The internet is filled with things. Here is one of them.
lebitla la mosadi ke bogadi2025 May 10web.archive.org
Reading something online, I stumbled across this African phrase in its translation: "a woman’s grave is at the place/home of her husband" and I had a difficult time understanding, being removed culturally from the phrase's origin. There's not much online about it (or even which language the phrase is in), but I still managed to find the absolute nerdiest source: an academic research paper from 2015, the PhD thesis written by Seepaneng Salaminah Moloko-Phiri at University of Pretoria, South Africa (they are now an associate professor at South Africa's North-West University in the School of Nursing).
According to the doctor:
The proverb “lebitla la mosadi ke bogadi” is used as a language tool during premarital counselling to instruct African women on the value of marriage and to encourage married women to stay in their marriages. However, some African proverbs which are commonly used to define the marital relationship between men and women appear to be gender-biased and focus more on women only therefore perpetuating ill-health, discrimination and oppression.
The study concludes that some women found the phrase positive and some negative, which doesn't seem like much, but at least does convey a culture wary of the implications.
Reading something online, I stumbled across this African phrase in its translation: "a woman’s grave is at the place/home of her husband" and I had a difficult time understanding, being removed culturally from the phrase's origin. There's not much online about it (or even which language the phrase is in), but I still managed to find the absolute nerdiest source: an academic research paper from 2015, the PhD thesis written by Seepaneng Salaminah Moloko-Phiri at University of Pretoria, South Africa (they are now an associate professor at South Africa's North-West University in the School of Nursing).
According to the doctor: The study concludes that some women found the phrase positive and some negative, which doesn't seem like much, but at least does convey a culture wary of the implications.