Although Ramatoulaye pays lip service to the traditional funeral rites, she's none too happy about them. According to long-established custom, she's expected to go out of her way to be generous and hospitable to her co-wife's family, providing them with food and lodging, catering to their every need.

On the third day of the funeral rites, the family home is swarming with guests, some family, some immediate family, some distant relatives, and others complete strangers. By the time the funeral rites are over, the house has not just been trashed, but stripped bare of anything of value. Clearly, this is a very expensive business indeed.

But what really makes Ramatoulaye upset about the funeral ritual is the way that she's expected to efface herself, to render herself an object for the service of other people, many of whom she neither knows nor likes. It seems that during the funeral rites she's nothing more than a glorified servant.

Ramatoulaye also doesn't like the way that she's treated on equal terms with Binetou. Whereas Binetou was only married to Ramatoulaye's late husband Modou for five years, Ramatoulaye had been married to him for thirty. It seems so unnecessary, not to say deeply unfair, that both women would not be given equal consideration.