‘It must be love’
March 10, 2017
Salimata was always told she should be proud to come from a family of wife beaters.
“You’re the daughter of a woman whose husband broke her hands. Your grandmother’s legs were fractured by her husband. You must be loved,” Salimata said, citing her mother’s words.
The 19-year-old woman from Mauritania’s Soninké ethnic group, who is married to a man who also beats her, said she taught herself to believe what her mother told her.
“I felt like an animal that had to be disciplined,” she said. “As time passed, I came to believe that my husband beat me only when he was at the peak of his love for me.”
Mauritania, a poor, mainly Muslim nation, has deep social and racial divides, each group with its unique marriage norms.
While divorce is widely accepted among the majority Moors, it is almost impossible among the Mauritanians of African descent such as the Soninké and Fulani.
And while domestic violence is frowned upon among the Moors, of Arab and Berber descent, it’s seen as an act of love and an accepted practice for Soninkés, said social researcher Sidi Boyada, an advisor at the ministry of social affairs.
Tradition
Aichetou Samba is a 60-year-old Fulani grandmother who lives in a modest house in Nouakchott.
“In the past, our girls used to get married aged 8, and they usually married their cousins,” she said.
