marrige as settlement.

Conventional medicine has swept most Africans off their feet but one thing that may take forever to be effaced from their hearts is traditional medicine.
Traditional treatment could take the form of drinking herbs, rubbing concoctions into incisions on the body, and bathing with particular liquids or bathing in some sacred streams.
Those who go for such treatment administered by traditional healers have to live with them for days, weeks and even months.
Treatment sometimes costs livestock and money. At times, the patients lack these items and they have to settle their bills in kind. For example they will have to work on the healers farm, rear his livestock, and do some odd tasks in return.
There are established cases where women, young and old have gotten married to the healers as a form of settlement. How this starts or ends up is what puzzles me. Do these women consent or they are simply pushed to the wall? Visit some of those healing homes and you would find numerous wives and children.