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Why Africans Go Home To Marry: A Reply To Sabella Abide By Francis Kizito Obeya
My dear Sabella,
Once again you have prompted me to the fore to try and proffer solutions to your endless pondering. Having just read your article titled,” why do African men go home to marry,” I have again decided to take you up on some of the points you have raised as well as enroll you in a different school of thought.
I am an advocate of the line of reasoning which claims that love knows no bounds. I believe that love should be appreciated where it is found. It doesn’t matter if it is found by black in white, rich in poor, able in disable. Love is a spiritual agreement between two people, a firm resolve of two hearts to beat as one. This is the reason why an African adage states that he who wishes to settle a quarrel between lovers must first sleep under their bed. When I walk the streets of these United States and see a white boy and a black girl or vice versa, I am not stru ck with envy or anger, neither am I forced in to thinking that she deserves to be with her own kind or he deserves to be with his own kind. Love is God’s creation that transcends racism but then that is a story for another time.
In order not to derail from the discussion at hand, let’s continue our discourse on the indigenous African woman versus her sister in the diaspora. Before the analysis, let me tell you a story: I was billed to be home this December to witness the wedlock of a buddy of mine. He was engaged to be married to a girl whom he had been seeing for over a year now. They both reside in the United States and he had become like a big brother to the bride-to-be’s family. They hang out, go for outings and generally get involved in each other’s family affairs. A month or two ago, I was greeted with the sad news, the engagement has been called off and there will be no wedding. Reason: the mother of the bride had earlier made an oath that none of her kids will marry outside her tribe. Tribalism! In the year 2005! In America where we like to blame the white man for everything bad that comes to us! Well, I spent a long time counseling my friend giving him stories of encouragement to snap out of the heartbreak and move on (need I remind you that this is the second time an incident like this will occur to him due to his place of origin?) I advised him to look homewards and take the girl of his choice since the whole game has now assumed a tribal dimension. The advantage of this will be that if things don’t work out between the two parties eventually, the tribe may stand a chance of benefiting from the fact that more of their children are out there gaining knowledge and experience that may be of benefit to it in future.
Mr. Abidde, why, if I may ask do you always feel that Africans living in the diaspora are castrated by their wives’ achievements? In all your writings about the domestic life of the black people you seem to make reference to the fact that these United States seem to deprive the men the balls to be the heads of their own home. I wonder how true this is since I have yet to meet a family where the husband tries to rule the household with the iron hand which you described. However I do believe there may be isolated cases which can always be attributed to the individual personalities of the characters involved. Such instances should not be used t o judge all the men living here as a whole.
Realistically, there are a number of factors a man considers before he takes a life partner. These factors are not always the same as the factors taken into consideration when he take a girlfriend. Men have been known to ask a lady for a relationship just because their present predicament required it. Such predicaments may include being drunk, being lonely, depressed, horny or even just for the fun of it. These predicament can not be employed to seek a lady for a marriage that is destined to last a lifetime. If a man carefully scans all the resumes of women he has known in his life and discovers the one he feels best meets his requirements, then he begins to seek a lasting and meaningful relationship with her. That is why most men go home to marry seeking the good times they have shared with a girl from a past relationship. You may argue about the men who have their wives already “packaged” and waiting to be “picked up” at home by these men. Well, what can I say? You must remember that there are still a few “mummy’s boys “out there who must be told how to lead their lives.
Speaking from a viewpoint of humor, I must observe that you seem to have given yourself the task of seeing your ‘sisters’ hooked up with a man before the day is done. All I have to say is ‘don’t try too hard.’ Have you been looking at the lives of African women in the diaspora? Don’t get me wrong, there are good and dutiful ones among them and those are the ones a man can go to hell and back for but have you taken a look at the cross section of those whom I deem unmarriageable? I once attended a party organized by a friend of mine whose aim was to bring single naija boys and girls together in a bid to foster a matchmaking opportunity. At the party, most of the girls kept to themselves and were reluctant to socialize with any of the boys who were in attendance. A few days later one of these girls would call up my friend claiming tha t there were no marriageable guys at the party. How can one judge a book by its cover, sabella? How can you tell a measure of a man by mere looking at him, not engaging in a conversation with him and not even sparing him a glance? All they were searching for was a parking lot filled with exotic cars and guys who talked big to inflate an ego. I still believe that every woman makes her man. Our get rich quick attitude has our girls looking for ready made husbands and the problem with most ready made goods is that they are either over- or undersized. It is often rare to customize them to fit your specifications. Any wise woman can take a man who has a prospect and fashion him into whatever kind of man she wants but then these are not the women we are talking about. On average, the reason why most African women living in the diaspora remain unmarried is for the simple fact that they have set some Hollywood standards for themselves (forgetting that almost all Hollywood actors are divorcees) and so are having a hard time finding a man capable of meeting such an illusionary expectation. Advise them sabella, to grab their heads out of their a*ses and see the reality before them then marriage will come.
For some people (present company included) the first reaction you exhibit when you get to the United States is to get on the next plane and start heading back home. This may be due to a variety of reasons. For some, when you discover that the place is not prettier than your beloved Abuja or some parts of Lagos; for others the fact that the streets have asphalt and gravel and not paved in gold. I was not pleased with my first pothole too. Where I am heading with these is the fact that everyone feels some sort of disappointment when they first get here. But they s*ck it up, gather their wits and go ahead to make a home out of it. There is no point singling out the wife from home and mocking her great expectations, there are those who snap out of it and there are those who don’t. I don’t have the statistics but I doubt if those who don’t outnumber those who do. A smart woman knows when to separate fact from fiction and realize her dreams from that. Do not forget that even some of your so-called sisters in diaspora came here to look for opportunities too so why begrudge a girl who was brought from naija to escape the economic hardship. At the time of writing this mail, I know a few girls who have returned to naija to await the second coming of IBB with whom there is assurance o f connection to loot and maybe find a husband in the process.
My point in all this is that a man marries where his heart tells him. Some men have been favored by women of different races, creed, belief and others believe that their fortunes lie with their kind. I think we can do a lot to respect their choices since a relationship is a personal thing anyways. It would be a total absurdity to think that an African woman in diaspora would understand her husband’s situation because she is well versed with the lie of the land or to claim that a wife brought from the motherland would opt out of a marriage simply because things were not as she had expected. It all comes down to the sort of upbringing the women in question have imbibed from home. Let all men marry where there hearts are and let the women continue to be the necks that turn the heads. I rest my case.
Francis Kizito Obeya
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