If according to Martin Luther King Jr. that there is no more lovely, friendly or charming and relationship, communion or company other than good marriage, then folks need to crash program on marriage. This is more serious when marriage is viewed as the only workshop where the man works and the wife shops. A man in love is incomplete until he marries, then he is finished says Zsa Zsa Gabor. Abraham Lincoln reminds us that marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
If according to Martin Luther King Jr. that there is no more lovely, friendly or charming and relationship, communion or company other than good marriage, then folks need to crash program on marriage. This is more serious when marriage is viewed as the only workshop where the man works and the wife shops. A man in love is incomplete until he marries, then he is finished says Zsa Zsa Gabor. Abraham Lincoln reminds us that marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
Is it true that all men and women change after marriage; that men and women tend to become less loving and uncaring years into marriage and start spending less time together. Do the three rings of marriage represent engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering or suffer head ring?
Men who marry foreign wives both Africans and Europeans or Americans must have their wallets loaded because the cost of marrying foreign wives is legendary. It doesn’t matter how you married her whether by “mail – order’ method or by conventional means, the unforeseen expenses are insurmountable.
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Marriage is the formalized co-habitation of a man and a woman after which they are addressed as husband and wife. It is a kind of promotion from boyfriend to husband and girl friend to wife. There are varying definitions of marriage to different people. Some say that marriage is an imposition by the society and people who don’t accept that imposition are classified as deviants. Due to several traditional, societal and religious factor and inequality in the society today, many marriages are headed to the rocks even before they even start. But I have come to realize that it is not marriage that fail; it is people that fail. Some of our brothers that marry foreign brides do pass through a lot of things while visiting Nigeria or trying to.
Upon arrival to Nigeria, husband buys a car for the couple to move around. This car is sold at rock bottom price immediately after Christmas (before going back) because it will depreciate in value if it is kept and unused. If you leave the car to somebody that has no car or job, you will be sending money for maintenance.
While in Lagos, if the husband cannot stay in a hotel, they are accommodated by a friend who is a Lagos resident. Couple then takes a local flight eastwards next day or so. The other alternative is to do it by road – that unending physically challenging 9-hr nightmare with near misses and actual crashes and occasionally telling her that we are about getting home now. You will also be ready to explain to her why we have so many policemen on the highway and also the presence of the villains you encounter at Benin bypass asking for radio permit in the car. Hmnnnn!
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Upon arrival to the East, they scamper to Owerri like distressed whales washed ashore by Hurricane Sandy in a desperate bid to run away from kidnappers and other irritants from the village. The foreign wife does not eat local food unless those purchased from fast food joints – Mr Biggs and Tantalizer etc.
While in the hotels, the cost of hotel bill keeps mounting because both have to eat and entertain friends who come visiting as well. I know of a fellow whose hotel bill paid at Imo Concorde can build 3 – bedroom house and yet he has no Ibari or Obi in the villa. Tired of Owerri as the case maybe, they decide to visit the village.
They arrive to the villa from Owerri and perform few road shows: Wife cooking in the open air and wife bending down to blow air into the fire to ignite or accelerate it; she participates in some traditional dances in the village square mixing freely with the local women who have heard of her visit earlier and looking up to meet her. Thanks God that today, she didn’t put the thick black sunglasses. Otherwise, the women could have noticed that she has dilated red eyes resulting from overnight excessive drinking the night before at Owerri.
Local women flock around to admire her exotic hairdo and thin waistline and her humility and line up to ask her to “do xmas for us”. She carefully weaves through the crowd that came to see her making sure she offends no one by greeting everybody. In the melee, some venerate her while others detest her. She was a recluse or Hermit of a sort in her native Poland for instance for marrying an African and was constantly marginalized but now accepted in Nigeria. Level don change as we are wont to say!
She makes few friends in the first few days depending on her bent and/or judgment. Husband is yet again tasked to provide his oyibo wife money to live up to expectation - doling out money to the women and to the dancers in the village square. Some came almost fully made but almost disappointed the people.
The local typical traditional Igbo outfit will be made for her in three different sets with corresponding and annoying sky touching headgear to be able to grace that traditional wedding in the evening or house opening the next day.
Darkness is a nightmare and she cannot remember when last she was in pitch darkness except when she was in her mother’s womb. At dusk, convincing her to sleep in room in the villa without AC even for one night is like convincing African leaders to fight corruption. She thinks that the noisy ceiling will cut off her head.
Woe betides you if the lady falls ill. The nearest hospital that suits her is called St. Nicholas, located in far away Lagos and there is no air ambulance even if there is money to ferry her. Then you resort to using road by hiring an ambulance, and that is if there is no fuel scarcity during this time. But there will be fuel because there is rarely a Christmas without fuel scarcity.
How much this “submission hold” took away from our dear brother, is something that cannot be determined now but this fact glares above all. All of these events/happenings will sit along with each other when next they come back if they will.
She finally goes back to her country heaving a sigh of relief furiously cursing the day she agreed to marry you. She then remembers what her friends, peer group and family told her about inter racial marriage but then it is belated. But life will continue and the man starts planning for yet another trip to Nigeria after five years of the last one. The nail that sticks out gets pounded. In life there are no small parts, only small actors. Love is a temporary madness curable by marriage only. A bitter end to this union looks like the inevitable end.
The rest is history!
Mike ONWUKWE sent in this piece from Sudan and can be reached on
[email protected]
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