How could someone carry a child for nine months, preparing to be a mother and caretaker, in a committed relationship in a conservative culture, where motherhood is the only aspiration, and then -- give it away!? It didn’t make logical or emotional sense, given the culture here.
Then I realized, the historical “gifting” of a child, was often to a closer relative who lived next door or just down the dirt path, so it wasn’t like a mom would never see her baby again. It was just that someone else is the primary caretaker. While this is still odd to me, I could imagine it better knowing that. People might "gift" someone a child because the female relative had lost a child, couldn’t have her own children, had lost a husband or was just better equipped to take care of a baby than the biological mother.
As globalization comes to Senegal, families now split up and have a greater possibility of moving distances away from each other, but the practice continues even when proximity does not. One might promise a child to a relative, and then that relative’s husband gets a new job and moves them to another country where they won’t see each other for years at a time, if ever again.
My own host mother was a gift child to her aunt. She was raised here in my small town, about an hour away by donkey cart from where her biological mom lived.
Hierarchy
Hierarchy and the patriarchal structure are very important in Senegalese culture. The hierarchy is generally older men, then younger men, then older women, then younger women, followed by male children and finally female children. Within a family the hierarchy goes from oldest sibling to youngest sibling.
