IMPORTED FROM NIGERIA

I dreamt of being married to an international man: especially, a man from Africa. For us, the black American women, there is something unique about the Nigerian men: I wondered why. All over the city of Houston, Texas, some black American girls find Nigerian men, more appealing and exceptional, from other African men..

What Is so unique about these species?. I once asked my friend, who gloats at her desire for a Nigeria man. She told me that Nigerian men are very confident, strong, and aggressive; spoil women with affection. They are extreme swaggers. They are very intelligent; flaunt their self esteem, abrasive and unashamedly expressive. The Nigerian men are ladies men. What lady wouldn’t want a strong man, a man that could satisfy her soul on any given day and in any moment in time: an intriguing moment with a polished mahogany.

These were the portraits of my dream man. I prayed and played the field, longing for a Nigerian man. My prayers were answered one lonely day-off from work and at home. I was online, trafficking on the internet when a chat request popped up. I had nothing to lose engaging a stranger in a chat room. I was safe in my home. It had been a boring day off from my nursing duties at the hospital. I was home, musing on the computer. His name sounded exotic: Ayodeji. I asked for translation. He promised a later day translation. I was curious about his chat request. His response: we had something in common: we shared the same birthday. I asked his nationality since that name was exotic and, to me sexy. He said he was Nigerian! Oh happy day. Hmmmm. Seek and yeah shall find!!! This day, I wasn’t seeking. But I found.

Every day since our first chat encounter, was like a great expectation. I logged off evenings, after an all day chat with him, praying that this new Nigerian would come back online and chat with me. I began to feel certain comfort in his association with each chat. Two months, we chatted online at every chance and opportunity that we were privileged. I would take my blackberry to work and chat with him. I became possessed by his chats.

One week into this madness, I asked for his pictures. He immediately sent me his portraits: half naked. Dear God! Just what I had been craving for all my life! Ayodeji was strong pretty, hot and tempting. He was too handsome to let go! That night, I held his pictures close to my heart, knelt down beside my bed and said the longest prayers to God. God it’s got to happen. I had found love. You may call it infatuation. As soon as I blessed my eyes on his pictures, I felt completely in love with him.

We got to know each other through the internet, texting and chatting: He would tell me everything about himself and his desire for a family. The more he shared, the hungrier I wanted him. He told me things I needed to hear. Things no man ever whispered to me. He would describe how he wished to make me feel inside as a true African woman. I would be rottened by his love affection and attention. Hmmm! I felt I hadn’t been romantically and erotically touched by my past relationships in America. I was listening to the voice of a strong black panther in the savannahs of Africa, hungry for love; thirsty for passion. I couldn’t resist his soothing sensual baritone. They were captivating and filled with aura. I wanted him badly. He was natural, barely used. A fresh mahogany from motherland! I would jealously guide and guard this man. He was mine and no American bitch would take him away from me. Every text he sent made me fall deeper in love.

My friends at work were seeing sudden changes in my life’s attitudes: I looked happier and more interactive with my coworkers. I was a beloved woman, again.They wanted to find out the reasons for my sudden happiness and calmness. One of them was from Ghana. I shared with her that I had found true love on the internet and he was from Nigeria. “Sharon, please be careful of Nigerians”. She said and walked away from me. I didn’t care about her warnings. Stupid jealous fool… I felt she probably would want him if she saw him.

The next morning I opened my email only to read a marriage proposal from him. He proposed to me. Few minutes later, he called from Nigeria asking if I had checked my mail. It was an awe moment. The locks in the back of my neck stood endlessly as I couldn’t believe hearing his voice and reading his email, all happening at the same time. He had asked me to marry him” Sharon, will you marry me?” He repeated, in a most sexy and engaging accent. “YES…YES… Ayo… YES my dear King”.

I said yes to a marriage proposal from a handsome man I had never met. A man I met online and exchanged chat with everyday. Wow! It’s truly a global village. I had fallen in love with a man I hadn’t any physical relationships with. This, to me was real love. And I would ride with it. I thanked God for this day.

He was too desired to say no! He was a plethora of passion. I felt differently each day online with him. He enriched me sexually and sensually. I knew this was my man. If you wanted something, then go get it. The world would not wait for you to come to it. Go and own it. I wanted to own him, in love and in health, till death do us part. Now he had given me the reasons to celebrate and adore him the remainder of our lives. I decided to take my chances with this stranger.

We began to prepare for our wedding day in Nigeria. I would have to travel to Nigeria to meet and marry him. He could not come to America because visa was a tough struggle in Lagos. I worked hard, sending him money for the wedding arrangements. One month later, I found myself travelling to Nigeria to go get married. I was alone: I was travelling half way round the world to meet a man for the first time, get married to him in his country: A man I met in online chat room, three months ago. A marriage that I was paying for!

I arrived Nigeria sixteen hours later and was greeted at the airport by Ayo and few members of his friends and family. The first time I saw him, his presence and physique confirmed all my dreams, imaginations about him. He was tall, polished chocolate. Well groomed and kept. As soon as I hugged him, I couldn’t release the grab of his whole body. I held onto him and felt a sense of security through his natural body odor and the dripping sweat from a very hot city. I was home with my “husband”. He came along with friends and family and was gracious enough to formally introduce this black American female to his entourage. I was elated.

I dreamt of making love to him. I wanted him badly and he could sense the way I was feeling and fondling his body all evening. I set him up for a night of erotic explosion by caressing various sensitive spots of his body at every chance I got. We had shared so much intimately. This night would be the night to practice what we had been preaching online: we were alone; not lonely. But when that moment came, I was blasted by his inexperience at love making! My African charming prince was worse than a virgin! A one minute man!. It was a huge disappointment for a first day to be a flat night! It was an experience worth forgetting; a mega meltdown. May be I had expected too much from him. Though I was disappointed, but I never gave up. I was thinking like a big girl. All I wanted was marriage and sex won’t be the deal breaker in this marriage. I swore that I would not let it happen! I will teach him. And he would teach me how to love and satisfy him. I promised that night before I drifted into a long peaceful sleep in his arms.

I would spend the next three months in Nigeria enjoying the beauty of a different culture and people, learning the intricacies of being married to a unique human from one of the world’s most enriched continents. It was a return to my ancestral land. My ancestors were forced from their various plantations, sold as slaves and shipped to the new world: The United States. It was an experience that was so profound for me.

I returned to the United States and began a process of filing for green cards for my husband so that he would come and live with me. It was a process that lasted one year: One year of torment and sadness. I became an enemy of the United States Embassy in both Nigeria and Houston for constantly calling and harassing them to speedy the application process so that my husband would join me. I was getting tired of being told stories by both embassies. I had to fight with the immigration and homeland Security by telephone. In Nigeria, a black American consulate worker once chided me for believing that this marriage was real. She said she was disappointed in me because she could see that I was being used by my “husband” as a getaway ticket to America. “You will regret this very soon”. She warned me. But I wasn’t interested in her Lagos lullabies. I had the best husband in the world and nothing would stop this reunion! So I was excited when, one year later, I picked him at the airport. He made it to Unites States. My life was about to change. I was now a “happily married woman”.

Two weeks after his arrival to Houston, I noticed a behavioral change. Money left on the bedroom dresser was always missing. These were little loose changes: five and ten dollars. I would leave these as part of my habit: and when I returned to fetch them, they were always gone. I asked him if he took the money and he said, he thought I had left them for him. I asked why I would leave little money for him. He was not a child and if he needed money he should let me know. I could give him more than he was lifting from the dresser. That troubled me. It was very juvenile.

I didn’t know my troubles just begun: The first major matrimonial quarrel we had was when he hit my son during one of his afternoon rage. I was very angry. Why hit a six year old boy so inhumanly? I asked. When I confronted him, he physically abused me. He held my neck and pinned my back against the wall, pushing his body heavily against mine. I was scared of this Nigerian terror. I pleaded with him to let me go.

He took a deep breath and began to slowly release his strong hold on me: He apologized as he let loose. The rage in his eyes had been replaced by the guilt of a sudden attack on the one he loved. I began to encourage him to talk more about his past with me after the incidence. Ayodeji came from a dysfunctional home: it was odd for me to hear that his parents were divorced. Divorce was uncommon in Africa, I assumed. It wasn’t like a promiscuous society as America where you could marry now and divorce next minute.

It was strange to me to hear him tell me stories of physical and mental abusive marriage of his parents. He had grown up watching his father beat his mother and that trauma affected his past relationships. I held him close and urged him to seek counseling. I was willing to pay for that so that it would help our marriage. I loved him dearly.

I tried to be faithful to him in all spheres of our marriage and especially in our physical relationships: But he seemed to hate any romantic advances that I made. He would rather ask me to turn on the pornography movie so as to arouse him before we made love. He was not indoctrinated in the foreplay lessons; the roadmap to an explosive sexual escapade. We were two different people when it came to erotic satisfaction: I was mainstream, ready for the world. He was still shy, sexually uninitiated and conservative novice.

I suggested to him that we should begin to increase our family. I wanted to get pregnant by him. He dismissed me with a horrible attitude: Imagine your husband, telling you to go make a baby with someone else because he doesn’t want to have a baby with you. He told me that the only time he would have me pregnant was when Immigration invited us for the second interview to change his permanent residence status! He believed that being pregnant during the second interview would make the green card process go faster! I was an oracle of green card; an idiot and victim. Yet I loved this man. Sexually, he was unwilling to satisfy my appetite for pleasurable moments with my husband. Every move I made towards him for a sensual moment at nights was counterproductive.

When he refused my approach for sex and told me to go have sex with other men, I called his bluffs and gave him his wishes. I began to date other men within Houston. I cheated carelessly on him. He would notice my behavior and when I saw he felt the rejections from me, I was not worried. It was painful to cheat on the one you love. But what do you want me to do… I had done everything to prove my love to him. I found out that he was a chronic liar: from the first day he contacted me on line, he had lied since then.

He continues to lie. He lied about his age. I did not know I was ten years older than him. I told him if he had just wanted to come to America, I would have helped him without getting married and lied to about his life and this fake love for me. I threw my heart to this relationship because I truly loved him. It wasn’t the life I had hoped for.

I wanted a stable home with him as head of our family. I wanted the American dream with an African. I got an African nightmare.

He was very immature in the ways he embraced the American lifestyles here. He thought and wanted to live the life styles of Jay Z and 50 Cents by getting an American woman. It was unfortunate he had been corrupted by what images young Nigerians were being exposed to in the Nigerian media about America and its hopes and dreams. My husband became a victim of that phony culture and the media hype, fuelled by the powers of a vibrant Nigerian media. I saw how culturally washed Nigerian youths were through their various media, especially the electronic media. Instead of celebrating their diversity through the rich programmes, the Nigerian media are busy celebrating anything and everything foreign. They don’t care about the content relevance to their society, as long as it was a foreign made, especially American made. I had sat at home one day watching rap music on television. I thought I was watching the American Black Entertainment Television.(BET). My husband and others within his age are victims of this cultural enslavement. He lived in an imaginary world of a successful ghetto rap artist. I hope he would wake up soon before America messes his life up for him.

I could not trust my Nigerian import any longer: last week I moved out of our marriage. Five years after all these mess began. I am on the steps of the court house in down town Houston waiting to file a restraining order on him. I called him few days ago and requested a divorce. The heartless loser wanted me to pay for the divorce. I don’t understand why he would not pay for the divorce. I paid for our wedding in Nigeria; I paid for his green card processing fees and bought him a ticket to America. He should pay for our divorce!

Azuka Jebose Molokwu, an author and broadcaster lives in North Carolina, USA. www.myspace.com/reggaelounge889fm.