Note 78.2 — PSYCHE’S TASK

The custom of avoiding parents-in-law among various tribes of Central and East Africa. Among the Bakerewe, a Bantu people inhabiting a large and fertile island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, “the wife, whether the first (omukuru) or the last (omwenga), must always belong to a family other than that of the husband, for marriages are not contracted between relations. Never in any case will the new household establish itself in the immediate neighbourhood of the wife’s parents. The reason is that the son-in-law (omukwerima) and his mother-in-law (mazara), according to their customs, may not see each other nor look upon each other; hence in order not to run the risk of breaking a rule to which everybody attaches grave importance, they go as far away as possible.”78.2 Among some tribes of Eastern Africa which formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan of Zanzibar, before a young couple had children they might meet neither their father-in-law nor their mother-in-law. To avoid them they must make a long roundabout. But if they could not do that, they must throw themselves on the ground and hide their faces till the father-in-law or mother-in-law had passed by.79.1