‘I am tired of relationships in London; all the guys appear nice until they come really close. Then you realize what a bastard they are. I thought you were going to be good, but you happen to be the greatest bastard of all of them.’ This is what a Ghanaian university administrative staff told me at Middlesex University years ago, when we attempted to try something conjugal. ‘I have made lots of mistakes in my relationships with men since I came here, and if I could reverse time, there are a lot of things I would readily undo,’ she pitifully submitted. As it turned out, she was also a bit of a bitch; she had two birthdays and had refused to grow past age 27 since she turned 34. So, we were not meant to be, to the relief of heaven. It would be the most regrettable amorous venture I would ever pursue in the United Kingdom. She is likely to say the same, wherever she is now.
Even though for many of us the reason for traveling abroad may be generally economic, a lot of us come in with twin hopes: meet a lovely partner and live the happily ever after life. If you didn’t have any serious relationship back home before traveling, it is usually the first thing on your agenda when you get your first letter from your bankers. If you had a relationship before boarding the aeroplane, you are instantly encouraged by the beauty of the surroundings here to drop that local breed and go for a posher western acquainted prospect. The ladies usually hold invincibly to the dream of meeting a gentleman with a very decent job, who also has a good mortgage at a cul-de-sac location in the capital. The strategy is that such guys would have no immigration problems, and when you marry them, you are guaranteed indefinite stay. The men also consider the economic suicide in constantly sending money to a woman back home, when you are not sure of the shape of the head of the unknown rival who might be warming her bed (worse if it is your bed) in your absence. Why bother tracking birds on the tree when one is in the cage in front of you. Cupid can strike anywhere; the nearer the better. Besides, it is too cold here to consider anybody enjoying the warmth in the west coast of sub Saharan Africa.
A Ghanaian gentleman, who made a visa breakthrough after seven unsuccessful applications at the British High Commission in Ghana, decided to shake his feet of all the bad luck in Ghana when his plane touched down at Heathrow Airport. He vowed never to return to Ghana, after escaping the hardships he had endured in Madina, Accra. His determination was made stronger when he fell in love with a British-born Jamaican in South London. When the romance grew really strong after a few months, he wrote to his lady in Ghana, advising her to forget that she ever knew him. As if Abraham was no father of nations, that same week the Jamaican lady caused him to be repatriated to Ghana. On reaching Madina, the first thing he did was to request for the key to the post office box he shared with the girlfriend prior to traveling abroad. He kept the key in his pocket until the letter he had written to her came through. He quietly fetched it and destroyed it before she would see it. Today, they are married with two daughters, but the ears of the first child look exactly like those of the friend who took care of his Ghanaian girlfriend while he was eating chicken and chips with the Jamaican woman who couldn’t cook a thing. Even so, he must thank his stars for post office delays; they saved his love.
The reason why Britain is called the United Kingdom is that many things unite against the immigrant, even in the pursuit of love. The United States of America is even worse, because all the 51 states are united in the Bush, where the White House presently is. By George, it is very difficult in a federation. If it’s Amsterdam or Belgium, you would have to work extra hard to see the glory of God in your love affair, because there are Red Light districts all over. Canada is too cold to warm up to anything romantic. In Italy, you are likely to send tomato leaves as flowers to a girl, because tomato picking is the career of most of the burgers who go bluffing in Ghana. Germany if full of Ghanaian taxi drivers who have made adultery their part-time job. So, it takes a great deal of caution to court and groom love abroad. The buildings are beautiful; so are the people. You often do not know the history behind the beautiful things you see. The beautiful people you meet also have a history behind them. They had to leave their home country for a reason. You would have to dig deep to find out what they are made of before you think of making anything good out of them.
The typical abrokyire life follows a typical pattern: work-home-money transfer and when the Holy Spirit permits, church and back to work. Occasionally, there will be a barbeque or a baby naming ceremony. For those studying, lectures and a few library visits are added to the equation, plus money transfers, even if you work part-time. There isn’t much socialization here, so you don’t get to meet people very often. Communication is usually by telephone and email. People in the same office send each other emails. Over here, things move really fast: you wake up when folks in Ghana are asleep, eat quickly, bath quickly if you live in a shared house, and kiss your partner quickly, so you don’t miss the train to work. By nature, love shouldn’t be rushed; if you court love in such a jet-paced routine, you are likely to make a lot of mistakes. In fact, you may never find it.
But find you will, because the life abroad is very individualistic; people live alone with their cats and dogs. Others work endlessly so they don’t come home to meet an empty house all the time. By the nature of our community-focused upbringing, we are encouraged to be gregarious. So, you often find it difficult to stay alone in the cold. Besides, you have to start a family and folks back home may be piling the pressure when you go past 30 in the case of women, and 35 in the case of men. And sometimes, there is pressure within you to find somebody, if you would be honest with yourself.
The search for a partner takes various forms. You enroll on a course in a university that is populated by ethnic minorities. You hope that by the time you complete your course, you must have bumped into somebody nice. You start looking from the postgraduate block to the undergraduate level, if you believe in catching them young. Soon the year ends and you have to hand in your dissertation and get out of the university. You decide to try the work place and you realize that even though you have a master’s degree, sometimes two degrees, you are doing the same job with people who don’t care about degrees. You have not come this far to marry a checkout girl or a shelf stocker at Tesco or Wall Mart. So you turn to your church, probably the worst place you can find a good person these days. You realise that almost all the 30something year old girls in the church are there for one reason: to find a catch, with or without the approval of the Holy Spirit. They look intently into the eyes of any well dressed gentleman, and when you engage them in a chat, they are skillful enough to bring the subject of marriage up. Yet, if the guy tries making a formal bid, they realize they might have overstepped the bounds of womanly modesty, so they begin to play the woman. The guy finds a straightforward alternative and off he goes. They must have found him too short, but they would later see him marrying a girl taller than them. This is where the marking scheme for Mr. Right begins to see some serious editing. Their motto changes from catch them right to catch and make them right. That way, a guy 5ft. 7in is as good as 6ft 2. The difference is negotiable. They have necessarily become Christians and have signed on to the motto of the Israelites: In Christ, we are equal. A few years ago, she thought she was hottest girl in town.
That is one prospect missed. Of course, more will come. Next, they make a presence on dating websites and chat rooms or get friends to introduce them to any nice single guy. They also tend to fall back on old flames. Usually they would call to check how you are doing. They would call again to ask of the email address of an old friend. A lady who had been playing this ‘affection resurrection’ game with me finally resorted to very unusual tricks. She would lie that she has a job interview and would fancy a mock session with somebody. She would come all polished up, as if she is coming for a real interview in your room. After she has downed a glass of apple juice or cranberry, she would skillfully steer the discussion to the obvious domain: why don’t you call me anymore?
Often the man or the woman looking for love abroad has a marking scheme. If you are as paranoid as me, the first criterion is that the prospect must necessarily have a postgraduate qualification. She would have good curves and is a no-no if she has had a baby from a previous relationship. Some foolish men ask: if she was good enough, the father of the baby would have married her. They forget to ask how good they are themselves. So, you have names of ‘could be’ wives on your mind. Men are like women in many respects: they put down names of their ‘would be’ children on pieces of paper and fantasize about it. A friend of mine actually keeps a list of prospects in his wallet. He judges the future of each of them by their response to the last telephone conversation they had. He strikes you out if you were not particularly engaging. The last time I met him, the first woman on his list had just gotten married in Ghana while he sat in the cold striking names in and out. Now, he has reviewed his marking scheme to reduce the number of degrees and his insistence on a particular tribe. He also doesn’t care about dimples anymore. Well, he hasn’t got a choice; he is been looking for the past five years.
The ladies who keep meeting bastards are those with the kaya-yoo mentality, who go flaunting their bum in search of a successful man who owns two cars, so they would drive the little BMW. The dream of the kaya-yoo girl is to one day meet a decent-looking madam, who would lift the kaya off their heads and take them to a rich home to serve as a maid-servant, so that they can say yoo. The fate of such girls is like the kaya-yoo girl: how many kaya-yoos get to live in a rich home in east Legon? They struggle in Accra central until they return to their home towns or graduate to prostitution at Nkrumah Circle. It is the same with those opportunists: does it not strike them that it is simply against the rules of nature to warm your way into the midst of plenty when you didn’t contribute anything at all? The girl I met at Middlesex was worried that I didn’t have my own house in London. Meanwhile, she had been in the UK for three years before I came, but she still had a solo account and slept on a student bed in a very populated house. Such girls are economic terrorists and they are most of the time not very beautiful. With her untainted beauty and the enormous glory at her bottom, Miss Beyonce Knowles travels across continents, shaking her bootylicious bottom to make money for the future of the relationship she has with Mr. Jay Z. So, if a lady has a bum the size of my palm, and she doesn’t want to help a man towards the buying of a house, then she is a thief.
When the pursuit of love abroad fails, you can always start calling some very old Ghana Telecom or Spacefon telephone numbers you nearly cancelled years ago. You rely on the hope that your abrokyire voice will work the magic for you. A few of them would have found themselves partners, but the economic conditions in Africa are such that many of the old prospects would still be hanging in, with no clear ‘marriage manifesto.’ They will be willing to cross carpet if you are able to undo the old damage with a few words, or when you really mean business, a few pounds. You had sworn that you would never bring a woman from Ghana, judging from the experience the friend next door went through when his moderate-looking Ghanaian wife joined him in London. The woman, who didn’t know much about G-strings, now wears expensive hair extensions and has recently filed for divorce and wants custody of all two children. This had scared you, but you are still holding on to your faith in the saying that ‘ofie ne fie.’
If you were one of those women who considered it naturally odd to waste money to sponsor a man to join you abroad, you would be rethinking your position. You had always thought that they might think you are desperate for a man. And frankly, men do think so most of the time, especially if there was no amorous relationship prior to the venture. When men get good things easily, they don’t take very good care of them, it is almost an established fact. Of course, not all men think this way. The worst thing is when they come in and cheat on you; it is a pain you would share with your grandchildren. But, when it gets to a point where no good thing is happening to a lady of 37 who lives alone abroad, it makes sense to bring somebody up west to help. You only hope it lasts.
Thus far, it seems those who meet bastards and bitches are bastards and bitches themselves. For, that is how it should be. It is very possible to meet a very good person here, if you do your homework well. If there are good men and women in Ghana, there should be good ones here, too. There is a generous representation of all the tribes and religions in Ghana abroad. Over here, you would find very well educated sons and daughters of our noble republic. There are men with great jobs, just as there are beautiful and well brought up women with good jobs, who are just looking for average Ghanaian men to settle with and cook salubrious meals for their ungrateful stomachs. I don’t know how it works out; those women looking for men seem to be out of the coverage area of the signals of the men who are also looking. That is abrokyire, where many things unite against everything. Even so, I do know many successful marriages that were contracted here. I am a Godfather to some three children here in London, and one of them was actually named after me. I never knew I would ever deserve such an honour. Think of what I would have lost if I hadn’t become a born-again Christian.
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