamba don't respect bachelors; how bachelors live; women who don't have husbands
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Introduction
- 1. bachelor's talks not like a child or a married person
- 2. bachelor like a prince without chieftaincy; does not know about householding
Types of bachelors
- 3. someone whose wife has left him is not a true bachelor
- 4. sickness can prevent someone from getting a wife
- 5. if wife leaves a sick person, not like a bachelor
Bachelors have no standing
- 6. bachelors are not consulted because have not held people
- 7. bachelors do not form groups
- 8. bachelors can do good work or have money, but do not get respect
- 9. a bachelor dies alone
How bachelors live
- 10. bachelor eats anything and sleeps anywhere; doesn't look at others
- 11. stays in his father's house; depends on the women in the house to wash and cook
- 12. some bachelors wash their own things
- 13. how a bachelors gets food and eats
- 14. bachelors who give respect get respect and get a good name; can get a wife
- 15. such bachelors give gifts inside the house and
- 16. bachelors make a town hot; roaming like dogs
- 17. some bachelors find good women
- 18. bachelors girlfriends can cook for them; can get a wife from them
Bachelors who are on their own
- 19. some bachelors don't want a wife; useless
- 20. bachelors without parents can attach themselves to a married person
- 21. useless bachelors do not get wives
- 22. bachelors who only befriend bachelors do not get wives; no name in public
- 23. bachelors can have money but won't get a wife
- 24. divorced man can search for money before marrying again, but bachelors lie
- 25. man should talk the truth to a woman he is courting; she will see through lies
- 26. a woman will respect the man who tells the truth
- 27. if a young man is not good, having a wife will cool him down
Bachelors who are studying and postponing marriage
- 28. bachelors who are studying have no fault; will marry later
- 29. also bachelors who study Arabic; will marry later
- 30. bachelors who also travel and learn work are the same
- 31. many differences among bachelors
Women without husbands
- 32. difference among women without husbands; include divorcees and widows
- 33. a girl in her family house has no fault
- 34. girls go around if parent do not provide for them
- 35. grown women who are taking care of themselves: their lives vary
Differences of women bachelors when adjusting to marriage
- 36. a girl who has never married has to be treated with patience and sense or will run home
- 37. inexperience can break up a marriage of a bachelor woman and bachelor man
- 38. a young woman bachelor does not know work well; requires patience
- 39. if she runs away, other women will not accept the bachelor woman's complaint
- 40. experience will help a man or a woman stay together
- 41. a woman who has married before will give respect; will make other wives look bad
- 42. woman bachelor can spoil relationship with other wife and also her own marriage
- 43. a woman bachelor has to be treated differently, with patience
- 44. a divorced woman also needs to be treated with strength
Conclusion
- 45. conclusion and recapitulation
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Proverbs and Sayings
A chief knows what is inside being a prince, but a prince does not know what is inside chieftaincy.
Inside of everything, there is something that looks like a bachelor.
A bachelor is a child, and a married man is an elder.
As for a bachelor, his abuse is just near.
When a bachelor dies in the night, he will die in his shit.
As for a bachelor, he is just like a tortoise. As a tortoise is moving with his shell, anywhere he reaches is where he sleeps.
As you are giving to them, it is you yourself that you want.
It is bachelors who make a town hot.
A bachelor and a dog are the same.
There is suffering inside having a wife.
If somebody doesn't want suffering, what is he going to do to get anything?
It is someone's way of living that they watch before they will give him a wife.
If you want to put a weak kpanjɔɣu on a pot, you put it on a pot that is old.
I don't know and I don't know: can they do work?
They are carrying you and you are also carrying somebody.
Money is nowhere apart from where there are people.
If you have money and you don't enter into people, then we don't count you among human beings.
If you have money, you have to get people to add to the money, because if you die, the money will not take you and bury you.
People are more than money.
A bachelor who says he is going to look for money before marrying, we look at him as a fool.
You take lies to talk and get a woman, and you take truth to hold her.
When you have a bad boy and he grows up, if you want him to be cool, you give him a woman.
We Dagbamba say that a man does not remain in his fellow man's house.
When you have a child with a strong face, you get a wife for him, and he will cool down.
Bachelors who want knowledge, we don't call them useless bachelors.
Sense gets.
If you catch a fish in the river and you want to cook the fish, you have to fetch the same river water to cook the fish.
If sense and sense are going to meet at the market, you will all go home useless.
When you have your wife or your husband, you bluff one another and you laugh at one another.
The one who is going to keep a woman bachelor is the one who has patience.
He becomes a deaf person and a blind person. When the woman is going to insult him or is going to become annoyed, if he is going to see all of it and hear all of it, he cannot hold a woman.
A young girl is like a drum: you should press her a little; don't press her a lot.
Such a woman does not take all her things to add together.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Miscellaneous terms
- cedis
- chieftaincy
- housebachelors
- householding
- householdership
- housepeople
- kpanjogu (kpanjɔɣu)
- pesewa
- Towns and places
- Dagbon
- Jidda
- Medina