UPDATED-MY DATE WITH A NIGERIAN

WRITTEN

BY

TAMBU KAHARI.

I did it. I went on a date with a Nigerian and it was the easiest thing on earth. It was like taking candy from a baby. I wanted to know what all the hoopla was about, and if it was true that Nigerian men had a thing for Zimbabwean women. It is true. They do. And it is all about sex.

It appears that when it comes to bedroom activity, Zimbabwean women blow their Nigerian sisters out of the water one hundred times over. There are things that we do, that Nigerian men have never heard of but are quite common place to us. To Nigerian men, being with a Zimbabwean woman is a prestigious thing, a thing of money and envy.  If women were cars, Zimbabwean women would be the latest Mercedes Benzes. That is how much we are in demand.

I found this out by spending half a day with a Nigerian man who fancied me. We met at a conference on racism. I smiled. He assumed the smile was just for him and like men before him, he fell for it. I was surprised. Don’t women smile in Nigeria? I think not. I admit, I did give him special, encouraging smiles. His accent was so thick that when he spoke, no one understood him. I had two choices. I could smile at him and nod my head encouragingly so that he wouldn’t feel bad, or I could break some dry sticks in front of him to show him that his English was completely mangled.   I chose to smile.

He took my phone number from my registration and by the time I got home, I had ten calls from him. I finally talked to him the following day and he told me that my smile had brought him to his knees.

His name was very long so I am going to shorten it to Ogi. That was all I could remember. He wanted to come over the next day, being Sunday, after church. I agreed.

When he called me the next day, we were just finishing brunch. He asked me if I had also cooked his share. If he wasn’t on the other end of the phone, I would have slapped him silly.

Note to African men: Some women don’t want to cook for you.

When I replied in the negative, he asked if I had cooked African food. I said to him very slowly. “I am not fond of what you call African food. Southern African food is very much international. West African food is very African and I am not used to it. So, no, I don’t cook African food, in your context. I cook it in my context. To me spaghetti and mince meat is African food.”

I don’t quite think he believed it, because unfortunately for me, he brought it up again during the date.

I asked him to drive me to IKEA because I was decorating my home. For those of you who don’t know what IKEA is, it is a cheap furniture store. We spent the better part of two hours looking for cheap curtain rails. He told me that he was a robotic engineer. He was 42 years old and was recently divorced from his white wife. He didn’t talk like someone who had seen the doors of school for very long, and so, I didn’t believe him.

He was a skinny man, short, dark and with West African features. No offence to my Nigerian brothers and sisters. I am just saying our features are very different. He wanted us to go to his apartment. In fact, it became quite an obsession as soon as we exited the store. I refused, He insisted. I insisted on not going. He said his home had wild and exciting things. I said, no thanks. I said people’s homes bore me. He said he would buy booze and mentioned some expensive brands, all of which I hated. I said unless he could make a perfect appletini and a sex on the beach, he could count me out. He went on about how we would buy this expensive booze and go and drink at his place. I was suspicious that he had more than drink on his mind and frankly, I wasn’t going to go there. I wasn’t attracted to him. So, I put my foot down, like a good Shona woman. I told him that if he insisted on having his way, that was fine. I would walk from his home to mine. He decided my idea of going to a bar was better than watching my behind as I went to my place.

As we sat in the dingy bar, and it was dingy people, I immediately began my research. But, first I told him that I usually wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like that. A girl has standards. He ignored me. I was miffed. But, I had a job to do for the Saladmag, so I got on with it.

“What do you know about Zimbabwean women?” I asked.

“I know that you drink a lot. You really, really, drink. Zimbabwean women are very quiet. They don’t yell or scream or anything. They are so quiet you can forget they are there. But, I don’t understand my friends and their love for Zimbabwean women. My friend has a Zimbabwean girlfriend. He is obsessed with her. He is always saying, “Gina this, Gina that.” I don’t understand it because you are very quiet.”

“I drink a lot,” I said. “I talk a lot too. I know we can be very quiet, it is our culture.”

He immediately went into the sex. “Zimbabwean women have a reputation of being good in bed. In fact, they drive men crazy. My friend forgets about his wife and everything for Gina. Gina always comes first. We joke about Gina from Zimbabwe. Every time they are together, Gina is picking up his phone. My friend doesn’t even care that his wife might be on the other line. Are you good in bed?”

I said, “Well, when you have the honour of sleeping with one of us, look me up and tell me if we are good in bed.” I knew that I was not going to be the one for him.

Ogi was very excited.  He wouldn’t get off the sex topic. “Do you women take it from behind?”

“What do you mean?” I was confused. Did he mean the style of sex from behind or anal sex?

“Do you take it from behind? That is my favourite.” He was excited like a little boy who had just discovered the most amazing dessert. “Come to my house?”

He reached out and started pawing me. He would grab my knees and lock them between his as he begged me to come to his house because it was more comfortable than the bar. He then  suggested another drink as I removed his hands from my knees and he promptly put his hands on my shoulder for a hug.

I visibly cringed. I believe West Africans are over emotional. They have little self control. He went crazy. He kept asking me to come to his house to talk about sex. I felt he wanted to do sex and I wasn’t having that. He would breathe in my ear and I would keep pushing back. I barely touched my ” sex on the beach” because he was in my personal space.

Eventually he noticed that I was almost falling off my chair . He asked me if it was against my culture to be touched in public and I jumped on that excuse. I don’t think I was lying. We are not people who display affection too much in public.

In between begging me to come home with him, he would ask sex questions. “Do you learn how to have sex? Is it an institutionalized thing to learn how to have sex? Do you get circumcised? ”

I could not get him off the topic. And so, I got pissed and decided to stop research 101.

“I need to go home.” I insisted. I had had enough.

“Please come to my house. My friend is so excited about his Gina.”

“No, I really have to go home.”

And so our date of just drinks ended. I will not be repeating the experience.

I cannot finish this article without comparing Nigerian men with Zimbabwean men. How could I not? It would not be me.

There was a cultural disconnect that turned into a communication barrier. We were not on the same wavelength, not even by a bit.

I don’t mind discussing sex with a Zimbabwean male. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable because they don’t lose control.

To Zimbabwean men, sex is a topic that is very comfortable to discuss with a woman. It is not something that will have him going stiff in that part of his body. It takes a little more than that to arouse them.

With Ogi, it felt dirty, disgusting somehow. He got too excited and wouldn’t get off the topic as if it was taboo in their culture.  His eyes got all big and round, he started breathing way faster than was decent and I had to pry his hands off my body constantly.

It was exhausting.

I didn’t want to talk about sex with him.

With a Zimbabwean male you are guaranteed a good debate about anything in the world.

It seemed to me that Ogi had never thought of having a discussion with a woman that had anything to do with politics, the weather, or current affairs.

At this moment I must admit that I wasn’t in the company of a higher breed of Nigerian males.

I also know that not all Nigerian men are the same.

Please, don’t write me letters protesting.

I know.

Ogi seemed to not quite respect me. If he was respecting me, it seemed lost in translation.  We were having some awful cultural barriers and most of them were mine.

I thought he was inferior to me. I couldn’t help it. He was dirty, at least by my Zimbabwean standards.

I didn’t think he was clean enough to touch me.  He wasn’t as clean as a Zimbabwean male of his calibre would be. There were definitely some hygiene problems. His teeth were awful. They were dirty and rotten. I hated that. I have a fetish for teeth.

I wanted to colonize and civilize him. There. That is the truth. I was so engrossed by the physical, cultural and social differences that I failed to appreciate the man within.  That is my failing.

I think all in all, Ogi was a very nice man. He respected my wish not to be touched without an argument. He paid for the drinks and when I stopped at a supermarket to get some fruit he paid for that too. Of course, any African man would do that too. It is expected of them all.

He tried to make me laugh, to make me feel comfortable and there was  a moment when we were actually in sync. He lost his car in the parking lot. After an hour of hunting for it, I found it and he denied it was his car. He was serious too. I insisted he use his car keys and they worked to open the car. When we got inside, there were his things.

With another man there would have been a temper tantrum. He was very even tempered and we laughed at each other and ourselves with ease.

I did not feel in any danger in his company, so I know he put his best foot forward.  Any Nigerian girl would be very lucky to have him.

Just not ME.

HERE IS AN UPDATE ON MY DATE WITH OGI.

CIRCUMCISION: My conversation with Ogi

If there was one point of the conversation when I practically squirmed, it was when Ogi and I were discussing circumcision. He asked me if women in Zimbabwe were circumcised.

In horror, I replied in the negative. I said, “We don’t mess with what God gave us.”

He frowned and asked, “You mean you still have a clitoris?”

I nodded emphatically. Given that my clitoris has served me well over the years, I intend to keep it where it is.

“But, it is dirty!!” he exclaimed in shock.  He shrunk away from me. He was touching me all the time, except at that point. Frowning, he sat back and stared at me in disgust.

“It is dirty!”

I was quite flustered. Never had I heard anyone tell me that my vagina was dirty because it still had a God given clitoris. I was lost for words because this was the first time I was meeting a man from a culture of female genital mutilation.

“What is so dirty about it,” I asked, stunned.

He shrugged, visibly controlling himself. I thought he was going to vomit or something worse. “It just is.”

“Well, our men are not circumcised either,” I said defensively. “We do not seek to cause pain in the genital area.”

“And you accept that?” he asked.

“Why not? There is no difference to me between a circumcised penis and a non circumcised one.”

He gaped at me.

“Obviously there is a difference to you between a woman with a clitoris and one without one,” I observed.

“It is dirty.” He said again.

He gave me this look that said if he could, he would “clean” me at once.

Here is my biggest issue.

Why was he still wanting to sleep with me afterwards when he knew I had an intact clitoris?

How do Nigerian men sleep with us?

Surely, the fact that I have a clitoris makes me more excitable about sex?

Is that not the reason Nigerian men would sell their mothers to get to us?

If I were a Nigerian woman, I would give this some serious thought before I allowed my daughter to be mutilated.