THE AMERICAN LIFE SEF 1 I'll Marry When I Wan

In less than four years in America, I have seen more dead men walking than I had seen in all my years in Nigeria. Everywhere I look, I see children of Africa who have become ghosts of their former selves. The noisy ones are sheer empty vessels. The dumb ones are experiencing shock. A distorted image of life and perception had transformed the Africans in America into a pathetic lot. There are more of them struggling to retain their sanity than there are those who are struggling to save their souls. The only gap between their American dream and their American nightmare is their American experience.

One Sat.u.r.day in March, I watched a Nigerian woman who lived in a high-rise housing complex in Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.semble her family laundry and bundle them into the laundry room on the 8th oor. The crowded room was full of residents who had gathered to do their laundry. The Nigerian woman noticed that white couples came to the laundry room together; the man helping out in carrying the clothes, sorting them out and subsequently folding them after was.h.i.+ng. Only African women had to come alone to the laundry, do all the tasks involved, only to return to their apartments to cook food for their husbands, who all the while were sitting on the couch ipping channels in search of violent sports and naked women.

The African man in America is confused. Those who are trying to be Africans in their homes are forced to be Americans outside their homes, while those who are pretending to be Americans in their homes, are daily reminded by the reality outside that they fall short of that t.i.tle, in e ect, raising so many questions and creating so many con icts. For instance, is a career-minded African wife of an African man, with a 9-5 job obligated to carry out the typical duties expected of an African housewife? When the need arises, who is going to sacri ce the time to take care of family problems - the man or the woman? Who is paying the bills and how much of that translates into veto power in family matters?

I once pointed out this perennial struggle of the African man to an African woman. She instantly barked at me. Her question was, how come when an African marries an "akata" or a "fat white trash", he knows how to behave—how to do the laundry, cook, clean the house, take the baby to the hospital, pick up the baby from the day care, etc. while the wife sits at home watching the Jerry Springer Show; but as soon as he escapes from the American woman, he instantly remembers how to be an African man? Because he got himself a slave as wife?

I met this Nigerian man recently. He had spent a greater part of his 19 years in America working at one nursing home after another. He has become an expert at changing old women's diapers. Nothing is too gross for him to handle. He lives in a huge nice house, one that would make you mistake him for a brain surgeon. And of course, he drives a big expensive car. But deep inside him, the man has died. He had to put up the external appearance to beef up his non-existent self-esteem. Unlike most people who love to care for the old, the sick, and the mentally challenged, this man is there just for the money.

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I'll Marry When I Want

His favourite expression is that his paycheque "doesn't smell like s.h.i.+t". In his heart of hearts, he hates every minute of his job. But until his dignity is restored, he cannot in any way function as either a real African or an unhyphenated American.

But don't ever try to use this story to buy the sympathy of the African woman. Unlike the African woman back home, the African woman in America faces a greater expectation from the African society. She too receives letters from home. And like all those letters, they are asking for favours, like money for hospital bills, ticket to Germany, school fees, etc. She is under the kind of pressure that a typical married African woman at home would not face. She is in e ect expected to be a provider as well as the mother of her husband's children. And in this society where the instruments of law favour women, the African woman is stunned that she has remained downtrodden.

What kind of support does the African man need from the African wife in America? A phone bill that is as long as the River Nile? A credit card bill that runs up and down Mount Kilimanjaro? A third car payment for the additional van, the symbol of the soccer mom generation? Or is it the yearly mother in-law visit? Or the bringing over of the wife's sister and/or brother to school in the United States? If the head of the household must bear the full responsibility, what happens to the privileges which the American society does not recognize?

When does one tag an African woman wild? Is it when she threatens to sue him for divorce and take her husband to the laundry, as they say? Or is it when she calls the cops and accuses her husband of attempting to **** her? Does buying Victoria's Secret count? The most intriguing fact about the African woman in America is their cla.s.s. Whether they are "imported" or "exported", the African woman in America belongs to the best of the best. If they fail to stand on their feet for what they believe in this free country, what hope is there for the African woman at home? Have you heard what follows when, in the heat of an argument, an African woman tells her husband, "This is America and..."

On my prompting, an African friend of mine bought owers for his African wife. By the end of Valentine's Day, the owers had been squashed to death on the man's body. The woman later told me it was the last time she would ever try to make a romantic candle-light dinner. Shame on you Africans, she said. Where is the love? Is America so full of only Okonkwos? What happened to the Njoroges? I understand when an African marriage fails because an African man wants to videotape himself making love to his wife. But to insist on calling your wife Mama Tayo in America where no woman wants to be old is cla.s.sic folly.

The last time I checked, the African woman is still trying to be African. She is gossiping about other women and their husbands. She is a.s.sessing whose Mercedes is bigger. She is quarrelling, even ghting. Have you seen them at baby showers? It is a lioness' den. If you are a man, an African man, you don't want to be anywhere near. Despite America's craze for skinny women, the African woman seems not to be particularly worried. Some punish themselves with visits to the gym. Additional burden, you might say, but so far, Holland Blocks and blouses still t. But as more and more Ally McBeals of Africa emerge, trouble as huge as yellow skin fever in the 70s brews.

I once asked an African man what contribution he would say he made to the American society after 20 years in America. He snapped, "I did not come here to contribute any s.h.i.+t. I came here to make money." He has a house in his hometown of Mbaino in which he would never spend up to

I'll Marry When I Want

200 days from now till he dies. He had been sending money home ever since he started working, and the demand has only increased. His children understand bits of his mother tongue but cannot say water without p.r.o.nouncing the letter t. To him, he is accomplished.

I respect the man's idea of accomplishment. But my idea is a little wider. I want to marry who I want, when I want and how I want. I want to graduate from preaching. I want to advance to that di cult practical level where I have to implement what I preach. I want to try to establish that ideal African family we have been ghting for. Because that is the frontline of this battle of America, their America.

The other day, looking at America, their America and all these battles that African men and women face in this land, I e-mailed the African woman I hope to marry. In my letter I stated my creed. Here are extracts:

"My dear, I am writing this from the very bottom of my heart. I was touched yesterday when you said I had changed. It wasn't because you were right, rather, it was because I had been debating the very opposite... While a part of me may be half-dead, a signi cant part is still half born. I don't know what is dying but I do know what is being born. The labour of its birth has been going on for so long. Sometimes, I cry for a stillbirth, rather than an endless pain of labour without any fruit.

"...Sometimes I see myself as rewood. I see myself trapped inside the three-legged metal that holds the pot in the chimney area of the kitchen. I notice the coal underneath me. I feel their warmth - their simmering. I could see Mama picking the grains of rice, was.h.i.+ng them, and getting them ready for cooking. But being a very dry rewood, I catch re. I start burning before Mama is ready. Question: How do I learn to simmer until Mama is ready?

And what if Mama doesn't intend to cook immediately? Or she chooses to use the microwave?

"...I am looking at a lot of philosophical questions; what good is a road if it will ultimately not lead to happiness? Where did I come from? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? What kind of person do I want to be? How should I live? What really matters? Do I want it to be said that I dreamt? Or that I achieved my dream? That I tried? Or that I accomplished?

"I am undergoing a critical search for meaning. I am trying to respond e ectively to the forces of nature I face. I try to be principled without being an extremist, exible without being brittle. I want to be resigned but not uninvolved. But most importantly, I want to love more than I want to be loved. There had been so many beginnings in my life with so few nishes. I feel like a failure when I know that I have not fulled the duty that comes with my privileges, especially when I feel it is divine in nature. The responsibilities that come with rights. But most importantly, I am ghting to face faith, my faith; and reason, my reason, equally. Finding the balance for these elements is the very ground of my battle.

"... I do not feel that the danger is that I am changing. Rather, it is that I am not. It would have been a sustainable situation if I was not being told that the only way for me to remain the same is to change... I have vowed to follow this story of you and I to the end. I will juggle my obsession, if that is what it is, with my thought. I will develop my images and hold on to my perceptions. I will maintain my attachments and solidify my clinging. To the world, I may be a one-person army ghting a cause of a lifetime. But there will be peace in my grave if once in a while you remember that I love you."

In other words, I will marry when I want.