I received a lot of reactions to my article; Why we should abolish bride price in South Sudan, published on Nyamilepedia on 20 August 2020. Many appreciated my advocacy to respect the rights and dignity of women, particularly regarding the abolition of bride price and other culturally demeaning practices. Among the emails that caught my attention was one from Tatiana Bol—a white woman married to a Nuer man in Australia—whose marriage came to an end due to multiple cultural differences, including her husband’s habit of contributing money to his relatives to ‘buy’ wives.
I stopped communicating with Tatiana in 2020 after my email inbox became full and I had to delete some files to save space. Unfortunately, I also deleted her email and attachments. However, while going through my archives on 22 November 2025, I came across some copies of her responses. After reading her four-page letter, I felt the need to make her heard.
Being a woman from a different background, she was in a better position to speak out on issues that many Nuer women do not dare discuss. She clearly still loves her husband and wishes him all the best. However, the cultural odds within Nuer traditions were too much for her to bear.
Here is the link to my original article: https://www.nyamile.com/opinion/opinion-why-we-should-abolish-bride-price-in-south-Sudan/
Below are her emails to me:
Dear Paul,
The opinion piece you wrote on the issue of bride price was excellent—a well-balanced article with all the points you wished to raise clearly supported by evidence and statistics.
I am a white (non-Anglo-Saxon) woman who, until recently, was married to a Nuer man. The South Sudanese practice of bride price was one of the main issues that contributed to disagreement in our marriage. I told him I could not respect a man who regularly participated in making monetary contributions within his Nuer community to help men raise enough money to “buy” a wife.
My ethnic background is Russian Cossack, and I explained to my husband how, in the past, Cossack clans also had a dowry system. However, this tradition—along with other practices such as putting an unfaithful husband alive into a sack and drowning him in the river—was abandoned as people became more Christian and educated.
I asked him to consider how life would be if cultures and traditions never moved on. For example, if the Chinese still practiced foot binding, women today would still have tiny, deformed feet. Or if white people had not abolished slavery, they might still consider it “normal” to travel to Africa to buy people and keep them in chains as slaves.
A point to consider: How interesting it is that South Sudanese cultural practices which negatively affect males—such as the ritual of the gaar or, in some tribes, knocking out several teeth when a boy becomes a man—have slowly disappeared and are now seen as too brutal and old-fashioned.
I have had South Sudanese friends for over 15 years (having been in a relationship with my ex-husband since 2006), and during that time, I have spoken with numerous South Sudanese women. My being non-African has often meant they felt “safe” to confide in me about issues of concern:
1. Women said that because their husbands had paid a bride price for them, the husbands believed they could do whatever they liked with their wives.
2. Husbands forcing wives to have sex (i.e., marital rape).
3. Husbands forcing them to have one child after another, leaving them unable to attend English classes or pursue any kind of study, as they were continually pregnant and caring for newborns.
4. Husbands take the child benefit money provided by the government to mothers, resulting in children not receiving decent food or clothing.
5. Husbands believing it is “normal and okay” to beat their wives. Even though the women know this behavior is illegal in Australia and other Western countries, they shrug their shoulders and say, “What can we do? This is our culture.”
6. Husbands threatening to throw out their wives and children if the wife does not “obey”. For women with six or more children and little English, obedience becomes the only option, as welfare housing rarely accommodates large families, and without language or work skills, finding employment is nearly impossible.
I have also seen how some South Sudanese men in Australia maintain one legally recognized wife while having additional “wives” with whom they have children, then take money from those women as well. I witnessed a distressing incident in an English class: one South Sudanese woman told other students that her husband had paid a couple of cows and several chickens for her bride price. Another woman from a different tribe mocked her, boasting that her husband had paid $70,000 AUD for her. The first woman became sad and upset, and tension grew between them, even though they had previously gotten along well.
In my view, once you put a price on the life of a human being—some kind of monetary value—you dehumanize them. They become a commodity, an object to be bought and sold.
How, then, does paying a bride price differ from human trafficking? While the terminology may be different, essentially, if a human being is bought in a monetary or in-kind transaction, is it not the same thing?
Unfortunately, I believe it will be extremely difficult to abolish the bride price practice among South Sudanese because of three major obstacles: poverty, greed, and pride/competition. The “revenge mentality” is also a huge obstacle. As long as families continue to live in poverty—especially under the dire circumstances in many regions of South Sudan—daughters will be “sold” to secure money for basic necessities. Greedy individuals with no conscience will continue to sell girls out of lust for wealth.
The obstacle of pride and competition is particularly strong among South Sudanese in the diaspora, even those who are university-educated. They condone and continue the practice, saying: “This is our culture. This is what our families have always done, and we want to continue this tradition even if we’re not in South Sudan”. This competitive aspect creates rifts within communities and between tribes, with families boasting that their daughter received a higher bride price than another’s, or that their son was a better match because he could afford to pay more. Such attitudes have led to arguments within and between families.
I told my husband how lucky he was that he did not have to pay anything for me—he got me “for free,” along with a home he did not have to pay for. His failure to adequately provide financially for me and our marriage was a breaking point. Although he gave me a small portion of his salary, he was essentially living off me, despite earning twice what I received. He was always sending money to relatives and friends or making “contributions” within the Nuer community.
Dear Paul,
I agree with you that the family unit is the fundamental cornerstone of any society. Yet there is another Nuer practice which I believe contributes to destroying positive family dynamics, as it devalues and demeans women and prevents vital dinner-table discussions from taking place.
This is the cultural practice of men eating before women and children, with women and children receiving only what is left after the men have finished.
This issue was a major contributor to the breakdown of my marriage. My husband accused me of not respecting his culture, while I repeatedly told him that I had not been raised to accept being treated like a dog fed scraps from its master’s table. I told him that if we attended South Sudanese social events where this behavior occurred, I would simply not eat. If he went ahead and ate with the men, I would lose all respect for him. On several occasions, he compromised by bringing me a plate of food at the same time as he served himself, but I refused it, saying I could not eat while the women around me had none.
This caused great friction between us. He told me I embarrassed him and made him feel ashamed in front of his relatives and friends, as it showed them he could not “control” me.
To them, I was a “disobedient” wife who did not “obey” her husband. When his female cousin visited our home, and he made her a cup of tea instead of me, she was livid, considering it demeaning for a man to do “women’s work”. Yet five days a week, I had dinner ready for him the moment he came home from work. A friend of his once tried to “put me in my place” in front of other South Sudanese men by clicking his fingers and whistling at me like a dog, ordering me to make him tea. Needless to say, I ignored him and walked away.
Satan’s strategy to destroy humanity is one of division and conquest, while God’s strategy is unity, forgiveness, love, and peace—to treat all as equal. God allows the sun to shine equally on all human beings: female, male, honest, dishonest. As it stands, Satan is succeeding in destroying South Sudan by ensuring divisions and friction remain inflamed—between tribes, clans, sub-clans, families, and even between men and women within the family. The more divisions, the greater the scope for conflict.
Paul, I pray that God grants you all you need to bring about positive change regarding South Sudanese cultural practices that bring so much heartache to women.
For the record, I married my husband because I respected his intelligence, humor, and potential—not for monetary gain. When he first arrived in Australia, he had no money and little formal education. Within four years, he had earned a diploma (plus two “Student of the Year” awards), secured a good job, and bought a car. Despite leaving me devastated and heartbroken by divorcing me, I continue to hold love in my heart for him. I know he is fundamentally a good and decent man. But as I often told him: “I am just one tiny white woman whose voice is trying to compete with the hundreds of voices of your relatives and tribe members shouting in your ear.” In the end, his need for approval from his relatives and tribe—to be seen as upholding Nuer traditions—was greater than any love he had for me.
May God be with you and keep you safe.
With warmest wishes,
Tatiana Bol.
Paul Ruot Bayoch is a citizen journalist, activist, and development agent based in Akobo
County. He can be reached via paulruotbayoch@gmail.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.