To marry or not to marry?

One day, many years ago, the gong was sounded in the village. An announcement was made: the deaf cannot marry the deaf anymore, says the chief, because you might get deaf children. This, while at the same time there are a lot of hearing people with deaf children in Adamorobe, and hearing people with deaf parents. There were deaf-hearing marriages as well as deaf-deaf. The last type was therefore forbidden from that point forward.

A few obeyed the prohibition and married hearing people. A few amongst them did not have any issues with it, because “the deaf gossip too much anyway!”. Others were very annoyed with the new rule, because they didn’t think it was an appealing option to marry a hearing person. According to them, the hearing were bad spouses per definition, because lot of deaf people have had failed marriages with hearing people.

We’re standing on the village square. Kwasi exclaims that he, without a doubt, wants to marry a deaf person and I put him to the test: “and what happens when you get a deaf child?”. “I would like that”, he tells me without giving it a thought. He points in the direction of the hills: “And I’ll send it to the school for the deaf over there”. The presence of a large school for the deaf means that a deaf child has a future. Does this mean that these people ignore the chief’s prohibition and still marry other deaf?

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. A lot of deaf cannot marry each other for another reason. Practically all deaf people here are related: brother or sister, nephew or niece or in laws. In this matrilineal society you are allowed to marry certain family members, but you are prohibited to marry others. The four deaf-deaf marriages presently in Adamorobe, break the rules (which are a bit too complicated to just quickly explain).

One of these ‘wrong’ marriages was the one between Ama and Kofi. On top of that, Ama is at least 25 years older than her husband, which is controversial here as well. After a divorce she had been single for a long time and chose him after he saved her life when she was bitten by a poisonous snake. That incident convinced her to marry her nephew anyway: “My family should not give me a hard time… he took care of me so intensively back then, while they didn’t even bother about me”.

Although, these marriages are controversial, they get criticized, and are not acknowledged or affirmed by their families. Sometimes one changes his/her mind because of that reason: several deaf people have had a relationship with this or that nephew or niece and decided not to go through with it in the end.

So why don’t they just marry a deaf person from outside Adamorobe, for example from the capital? “The Accra women don’t go to the farm”, Kwasi told me, “they just girlishly toddle around”. And it’s expensive. In Accra one marries with a “ring and a gown”. In other words: a Christian wedding ceremony. Here in the village one marries in the traditional way: an agreement between the families, sealed with some hard liquor and some money. Simple and relatively cheap.

A few deaf people here are therefore single, and most of them have been divorced once or several times. It’s quite easy to divorce here, and divorces are very common. The single deaf people face three options which are considered unappealing: marrying a hearing person is something they don’t want (anymore), marrying a deaf family member is prohibited and marrying a deaf person ‘from outside’ is expensive or the perception of life is too different. So you see, finding a lifetime partner here is no walk in the park.