[b]"She worked at the Red Lobster in Times Square and lived with her husband near Yankee Stadium. Yet one night, returning home from her job, Odine D. discovered that African custom, not American law, held sway over her marriage.

A strange woman was sitting in the living room, and Ms. D.’s husband, a security guard born in Ghana, introduced her as his other wife.

Devastated, Ms. D., a Guinean immigrant who insisted that her last name be withheld, said she protested: “I can’t live with the woman in my house — we have only two bedrooms.” Her husband cited Islamic precepts allowing a man to have up to four wives, and told her to get used to it. And she tried to obey.

Polygamy in America, outlawed in every state but rarely prosecuted, has long been associated with Mormon splinter groups out West, not immigrants in New York. But a fatal fire in a row house in the Bronx on March 7 revealed its presence here, in a world very different from the suburban Utah setting of “Big Love,” the HBO series about polygamists next door.

The city’s mourning for the dead — a woman and nine children in two families from Mali — has been followed by a hushed double take at the domestic arrangements described by relatives: Moussa Magassa, the Mali-born American citizen who owned the house and was the father of five children who perished, had two wives in the home, on different floors. Both survived.

No one knows how prevalent polygamy is in New York. Those who practice it have cause to keep it secret: under immigration law, polygamy is grounds for exclusion from the United States.

Under state law, bigamy can be punished by up to four years in prison,

No agency is known to collect data on polygamous unions, which typically take shape over time and under the radar, often with religious ceremonies overseas and a visitor’s visa for the wife, arranged by other relatives. Some men have one wife in the United States and others abroad.

But the Magassas clearly are not an isolated case. Immigration to New York and other American cities has soared from places where polygamy is lawful and widespread, especially from West African countries like Mali, where demographic surveys show that 43 percent of women are in polygamous marriages.

And the picture that emerges from dozens of interviews with African immigrants, officials and scholars of polygamy is of a clandestine practice that probably involves thousands of New Yorkers.

“It’s difficult, but one accepts it because it’s our religion,” said Doussou Traoré, 52, president of an association of Malian women in New York, who married an older man with two other wives who remain in Mali. “Our mothers accepted it. Our grandmothers accepted it. Why not us?”

Other women spoke bitterly of polygamy. They said their participation was dictated by an African culture of female subjugation and linked polygamy to female genital cutting and domestic violence. That view is echoed by most research on plural marriages, including studies of West African immigrants in France, where the government estimates that 120,000 people live in 20,000 polygamous families.

“The woman is in effect the slave of the man,” said a stylish Guinean businesswoman in her 40s who, like many women interviewed in Harlem and the Bronx, spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you protest, your husband will hit you, and if you call the police, he’s going to divorce you, and the whole community will scorn you.”

“Even me,” she added. “My husband went to find another wife in Africa, and he has the right to do that. They tell you nothing, until one afternoon he says, ‘O.K., your co-wife arrives this evening.’ ”

Men, in contrast, tended to play down the existence of polygamy, if they were willing to discuss it at all.

Dr. Ousseiny Coulibaly, 36, a gynecologist, was born in Mali and educated in France, where polygamy has long been an explosive immigration and women’s rights issue. Yet he said he was unaware of any cases among his West African patients at Harlem Hospital Center.

“I’m not asking,” he said. “I’m not even suspecting it. There might be so many things I don’t know.”

Don’t-ask-don’t-know policies prevail in many agencies that deal with immigrant families in New York, perhaps because there is no framework for addressing polygamy in a city that prides itself on tolerance of religious, cultural and sexual differences — and on support for human rights and equality.

Last summer, when a nonprofit agency in the Bronx surveyed the needs of the sub-Saharan immigrants in its child care and literacy programs, questionnaires asked about interest in marriage counseling, but not about polygamy.

“This is a very private community,” said Rose Rivera, director of Head Start at the agency, the Women’s Housing and Employment Development Corporation, which largely relies on the fathers to translate for the mothers. “They’re not really ready to trust us.”

Yet on Monday, two Gambian women with children in the program acknowledged, when asked by a reporter, that polygamy was a given in their lives. Both described themselves as “first wives,” married at 16, who joined their husbands in New York in the 1990s, never having attended school.

One, now 36, with three children, said her husband was betrothed to a second wife in Gambia whom he would soon bring to the Bronx. Protest was pointless. “They won’t listen,” she said. “Whether you like it or not, they will marry.”

Islam is often cited as the authority that allows polygamy. But in Africa, the practice is a cultural tradition that crosses religious lines, while some Muslim lands elsewhere sharply restrict it. The Koran says a man should not take more than one wife if he cannot treat them all equally — a very high bar, many Muslims say.

Ms. Traoré, of the Malian women’s group, cited two prosperous households in Bergen County, in New Jersey, that seemed to pass the test.

“They get along very well,” she said of the wives in one home, who married their husband in Africa at the same time. “It’s extraordinary. When they come to our celebrations they dress the same, the same outfit, the same jewels. The husband is completely fair.”

Still, since only one wife could have entered the country as a spouse, the other is probably more vulnerable to deportation, she acknowledged.

More typical, many immigrants said, are cramped apartments in the Bronx with many children underfoot, clashes between jealous co-wives and domestic violence. And if the household breaks up, the wives’ legal status is murky at best, with little case law to guide decisions on marital property or benefits.

Men, too, can end up in polygamous marriages reluctantly, driven by the dictates of clan and culture. That seems to be the case for the husband of Ms. D., the Guinean restaurant worker. Efforts to reach him for this article failed, but as Ms. D. tells it, he insisted he was just as surprised as she was when his first wife, left behind in Ghana, showed up six years ago.

Their match, like many African marriages, had been made by their families before he left for New York. Years later, he met and courted Ms. D. in the Bronx, saying his relationship with his Ghanaian wife was over.

But a year after he married Ms. D. in Guinea and they returned to the Bronx, relatives arranged for a visa for his first wife to join them.

“In Africa, women accept things like that,” Ms. D. said. “Here, the apartments are too small.”

She recalled terrible fights during the three months they all lived together. The conflicts continued after she paid for the first wife to move to another apartment. For eight months, the husband shuttled between the two, but he became abusive, she said. And when Ms. D was five months pregnant, he stopped showing up.

Like many West African women, Ms. D. had been subjected to genital cutting as a child, making sex painful. The other wife had not been cut.

“It’s not life, your man sharing a bed with another woman,” Ms. D. said. “You’re always thinking in your head, ‘does he love me?’ ”

Such stories of polygamy, New York style, are typically shared by women only in whispered conversations in laundries and at hair-braiding salons. With no legal immigration status and no right to asylum from polygamy, many are afraid to expose their husbands to arrest or deportation, which could dishonor and impoverish their families here and in Africa.

But Aminata Kante, an immigrant from Ivory Coast who found help for herself and Ms. D. at Sanctuary for Families, an agency for battered women, uses her own story to urge rebellion.

Wed at 15 in Ivory Coast, over the telephone, to a New York City taxi driver thousands of miles away, Ms. Kante was delivered to her groom on a false passport. She said she endured his abuse for years, bore three children, turned over her paycheck from work as a health aide, and tried harder to appease him when he sent two of the children to Africa.

But something snapped, she said, when he announced that he had taken a teenage second wife, also married, just as she had been, over the phone — a valid wedding in Ivory Coast. Ms. Kante left him. Relatives pressed her to return. Uncles warned that she would be branded a bad woman, and that the stigma would follow her children in Africa. Without papers, vulnerable to deportation, she ended up in a homeless shelter.

But now, at 30, she tells the story in the warm glow of her own living room, her children restored to her, and a green card secured, through unusual legal efforts by lawyers at Sanctuary.

“I know a lady who lives with her husband and another woman in one room, a two-bedroom, with 11 kids,” she said. “I tell her, she has to move — it’s not a life.” And her own husband? His second wife is 23 now, with three children. And recently, Ms. Kante said, he married a third."[/b]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/nyregion/23polygamy.html?pagewanted=all

this is our african culture. before islam and christianity our ogun worshipping forefathers practiced polygamy. we should continue this practoce so we dont end up like the westerners where a man has a wife but he spends his money in strip clubs googling over other women and spendig his paycheck on a LovePeddler....or worse, end up in a homosexual relationship.

we dont want homosexuality in our lives and communities and we dont want strip joints....but we will happily take polygamy.

Negro_Ntns: this is our african culture. before islam and christianity our ogun worshipping forefathers practiced polygamy. we should continue this practoce so we dont end up like the westerners where a man has a wife but he spends his money in strip clubs googling over other women and spendig his paycheck on a LovePeddler....or worse, end up in a homosexual relationship.

we dont want homosexuality in our lives and communities and we dont want strip joints....but we will happily take polygamy.

I'm not a advocate for homosexuality or polygamy however I am neutral with polygamy and not for homosexuality. To me polygamy will always be part of African societies regardless of class or educational status, while homosexuality will always gain ground in the western world. So as long as people know the full realities of both homosexuality and polygamy in this world then it is their prerogative. When it comes to this story though, that African man should have never brought that life style in America; if he knew he wanted to practice that he should have stayed in his country or kept that practice in his country when he is there and when he is in America let it go, with his wife knowing of course. I feel sorry for his wife and he doesn't know he starting more trouble then good in his household.

Negro_Ntns: this is our african culture. before islam and christianity our ogun worshipping forefathers practiced polygamy. we should continue this practoce so we dont end up like the westerners where a man has a wife but he spends his money in strip clubs googling over other women and spendig his paycheck on a LovePeddler....or worse, end up in a homosexual relationship.

we dont want homosexuality in our lives and communities and we dont want strip joints....but we will happily take polygamy.

I am somewhat undecided on polygamy, it certainly won't be my first choice but Lord knows I'd take it over a husband visiting sluts, ashawos and what have you!

naijababe:

I am somewhat undecided on polygamy, it certainly won't be my first choice but Lord knows I'd take it over a husband visiting sluts, ashawos and what have you!

So true

Better polygamy than incest, rape and adultery, especially when the wife is going through pregnancy and her monthly period.

amor4ce: Better polygamy than incest, rape and adultery, especially when the wife is going through pregnancy and her monthly period.

Yeah it is better then adultery, incest and rape but are you saying that while the wife is pregnant or on monthly period the husband can't hold himself for a couple of months

Polygamy is an African tradition.

However, it takes lots of greed and less of tradition for a 23 years old lady to consent to mail bride arrangement as a second wife.

Men are polygamous in nature. It's time to get rid of it.

I blame African women for tolerating the rubbish sef.

Imagine this scenario:

Husband: I am bringing home a new wife

Wife: Ah!! Let us meet her. Let us welcome our new wife.

Nonsenseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

She should be asking him how long he's been having an affair behind her back.

Ileke-IdI:
Men are polygamous in nature. It's time to get rid of it.

I blame African women for tolerating the rubbish sef.

Imagine this scenario:

Husband: I am bringing home a new wife

Wife: Ah!! Let us meet her. Let us welcome our new wife.

Nonsenseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

She should be asking him how long he's been having an affair behind her back.

LOL

ifyalways: Polygamy is an African tradition.

However, it takes lots of greed and less of tradition for a 23 years old lady to consent to mail bride arrangement as a second wife.

Exactly, it is all about the money in the end of the day. I am not saying Funke Akindele is this but she married a wealthy yoruba man who had three before he married her, if he was poor would he have married her.

I think we should start taxing polygamists especially in Nigeria. For each wife you pay a handful sum to the state. I mean this is a nice way for making more money for the state.

anonymous6:

Exactly, it is all about the money in the end of the day. I am not saying Funke Akindele is this but she married a wealthy yoruba man who had three before he married her, if he was poor would he have married her.

Negro_Ntns: this is our african culture. before islam and christianity our ogun worshipping forefathers practiced polygamy. we should continue this practoce so we dont end up like the westerners where a man has a wife but he spends his money in strip clubs googling over other women and spendig his paycheck on a LovePeddler....or worse, end up in a homosexual relationship.

Rubbish, Ogun and Sango probably even had their own sex mates, have you never heard of a concubine?

ifyalways: Polygamy is an African tradition.

However, it takes lots of greed and less of tradition for a 23 years old lady to consent to mail bride arrangement as a second wife.

African tradition doesn't exist.

stillwater: I think we should start taxing polygamists especially in Nigeria. For each wife you pay a handful sum to the state. I mean this is a nice way for making more money for the state.

True it will help boast the economy, if used properly, which is a issue with some Nigerians

US has given up on prosecuting practicing polygamists becuse they are cautious about the catch 22 of making homosexuality a rights choice and denying the rights to polygamists. so they have decided to look the other way....kind of "dont ask, dont tell" approach.

they know people are doing it and if they start to crack down it will start a fire. there are people with nothing to do just waiting for the next civil rights bandwagon to camp on and make money and fame.

if, according to US civil rights act, people have the liberty to chose a sexual lifeatyle of homosexuality, then the liberty of freedom of choice for a woman to coshare her man should not be denied.....neither should a man be restrained from his choice to copulate with multiple women.

....besides, for every 10 married household in US, 9 are in an extra-marital affairs. the economy is poor and getting worse, if this is not the time to have polygamy i dont know what other time is best suited.

we have a underground movement currently in lobby nd weighing the structure by which a legal presentation can be tabled for consideration. women and their feminism have taken over the society but Insha Allah, we shall continue to protect the society against the evils of social decay and family abuse. it is abusive for a husband to lay his hands on his wives. it is even worse when he is spending his time in strip joints and red light districts wasting his life away in an unloving, unromantic and definitely unrewarding relationship.

women should join us with their voices and work with us to protect the society and the children. we dont want homosexuality in our communities and we dont want bars and joints in our communities. many women are without homes and protection......let us put them in homes where in the comfort of a husband and their fellow sisters they can share goodwill and an upliftemnt of spirit and fulfillment.

they say charity begins at home, me myself i will marry from every ethnic group in nigeria. what a better way to bring unity to our dear country.

Negro_Ntns: US has given up on prosecuting practicing polygamists becuse they are cautious about the catch 22 of making homosexuality a rights choice and denying the rights to polygamists. so they have decided to look the other way....kind of "dont ask, dont tell" approach.

I never looked at it that way but there could be truth to it, the more they give homosexuals rights polygamist will request the same to and it is already starting from documentaries/shows I have been seeing

Negro_Ntns:
they know people are doing it and if they start to crack down it will start a fire. there are people with nothing to do just waiting for the next civil rights bandwagon to camp on and make money and fame.

lol

Negro_Ntns:

if, according to US civil rights act, people have the liberty to chose a sexual lifeatyle of homosexuality, then the liberty of freedom of choice for a woman to coshare her man should not be denied.....neither should a man be restrained from his choice to copulate with multiple women.

....besides, for every 10 married household in US, 9 are in an extra-marital affairs. the economy is poor and getting worse, if this is not the time to have polygamy i dont know what other time is best suited.

you have a point but that is tough sell in America, that is why America shouldn't dictate to Nigerians about homosexuality since they are against polygamy in their country. Even though personally I have different opinions about both of these life styles

Negro_Ntns:
women should join us with their voices and work with us to protect the society and the children. we dont want homosexuality in our communities and we dont want bars and joints in our communities. many women are without homes and protection......let us put them in homes where in the comfort of a husband and their fellow sisters they can share goodwill and an upliftemnt of spirit and fulfillment.

I don't think you should worry about that in Nigeria, for the most part it won't fly in Nigeria based on the law that was passed last year

Negro_Ntns:
they say charity begins at home, me myself i will marry from every ethnic group in nigeria. what a better way to bring unity to our dear country.

All the power to you lol, I hope you won't add stress for yourself with that quest

Polygamy in America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YBs6TbDPUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tNouIAL-Kg

anonymous,

oh yeah...im telling you thats one train thats going to be hard to stop. . you can witness in different nations today, particularly the developed nations, how their leaders openly s c rew around and admit to doing it. They always do it but the unlucky ones get caught.

Compared to monogamous households how many polygamous households does the husband pick a rifle and blow his wife's life out or pick a butcher knife and snuff life out of her? A man in sexual heat is a dangerous man....he is worse than a baboon and he will remove the block that is restraining his sexual apetitte.....so if he sees the wife as a restraint, he will get rid of her. In polygamy its different.

In old days kings marry into other tribal groups to solidify alliances and understanding. I am recommending that no person should be voted President of Nigeria unless he has. first been married to women from the three major tribes. That should breed unity. ....in addition to the children. lol.

Negro_Ntns: anonymous,

oh yeah...im telling you thats one train thats going to be hard to stop. . you can witness in different nations today, particularly the developed nations, how their leaders openly s c rew around and admit to doing it. They always do it but the unlucky ones get caught.

Compared to monogamous households how many polygamous households does the husband pick a rifle and blow his wife's life out or pick a butcher knife and snuff life out of her? A man in sexual heat is a dangerous man....he is worse than a baboon and he will remove the block that is restraining his sexual apetitte.....so if he sees the wife as a restraint, he will get rid of her. In polygamy its different.

In old days kings marry into other tribal groups to solidify alliances and understanding. I am recommending that no person should be voted President of Nigeria unless he has. first been married to women from the three major tribes. That should breed unity. ....in addition to the children. lol.

well my opinion on the matter is as long as the man involved is taking care of all his wives and children equally, especially financially then it shouldn't be a problem if the parties involved agree to the life style. I don't know about making the president marrying from other tribes lol sounds funny if it isn't naturally done.

anonymous6:

well my opinion on the matter is as long as the man involved is taking care of all his wives and children equally, especially financially then it shouldn't be a problem if the parties involved agree to the life style. I don't know about making the president marrying from other tribes lol sounds funny if it isn't naturally done.

lol, ...trust me, its going to be natural! everyman is gettig a push from his ego to be the president and the one everyother man worships. so i dont know why marrying yoruba hausa and igbo will be a problem.

look, the erotic presence of woman is tonic for a man's libido and testosterone. it heightens his anxiety and action....its a distraction. so the more he discharges and off load his fluid the better his ability to focus and perform at his work and civic duties. there are many benefits. lol.
we should stop this talk here and move it to sexuality. in fact we used to have weekly open discussions on sex back when that brazilian girl was on the forum.

Negro_Ntns:

lol, ...trust me, its going to be natural! everyman is gettig a push from his ego to be the president and the one everyother man worships. so i dont know why marrying yoruba hausa and igbo will be a problem.

look, the erotic presence of woman is tonic for a man's libido and testosterone. it heightens his anxiety and action....its a distraction. so the more he discharges and off load his fluid the better his ability to focus and perform at his work and civic duties. there are many benefits. lol.
we should stop this talk here and move it to sexuality. in fact we used to have weekly open discussions on sex back when that brazilian girl was on the forum.

lol