In Muscular Strength And Endurance The Women Of The Somal Are Far Superior
To Their Lords:
At home they are engaged all day in domestic affairs, and
tending the cattle; on journeys their manifold duties are to load and
drive the camels, to look after the ropes, and, if necessary, to make
them; to pitch the hut, to bring water and firewood, and to cook.
Both
sexes are equally temperate from necessity; the mead and the millet-beer,
so common among the Abyssinians and the Danakil, are entirely unknown to
the Somal of the plains. As regards their morals, I regret to say that the
traveller does not find them in the golden state which Teetotal doctrines
lead him to expect. After much wandering, we are almost tempted to believe
the bad doctrine that morality is a matter of geography; that nations and
races have, like individuals, a pet vice, and that by restraining one you
only exasperate another. As a general rule Somali women prefer
_amourettes_ with strangers, following the well-known Arab proverb, "The
new comer filleth the eye." In cases of scandal, the woman's tribe
revenges its honour upon the man. Should a wife disappear with a fellow-
clansman, and her husband accord divorce, no penal measures are taken, but
she suffers in reputation, and her female friends do not spare her.
Generally, the Somali women are of cold temperament, the result of
artificial as well as natural causes: like the Kafirs, they are very
prolific, but peculiarly bad mothers, neither loved nor respected by their
children.
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