Female Supremacy Articles - Page 28

Screen 29 of 43

“Love comes first into the heart of the woman,” explained Nananghe. “Once it’s in the woman, only then can it jump into the man.”

But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that have long kept outsiders out of these remote islands are no longer holding back the modern world. Young men are increasingly leaving Orango, located 38 miles (60 kilometers) off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, a country in West Africa. They find jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the archipelago’s more developed islands; others collect oil from the island’s abundant palm trees and sell it on the African mainland.

They return bringing with them a new form of courtship, one which their elders find deeply unsettling.

“Now the world is upside down,” complained 90-year-old Cesar Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. “Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them.”

Standing in the shade of a grass roof, he holds himself upright with the help of a tall spear and explains that when he was young he took extra care to maintain his physique, learned to dance and practiced writing poetry—all ways in which men can try to attract women, without overtly making the first move.

In recent years, young men have become increasingly bold, going so far as to openly propose marriage—a dangerous turn, say traditionalists.

“The choice of a woman is much more stable,” explains Okrane. “Rarely were there divorces before. Now, with men choosing, divorce has become common.”