Record Price Paid For Bride

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30862, 22 September 1965, Page 17

Record Price Paid For Bride

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PORT MORESBY, Sept. 21. A record “bride price” of nearly £2OOO has been paid for a 19-year-old Port Moresby shop assistant.

The Papuan bride, Serna Bogoda, married Udu Sisia, aged 25, an X-ray technician by native custom two years ago. The bride price, which has been paid in “instalments" included nearly £lOOO in cash, mostly silver, and the rest in valuable shell armlets, rice, sugar, tinned meat, fishing nets and canoes. About 90 members of Serna’s family will share the bride price which was raised by Udu’s father and other relatives.

The young couple live in Hanuabada village, which is built on stilts over the sea at Port Moresby. The bride price was not fixed by the bride’s parents, but the groom’s family considered it a matter of prestige to pay as high a price as possible. The previous highest reported bride price was £lBOO paid for a 21-year-old New Guinea dental nurse.

Some Papuan and New Guinean leaders have been trying to get bride prices “pegged” because they believe the system is getting out of hand and causing many native families to get heavily I into debt.

A prominent Papuan Native Government councillor said earlier this year that many unmarried couples were living together because the boys* families could not raise a large bride price.

The Administration has been unwilling to take action on bride prices. “You just can’t stop it,” the Assistant Administrator for Services (Dr. J. T. Gunther) said today.