Child marriages are rampant in Madura
By Lies Marcoes-Natsir
SUMENEP, Madura, East Java (JP): The ferry connecting the tip of East Java and Madura island was moving slowly. The air was hot and stinging on that noon day, and the slight ocean breeze did not help to temper the heat. It was the end of the dry season.
An intensely Madurese atmosphere was at work here. This expressed itself not only in the special dialect they spoke, it was obvious too from the way they were dressed. Old and young women covered their heads with an embroidered scarf or a Moslem headscarf. Gold jewelry adorned their bodies in a very eye- catching way. Women had heavy eye makeup, generously using black kohl (celak) on the lower eyelids. The men use kohl too, and even the eyes of babies are daubed with the stuff, which is usually imported from Mecca. Moslems do not regard it as a cosmetic. Followers of Prophet Muhammad use, and Madura has always been known as a profoundly Moslem region.
A young teenage girl was sitting in the corner of the ferry bridge, away from the scorching sun, carrying a baby in a red batik cloth. In one hand she was holding a plastic bag stuffed with baby clothing.
When the baby started wriggling in her arms, she started to rock the child. She unbuttoned her dress with an automatic movement and produced an undeveloped nipple. The baby in her arms could not suck it, and grew frustrated when it discovered that there was no milk.
The girl pulled a bottle filled with milk from the plastic bag. She put the dirty nipple of the bottle in her own mouth to wet it first, then stuck it in the tiny mouth of the baby.
The milk in the bottle looked cold, and it may well have been off, which was perhaps why the baby rejected it. But she forced the nipple in until the baby choked on it.
Bocak manak bocah (a child begetting a child), commented a friend of mine with a sigh of compassion.
I was able to see why the mortality rate of mothers and babies on this arid island was higher than in Java. The maternal mortality rate in Indonesia is among the highest of all ASEAN countries, 425 per 100,000, but in certain regions like Madura, West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, the numbers might be even higher.
Certainly, limited health infrastructure and clean water are some of the causes of the high maternal mortality rate in these parts of the archipelago. But economic and sociocultural factors and religion are also important. These factors define the role of women in public.
The phenomenon of teenage pregnancies is not really unique to Madura.
Valuable information about child marriages came to light at a recent discussion on reproduction rights in Islam. Child marriages are a normal thing, even if the marriage laws state that marrying couples should have reached adulthood. Child marriages are still taking place a decade after the laws were put on the books.
The stories quoted here were based on their own experience. A young religious elder, Kyai Abdullah, explained that such marriages are not really strange. He chairs the Sumenep Islamic Court and teaches at a Moslem boarding school, where the training was held from Oct. 7 to 12.
The Moslem Court in Sumenep registered at least 150 divorce cases last year which were caused by conflict between the couples, as a result of forced child marriages.
The stipulation that the bride should be at least 16 and the groom 18 is just a legal formality. Often a would-be bride gets married two years after graduating from elementary school, between 14 and 15. But ages can be manipulated by the village chief for the registration at the Moslem Marriage Office (KUA), so that the marriage is regarded as legal.
In many cases, marriages are often conducted in a way called sirri, or secretly. This mean that such a marriage is declared legal by religious law, even if it is not registered at the KUA. Even if the state does not recognize such marriages, to most people in Madura this is not important, as long as the marriage is recognized under religious law.
Secret marriages take place when the couple have not reached adulthood yet, they might still be children. Such marriages are usually set up to link the couple's parents, who will marry them off when the children grow up. The reasons are usually quite simple. For example, the parents feel that they have donated to other people's weddings too often, they covet the donations they are due for their children's wedding. After the tobacco harvest, there are lots of people who are suddenly rich, and marry off their children at a very young age. Some parents marry the children because they do not want to see their daughters lose their virginity outside of marriage, which is against religious teachings. Others do so because they are afraid that their daughters will spend their life in the dreaded state of spinsterhood.
Secret marriages do not always end in failure. One of the participants in the recent discussion said that she married when she was still in boarding school, just before she took exams at Tsanawiyah Moslem Junior High School. When her father came to fetch her for marriage, she felt that her life was crumbling apart and her future a bottomless dark pit.
But after the marriage, her husband allowed her to continue her studies and graduate from senior high school, and they then led a good married life.
Usually, children of sirri marriages are sent back to boarding school and "enter married life" three or four years later.
Regardless whether or not a couple get along well, a sirri marriage is rarely "dangerous" if both of them are still minors. Things are different if the groom is an adult and the bride is not.
One participant from Madura who lives in Jember, East Java, now said she was married when she was a fifth grader in elementary school, and her husband was 23 years old at the time. It is understood that in a sirri marriage the couple should not lie together as husband and wife. But that's not the way it was for her.
"My mother did not know that my husband frequently pinned me down and had his way with me. I was very scared but I didn't dare scream. My mother would've been very angry if she'd known that we'd had sex before the time. I only wanted everything to be over soon, so that he would go home to his parents. Afterwards I'd go to the bathroom, I couldn't urinate, my tears were falling without me noticing it because of the excruciating pain I felt. My genitals became swollen, felt as big as a coconut, making it hard for me to walk. But I forced myself to walk because I was afraid of my mother."
Pregnancy
Marriage at a very young age, followed by sex and pregnancy is clearly unhealthy for women. Especially because in Madura family planning is not allowed for religious reasons.
With due respect to traditional knowledge and local culture, the traditional post-natal treatments with their generous use of "Madurese ingredients" are perhaps not as hygienic as one would hope.
One training participant said there is a post-natal custom where the woman is "plugged" after childbirth with a tampon made of jati leaf containing hot ashes. The tampon stays there until she has finished her bath. This is supposed to benefit the womb and shrink the vaginal lining. Post-natal infections are common after this treatment.
The influence of sex is felt throughout daily life. In the present concept, however, the woman is steadfastly placed in a position where she has to perfect herself as much as she can with the aid of various herbs and potions to provide satisfaction to her spouse, in spite of the pain she has to go through. And vaginal fluids -- natural before intercourse -- are absorbed by ingredients rolled into cigar form in the vagina. This enables the husband to enjoy sex as if the wife had never lost her virginity.
As is implied in the current television commercial for Idaman a traditional jamu made according to a Madurese recipe, husbands are justified to grouch and look for another woman if their wife no longer satisfies them.
It is ironic when one remembers that the Islamic wedding principle is based on fairness and mutual love.
The writer works for the Indonesia Society for Pesantren and Community Development (P3M) as a coordinator of an advocacy program for health and reproduction rights of Moslem women.