The Dowry

Before I asked my wife to marry me I lived in Kenya for 4 months, and there the prospective husband gives the wife’s family a dowry.  Many times in America the Bride’s family gets nothing from the Groom.  I decided to give my wife’s family a dowry.  I write this in hindsight of being connected to my new family for almost 13 years.  Now I see that dowry I gave as even more important than I did then.  Why?  A marriage is often seen as the marriage between two people.  But it is more than that.  It is the marriage between two families (I got that idea from an Indian Christian talking about arranged marriages).  I am FULLY invested in my wife’s family.  By marrying her, I was marrying them.  My wife has two younger sisters and the next in line’s groom also gave the family a dowry.  So when the baby gets married we will have to tell him the dowry requirement.

So what is a dowry anyway?  In Kenya a dowry was cows.  That was and is the most valuable thing to the people of Kenya.  It may not be the most valuable thing to you, but it is to people in Kenya.  So they give cows.  Maybe one cow, maybe ten cows, maybe a hundred cows.

I did not give my wife’s family cows, but I did give them things that were important to me.  I am not going to tell you all of the things I gave them, but I will share a few.  I gave them articles of clothing that meant something to me, sentimental value not marketable value.  I gave them Dave’s Insanity Limited Edition Sauce.  It is the hottest marketed sauce in the world.  Only so many a made each year and it comes in a coffin type box with a warning label.  That may not mean a lot to you, but it means a lot to me.  I also took them all out to eat at Olive Garden (she is the oldest of five kids).  I also gave them a lion figurine I got from Kenya, and who knows, maybe inside that lion is a hundred cows.

So are you thinking of asking a woman to marry you?  Are you planning on giving her family a dowry?  If you do, it may help you and her family to realize that you are marrying into her family.  I can say that my wife’s parents are truly like my own parents, and both of them are my heroes.  I can also say that my wife’s brothers and sisters - and their spouses and children. . . are like my own brothers and sisters and children.  Many the dowry was one small idea that helped continue to foster the idea that when two people get married, two families get married.

So thank you to Chebet Ruto for giving me this idea of giving a dowry to my wife’s family, and in her own words – “It’s Biblical.”