039 From Cows to STD's.

Dear Nargles and Warbles,

Let me tell you a little story here that I learned in History a while back.

Once upon a time there were these Bantu people in Africa. They're your generic "black person" today. They had efficient crops and could take over parts of Africa where the people didn't have crops because, you know, agriculture generally works. Always.

So they did their whole expansion thing and soon they covered the whole of Africa. They had no animals, but they had lots of handy plants and dominated their continent.

 




THEN, THERE CAME A PLOT TWIST.






Some guy in Asia thought it would be a good idea to be all, "Hey, I wonder what would happen if we gave the Bantu some cows". So cows were introduced to the equation, and boom, the Bantus completely obliterated all the other ethnic groups. Because sorghum + cow = literal equation for success when you consider that without plants or animals, you die.

Except these cows became so important that they didn't become food. No. They became wedding presents.
-------------------

So there's this thing in Africa where a woman has to give a dowry to her fiancé when they get married. This dowry is used to support them if needed, and I *believe* it's given back to the lady if they get divorced, so kind of an insurance policy. This dowry in Africa is almost always in the form of cows. And since cows are rather scarce in Africa nowadays, women are unable to get married. Which sounds stupid, because all this is for a rather small and silly reason, but this actually was incredibly important centuries ago.


So what do the sad lonely women do instead?

Well, no cows means no marriage.
And no marriage means no sex.
And no sex is BAD so they eventually have more sexual partners OUTSIDE of marriage.
And more sexual partners means more chances of STDs.

So long story short, women in Africa are having an HIV crisis.

And I know this isn't a laughing matter, and I sort of made fun of the whole thing, even though this is literally life and death, and I am incredibly sorry if I offended anybody, but I just wanted to pose ANOTHER question to you:

Should this happen? Should traditions still be kept if they are dangerous? Should this whole dowry thing occur if it's leading to a massive HIV outbreak?


Chew on that,
Quibbles.