A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter III-24:  How a Husband and Wife Separate

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How Dagbamba divorce; causes of divorce; examples of three divorces


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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Introduction

Importance of knowing a woman before marriage

Lack of children

How the separation proceeds; wife returns to her family

Quarrels among wives:  jealousy

Quarrels among wives:  childbirth

Quarreling in a house

The response to jealousy

Why a woman leaves a man

How Alhaji Ibrahim divorced three of his wives

Gurumpaɣa

Ʒɛnabu

Alima


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Proverbs and Sayings

If you haven't done something before, and you want to talk about it, it will be difficult.

Everybody knows to his extent.

When it comes to taking a wife, a man is like a crocodile.  When a crocodile sees water, whether it knows the water or not, it will enter it.

When you see a horse standing somewhere, and the horse has thrown somebody down and come to stand there.  If you don't ask and you come to take the horse, it will also throw you down.

If you see a horse standing in the bush, you should ask before you ride the horse.

The mouth that is washed, they don't blame it.

If you have said something, you don't deny it later.

Their noses will be smelling at one another.

If your wife runs away, you have to follow her legs.

You don't take a woman and leave her things in another man's house.

Somebody can die in all, and somebody can die and still be alive.

Health is everything,

Without health, you are a dead body.

To die is all is better than to die and still be alive.

If a man has wives and the women are dying in his house, it's not sweet.

When somebody's heart is removed, you cannot find it again.

It is the heart that is a human being, because where your heart points to, that is where you point to.

To us Dagbamba, and even to God, if you have women and they are as many as a hundred, if they all go out from your house in one day, it is better than if a woman dies in your house.

If a woman dies in your house, no one knows its pain, except you, and God.

You can take your friend's dance, but don't get the way of living of your friend.

Her mouth is sweet.

Not fearing trouble and not having sense, we take both of them to be one thing.

You take lies to find a women and you take truth to hold her.

However strong you are, if many people group against you, they will defeat you.

As for tradition, it doesn't finish.

A family or a line doesn't have anything to do with change.

There are no slaves again, but there are still lines of slaves; and those who bought them before, their lines are also there.

You don't dig a hole for your dog, and the dog will sit down.

A snake will not lie down for you to compare its length with the length of a stick.

Sometimes you won't want something but you will say you want it.

The river is full.

If there is a small pond by the side of a river, when the river is flooded, it will come and fill the small pond, and they won't call the small pond by its name again; they call it by the name of the river.

If you want to see the ears of a snake, you will become tired.

If you have seen something yourself, it is better than if somebody had seen it and come to tell you.

If you've given birth to children with a woman, it shows that you have become family.

When you have eye sickness, you don't have to tell anyone.

If somebody does something bad, and you see it because you are with the person, you may say something against him; by then, others who have not seen it will be finding your fault or talking against you until it comes to a time that everybody sees it.

If I am with somebody and the person does something bad to me, if I ask him about the thing, it means that our friendship is going to last.  It is because I want him and me to stay together that I will ask him.

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