There is a village where the Mo Nam community has an extremely interesting custom: women can freely capture their husbands.
Just stopped breastfeeding and already… got married
When we looked for the list of the elderly in Dak Long commune (Kon Plong district, Kon Tum province), the Chairman of the Elderly Association of the commune pointed to a name in Kon Ray village: Mrs. Y Noang. Y Noang is 70 years old this year, has been a member of the Elderly Association of Dak Long commune for 15 years, but the special thing is that A Gio - Y Noang's husband is still… young.
The story of this couple's "marriage" and husband capture, until now, still makes the Mo Nam people in Kon Ray village laugh.
Dinh To Go - A Gio's uncle sat on the floor, raising his hand above his head to describe his nephew's figure when Y Noang took him to be his husband: "At that time, he was 15 years old, very small, standing at the same height as my shoulder, but he was already "captured". He was following an illiteracy eradication program, but every time he came home from school, he would pull up his mother's shirt to breastfeed, and at night, Y Noang would come and take him to be his husband".
Listening to his uncle recount his story, A Gio sitting next to him also laughed innocently: "Back then, it was so hard, this village was still very dark, there was no rice to eat, and there was also war. Breastfeeding was just a habit, because there was no milk left for the mother".
In addition to the custom of capturing a husband, in Mo Nam there are many other strange stories such as: The concept that raising buffaloes and cows is to slaughter and eat meat, plowing the fields and trampling the soil is the work of humans. Rice grains must be worshiped four or five times, and rice grains also have souls. The villagers lived on upland rice, drank rice wine, and lived a poor life, as light as the soul of a tree or blade of grass, but living to be a hundred years old was normal.
The story of Y Noang and A Gio getting married was told by both husband and wife as arranged by their parents. They were from the same village, at that time Y Noang was nearly 40 years old. The family was poor, the war was endless and famine was rampant. All the village boys joined the army, so Y Noang lived through the most beautiful years of a girl’s life without being able to “catch” a husband, and had to set up a tent alone on the edge of the field. Then “one fine day”, her parents and the “young girl” Y Noang brought pigs, chickens, and a matchmaker to the house to propose: “A Gio must quit school, separate from her mother’s breast to follow Y Noang to be her husband”. Having a wife in such a “dizzying” way, the young man Mo Nam had to bow his head and swallow his tears and quietly go to be the son-in-law.
A Gio and Y Noang were not the only underage couple in the village. In Kon Ray, there were dozens of couples in the same situation. Like A Eo, when she was 14 years old, she was also captured by Y Xeng – who was 33 years old at that time. Even more strangely, when he came to arrest A úo, Y Xeng had already been married once and had two children in his arms. “My son had to follow his wife home to be her husband, he couldn’t resist. At that time, I was still too young, didn’t know what love was, when people told me to go home to perform a ceremony to become husband and wife, I just did it, I didn’t know anything,” A úo scratched his head as he remembered the day his wife arrested him.
Husband calls his wife… sister
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| Mo Nam women are often older than their husbands. |
A Eo said that, like many other couples, because he is much younger than his wife, he does not call her “younger sister” but “older sister”. Despite the age difference, they came together according to the customary law of the village, but after decades of living together, Eo and Y Xeng are still together, giving birth to children. The couple still raise Y Xeng’s child as their own, never saying harsh words to each other.
A Gio recalled that when Y Noang forced him to be her husband, he was still very naive. But because of that, Gio was very pampered by Noang. “Noang washed my clothes, washed my pants, cooked for me, went to work in the fields with me and had children. Now we have 6 children but we rarely argue,” A Gio boasted. “So when we argue, who has to give in?” – we asked. A Gio innocently said: “Of course it is me, I am younger, Y Noang is… older sister, I have to give in!”. Y Noang sat next to her husband and listened to him tell the story: "My parents chose me because they were afraid that if I married a young wife, I would grow old and my wife would reject me when the death anniversary comes."
Indeed, Mr. Dinh To Go confirmed that Mo Nam men are very afraid of aging before their wives and it would be unlucky if their wives rejected them, and then their wives would start drinking and debauchery, or even be abandoned by their wives. According to Mr. Go, the fact that the husband is inferior to his wife in age stems from an old concept of the Mo Nam people, which is that according to the matriarchal system, daughters are more important than sons. Therefore, when getting married, women also have more rights and demands than men.
Like A Eo - Y Xeng, as well as many other couples in Mo Nam, A Gio and Y Noang always addressed each other in a very orderly manner as "sister - brother" throughout their decades of marriage. Although they were dozens of years apart in age, a hard and difficult life had caused A Gio to age prematurely. Sitting together in front of the wooden house, like many other couples, it was hard to see the age difference between A Giọt and Y Noang, even though Y Noang's back was hunched and his hair was starting to turn gray, many of his teeth had fallen to the ground, while A Giọt still went to the fields and was as strong as a young man.