Abumbi
II, the 11th fon, or king, of Bafut, Cameroon, has close to 100 wives.
They weren't all his to start. According to local tradition, when a fon
dies, his successor inherits all his wives and then marries his own
queens.
"The queens have a great role to play in the fondom,"
notes Prince Nickson, also of Bafut, noting that it is up to these women
behind the man to shape him in his kingly role.
"Behind every successful man must be a very successful, staunch woman," says Abumbi's third wife, Queen Constance.
"Our
tradition has it that when you are king, the elderly wives remain to
hand down the tradition to the younger wives, and also to teach the king
the tradition because the king had been a prince, not a king."
Despite
the fact that polygamy is legal in Cameroon, the data shows that there
are far fewer polygamous marriages across the African continent. The
practice is being challenged by changing values, the spread of the
Christian faith, the growing appeal of the western way of life but also
the rising costs of having large families. It is against this backdrop
that Cameroon's traditional rulers must walk the fine line between two
often conflicting cultures.
"During colonialism other values came
in, of governance, different from the traditional values we had and
therefore there is this constant conflict between the traditional values
and modern western values," admits Fon Abumbi II, who has ruled Bafut,
the largest fondom in the region, for 47 years.
On meeting the queens of Fon Ndofua Zofia II of Babungo -- one of Cameroon's youngest traditional rulers -- Methu said:
"All his young wives, forced on him by tradition, spoke fluent English in a French-speaking region and were great marketers."
It
is this seeming contradiction that makes life in the fondom fascinating
and confusing. Are they stuck in the past or keeping pace with the
present? Fon Zofoa III doesn't think you have to choose. He may have
"inherited" 72 wives and more than 500 children after his father's
death, but he considers himself a very modern king.
"To run a
kingdom nowadays in this era, you must be educated because things are
moving very fast. Like they used to say, education is light, ignorance
is darkness."
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