THE NARRATIVE ARC
At 14, My first suitor Was 39 and I Was Getting Old
If your culture supersedes the law, is it wrong?
My mother came to find me that day, “There is a man here. He said he met you two years ago in Lagos?”
Of course, I knew who she was talking about. I was going on 14 when I traveled outside of my hometown to Lagos after my Junior Secondary School Exams. If I passed, I would enter Senior Secondary School, the US equivalent of High School.
The man was a businessman friend of my uncle’s whose house I had stayed at during my trip. While there, the man had taken a liking to me which I thought was okay in an uncle-niece way — like with my uncle, but the messages of his letters explicitly told me he was looking for a wife. As a Christian man, God had told him I was the one for him.
He sent me money to use to buy snacks. I never told my parents. I was happy to receive the money and didn’t want to be told to cut him off. Beyond asking me if I wanted to be his wife (no, but I did tell him I was thinking about it), what was the worst that could happen? There were 294 miles between us and I was in boarding school. He was never going to pop in.
But when my mother said a man from Lagos wanted to see me, I knew it was him.
He came bearing three gifts: a body spray, and two other items I cannot remember now. And they were wrapped in a black nylon bag.
Our meeting was brief. My mother offered no seat to him nor gave us privacy to talk. From her general demeanor, I could tell she was unimpressed by this man.
I was 16 years old, living with my mother, and as far as he could tell, I was obedient and respectful towards her. My mother was educated and I was getting an education. This is to say, I wasn’t a child desperate to escape her family life. If he was going to marry me, he needed my mother’s approval.
In my culture, if a man does not accept his visitor, he gets to use his voice and ask the person to leave his home. Women are not to be heard. If a woman does not accept a visitor, she begins to sweep.
Sweeping when a visitor is around is rude and is verbatim for — leave. Since my siblings and I swept the house as part of our chores, it was strange to see my mother pick up a broom to sweep.
And oh boy, did she sweep. She swept, she dusted and she swept again. My suitor went from dusting off his shirt to covering his nose and then he said he was leaving.
My mother barely responded. Then she took his gifts from me, called them trash, and threw them out. That was all she ever said about my suitor who left and never came back. But he did continue to tell me a lot about how marrying him was God’s will.
When at 17, I gained admission into the university, he wrote to tell me that I should promise him that I would never wear trousers (against biblical teaching as it would show off my figure for men to leer at) and promise that I would never use lipsticks or paint my nails.
I was already bored with him and whittling down communication. It wasn’t a big loss.
My second suitor was pushing 40 when I was not yet 19. I hadn’t met with him nor spoken with him before he went to my parents to ask for my hand in marriage as is common here. If my parents agreed, chances are that even if I didn’t want to, they could pressure, threaten, or talk me into it.
Meeting my parents did not work so he came to me. If I accepted him, chances are my parents would as well, or I may get pregnant outside of wedlock and that would be shameful and scandalous.
When my suitor found me at the university to introduce himself, he thought I should know him because he had met my parents.
“No,” I told him, blankly.
“They never mentioned me?”
“No”
“But I was at your house and met your parents,” He insisted
“I don’t know you, sir,” I told him
“Well, it is true and you are nice,” he told me.
“Okay.”
“Your mother is the rudest woman I have ever met in all my life,” he said.
I was confused and angry at the same time. Rude is not a word I have ever heard anyone use to describe my mother.
“I am surprised you seem so calm,” the man continued. “It is a good thing I came to see you because your mother put me off”
Okay.
The man and I spoke well in our Igbo language. He asked if my mother spoke Igbo too. Of course, I told him. She also teaches our language in the Polytechnic.
“Why?” I asked him.
According to the man, he barely spoke any English. Once my mother noticed and heard him say he came to ask for my parents to give me in marriage to him, she refused to speak in our language to him. She only spoke to him in English. She offered no food or drink until he left our home feeling very disrespected and confused.
Was something wrong with my mother? He wondered out loud — more to himself than to me. Why would she be rude to her daughter’s suitor?
A call to my mother later and she acknowledged she had met with the man. That was the last we spoke of that one.
My mother you see, was an outlier as far as marriage was concerned. Education-wise, she pushed herself, something that was not necessary or important for the women of her time. My mother would eventually retire with her doctorate and Phd. She was also a teacher.
Marriage must not have been her priority as she was 28 when she married my father. Her elder sister was 13 when she married her 30+ husband and her youngest sister was 17 when she married her 30+ husband.
In my country, the earlier a woman married, the better for her. Nothing is as important as a woman getting married — quickly, and having her own family. These days, with education, some people make negative noise when a girl less than 18, gets married however, even at 16, the negative noise is still muted as many other people do not have any problem with it.
No one died when a former governor over 60 years of age, married a nine-year-old girl, in Nigeria. This is still standard, especially in the Northern parts of Nigeria. In the Eastern part of Nigeria where I am from, a twelve years old girl, is in preparation for marriage.
In Western Nigeria where I live, 12-year-old girls are working, in prostitution, or doing whatever they can to feed their parents and siblings. It’s just the way it is.
A legal adult in Nigeria, according to our laws, is a person of 18 years and above. When it comes to marriage though, no court is going to convict anyone marrying a minor, as stated by the same laws. This time, the parent’s agreement to their child’s marriage trumps the law.
At seven years of age, Nigerian girls are helping more around the home — cleaning, cooking, babysitting their younger ones, doing laundry, buying food from the market for the family, etc.
I hope that in time, more women will opt to wait until their brains are at least, fully developed before they marry their 50-year-old soulmates.
Until such a time though, when the will of a girl is subject to the decree of her parents at any age, is there anything wrong with the union?
Is a culture where as soon as a girl has seen her first period, has grown breasts, and a man of 50 can walk confidently and say, “I want to marry her” and he will be welcomed with fanfare —is their union wrong?
Thank you for reading. And much thanks to Debra G. Harman, MEd. for the many edits that polished this work.
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