The Divorce Market: Where Mauritanian Women Find New Love After Losing Marriages

• If you are a divorced woman struggling to find new love, you may want to consider trying the Divorce Market in Mauritania
• The divorcees meet at the market to sell the items they carried from their ex-husbands and use the money to alleviate the pain in their hearts while seeking new love
• Interestingly, men prefer marrying divorcees than singles as they believe a woman becomes more beautiful and experienced after separation

The divorce rate in Mauritania is high, but it is more celebrated than frowned upon, so much so that there are celebrations whenever it happens.

This is because divorced women in the country have a higher chance of finding new love than single women.

Divorced women sell ex-husbands' household items

In a video by Discover with Joe HaTTab, the women disclosed that divorce is a common phenomenon among Muslims, which is why they’ve embraced it.

They explained that they don’t feel sad when divorce happens because they view it as a livelihood that has reached its end.

For this reason, a physical place called The Divorce Market exists where divorcees meet to sell the items they had in their previous marriages.

"Women own all the items in a household once she gets married, which is why we move out with them when it ends," one of them noted.

Women become more beautiful after divorce

The idea is for the woman to get past the separation by becoming an entrepreneur, thereby improving herself in readiness for a fresh start.

According to the interviewee, a woman receives many offers for a new marriage immediately after her previous one ends.

“When a woman leaves a marriage, she becomes more beautiful with higher experience. That means her new husband is bound to take better care of her than the first one,” she added.

Remarrying does not always guarantee that she is headed for forever bliss; sometimes, the new man leaves after a short time, and the woman is back on the market.

Divorced woman struggles to make ends meet

Meanwhile, a divorced woman has opened up about suffering since her marriage ended three years ago.

Her biggest worry, however, is not the companionship or love she lost from the relationship but the financial security.

The problem, however, is that the woman, who is in her 40s, has been unable to find a man willing to marry her as a stay-at-home wife.

Proofreading by Otukho Jackson, a multimedia journalist and copy editor at TUKO.co.ke