Written By: N. Amma Twum-Baah
If you are a true African and have any practical clue, you probably read the caption and asked, “How to be single and what?” But if American women and European women can be single and happy, why can’t African women be single and happy too? After all, we’ve mastered their language, the way they dress and even the way they look. Right? Wrong, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because the concept of being single, first of all, is as foreign to us as it will ever be even among the most liberated, modern-minded, progressive thinking African woman. Who do you think you’re kidding?
I thought African women were well ahead of our game until the day a friend of mine who recently graduated from law school, passed the bar on her first try and just got hitched by one of New York City’s most prestigious law firms said to me: “Nicole, I think I’m missing something. I have all this, but I still don’t have a husband and if I’m not married next year I don’t know what I’m going to do. I feel like I haven’t achieved much” What?! First of all, she has achieved so much and second of all, she’s only 30 years-old and one of the smartest, most successful women I know! After all the degrees and personal accomplishments, a woman must still either be in a relationship or be married to feel emotionally and “culturally” secure?
My father still swears I’m making a big deal out of nothing; but I know I’m not. Upon my graduation from college, four years ago, the women in my mainly Ghanaian congregation church decided to get together and surprise me with a congratulatory gift. What did they come together and decide I needed more than anything else in this world (after having paid my own way through college)? A 12-piece Conningware cooking/baking set. Yes, cooking utensils. After four years of college, I get cooking utensils. The message I got from the heartfelt gift: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got the degree. Now it’s time to find a man and settle down with your Conningware set!” How do I know? Because I know the ladies did not get together and decide to get me a 12-piece cooking set so I could sit at home alone and bake lasagna for myself. They could have gotten me a 6-piece set for that. Okay, so I’m being just a little bit ungrateful and over-exaggerated, maybe that’s not what they intended their warm gift to mean to me, but that’s the way my ‘feminist radar’ took it. I love the cookware and it has been of great use to me ever since, but that‘s besides the point. The point here is, according to African culture, no man = no honor and no dignity even for the most accomplished woman.
Being single and happy is definitely a foreign concept to most African women. Even if we wanted it not to be the case, what choice do we really have? Cultural realities, such as these, are very hard to run away from. They follow you to every corner of the earth. The issue comes up when you talk to your mother on the phone, your aunts, your sisters and, yes, even your most-educated, self-proclaimed, “single and happy” girlfriends. The voice, not always so subtle, can be found in the emails they send, during phone conversations and, now, they’re even texting it to you: “so, when are you getting married? You need a man in your life.” No matter what country they come from, African women will tell you the same thing: “a married woman gets more respect than a single woman, even if the married woman sells cassava at the market and the single woman is the doctor who cares for the married cassava seller’s sick children.” Ironic? No, it’s called the reality of cultural influence. The amazing thing I’ve never missed is this: you hear these things coming from women not men. Now that’s ironic!
If you ever meet an African woman who grins at you and says “I’m single and happy,” tell her she’s a liar. The truth is she’s able to say that half-heartedly, either because she’s stopped talking to her mother altogether and to other female members of her family, or she’s hanging out with too many “western world”- for lack of better term - women who are falsely boosting her ego and telling her she doesn’t need a man to be happy. The day she runs into an African and mentions that she’s single and happy, that’s the day her false “single and happy” bubble will burst and expose the pain she’s hiding inside.
The underlying truth is that even your western-minded female friends are falsely telling you they are single and happy. When they lie down to sleep at night in their quite apartments and snuggle their tear-soaked pillows, of course you’re not there to witness that.
Sorry if you were hoping to find the answer to finally being a “single and happy” modern-day African woman. There is no such thing.
*While this article is a sarcastic depiction of the issue of singlehood among African women, the underlying reality is that the concept of “no man, no honor” really does exist. It is a dilemma faced by millions of women world-wide, especially African women, who have chosen to postpone relationships or marriage to focus on professional and educational goals. In Ghana, there is a saying “Oba enuonyam ne ne kunu,” translated to mean “a woman’s honor is found in her husband.” Even if you are truly single and happy, there are those around you who will go out of their way to make you feel less-than-human and incomplete. It is the general perception that a woman with a husband who ignores her and makes her unhappy is luckier than a woman walking around single, happy and “unloved”. Like my friend jokingly said, “at least she has someone to go home to so he can pound on her.” | |
