I’d like to share a story about an old and controversial practice for teaching cultural values within the family. My Ugandan friend Betty helped me understand it in ways that surprised me.

Betty’s Bride Price

I met Betty while I was working in Uganda. She’s from the Acholi tribe in Northern Uganda, which was greatly affected by a 25-year civil war started by rebels known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.

One time, I was interviewing women from Northern Uganda about their life experiences, and Betty was one of them. I asked her to tell me about a moment when she felt proud of herself.

Betty smiled as she told me about winning the Best Dancer prize at a harvest festival. She met her husband there, and her parents received a high bride price because of her win. It also meant she got to join a new family where her main role was to dance.

The Acholi Campfire Culture

As I listened to Betty’s story, I realized that a Western perspective usually sees bride price systems as devaluing women. It was clear, though, that Betty didn’t feel devalued at all.

Betty explained that the Acholi used evening campfires as their cultural education system. Around the campfire, families shared stories with important morals, cooked and ate traditional food, learned songs, and practiced cultural dances. Betty’s mother-in-law, a former champion dancer, was too old and injured to teach the cultural dances. Dance was important in their family; they were thrilled when the girl their son was interested in was also a champion dancer.

Before the war, families from the Acholi region met at harvest festivals where teenagers danced the traditional Raka-Raka mating dance. During the Raka-Raka, Betty and her future husband had signaled their mutual interest in each other. Their parents started talking. When Betty then won the Best Dancer prize, his family offered her parents more than anyone else did.

Betty got along really well with her parents-in-law, but it turned out that she and her husband fought a lot. Instead of considering divorce as an option, the family built her husband a separate hut on the other side of the family land. I later learned this was a common solution to marital troubles. Betty remained a respected part of the family and their campfire’s cultural expertise, in spite of her rocky marriage.

Until the war came, Betty told me she felt secure, well loved and well supported by her husband’s family. She had a clear sense of her own identity and value in her community. That value was perfectly aligned with her passion and talents.

Women as Teachers of Culture

Eventually, I shared my Western worries about bride price with Betty, and asked if she had ever felt devalued or exploited. She was surprised at the question, and reminded me that the Acholi way was to love on each other through hard times. Families helped each other to each give their best to making life good together.

I also hesitantly asked if she had to do hard labor, like cooking and working in the fields. She laughed and said living in the countryside always involved hard work. Joining her husband’s family was like joining another household’s work-team, she told me. They made it fun, and taught each other their skills.

Betty admitted she wasn’t a great cook at first, but she learned from her mother-in-law and one of her sisters-in-law. That sister-in-law was recruited to marry into their family because she was a great cook. Becoming part of that family’s campfire, meant Betty eventually learned how to make all the most delicious dishes in their farm-to-table tradition.

In Betty’s view, her parents’ bride price was a reward for raising her well and teaching her valuable cultural skills and knowledge. She felt proud that the high bride price showed she was a valued member of her new family. She also knew that the money would help her parents honor another family for raising a talented daughter, when it was time for her brother to choose a wife.

My Cross-Cultural Thoughts

Reflecting on this story, I can see how the Acholi campfire system invites a kind of self-optimization — for the woman, their family, and their culture. A girl is raised to be good at what she loves, so she adds value to another family and contributes to the community culture. Acholi women were not traded like livestock. Instead, a long term economic incentive was offered to parents for raising daughters who would become tomorrow’s teachers of the Acholi ways. The bride price system was basically an economic incentive for families to keep the Acholi culture alive.

In Betty’s case, that meant she got to spend her life (and earn her right to be supported by the family group) doing something she loved. In my culture, it’s much harder to sustain ourselves with joyful activities like singing, dancing, storytelling, and gardening. That makes me a little sad.

From another perspective, I can also see how a low bride price might make a young woman feel worthless in Acholi culture. Then again, as Betty and countless other women from Northern Uganda reminded me, the Acholi way was to love on each other through every hard thing. That’s pretty different from my Western culture, too.

As I mentioned in my TedX talk about working with the Acholi community, that impressed me about the Acholi culture again and again.

Though I spent 11 years living and working there, I haven’t been back to visit Uganda since 2013. I’m not sure how the Acholi culture has continued to change since the post-war resettlement of the Acholi people heading back to their rural lands. I hope the Acholi campfire culture is making a comeback, and that Betty is still dancing!

Conversation Questions:

• What do you think about the Acholi campfire system for teaching cultural values?
• Is there a bride price system in your culture? How does it work? What factors determine the value exchanged between families?
• If you were raising your children to be future teachers of your cultural values and skills, what would you want them to learn?
• How are cultural values passed on to the youth in your culture today?

Book a conversation class!

I’m genuinely interested in what you think about this topic. I’d also love to help you tell your story in English, and I have lots more stories like this one to share, from all over the world. Book a lesson with me on Italki, and let’s have a great conversation!