Part one
This same question re-emerged recently as I analyzed the travails of an African woman named Nkechi (Not her real name) Before Nkechi came to America, she was a African trained professional working at a leading financial institution in Africa. She was one of the African growing yuppie population- wealthy, young and influential. Then she paid her way to America to marry her college sweetheart. That was where the fairy-tale ended and the nightmare began.

I am using Nkechi’s story to illustrate my confusion because hers is a common story that replays itself all over the Western World. Nkechi and her husband are professionally accomplished. The man is in a private practice while Nkechi works for the state. They have two kids but the quality of their lives and their marriage is nothing to write home about. Emotional, verbal, and physical abuses are the order of the day. The entangled web of name calling, accusations and quarrels stretched from Lagos to London and down to Las Vegas. Each day, the list of enemies on both sides keeps increasing. Nkechi has given up hope that he would change. She remains in the marriage she says because of the kids. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a time when it was good. On his part, the husband sees Nkechi as a clog on his wheel. The battle ranges from bill payment to child care.

As part of my research for this piece, I asked a female colleague of mine what she wanted as a woman. She used a thirty minute story to say that she wanted a man- a man with good heart, one who is educated, nice looking and wealthy. I asked her why and she responded that she wanted those conditions met for her to be happy. With that, I got her to say the magic word- happy. I had always assumed that women, just like men want to be happy. But it has been obvious that mine was a too simplistic view of life.

Nkechi is not happy. She got her educated, nice looking man but one that has not got a good heart. Like Nkechi, many modern African women in America are not happy. This includes those who are married and those who are single. They are not happy because they have not gotten what they wanted. To some, what they desire is looking more like what they deserve. To others, they are being force to confront the confusion in getting what we want and the other confusion in not getting what we want. For many, it has remained difficult for them to see that what they know they are is more important than what people think they are.

More often than not, what is left out is sincere answer to these pertinent questions: Do women really know what will make them happy? Do they know what they really want? Do they know how to communicate that across to those who will make it happen? Are they the ones who will make it happen? Does it all begin inside them before it gets outside? Are women looking at the wrong places? Is what women ought to want different from what they do want?

I have tried to pose these questions to Nkechi but the conflicts in her life have not let her pause to ponder all these. She once came close to saying that marrying her husband was a mistake. “He was a disappointment,” she concluded. What were her expectations? Where they based in concrete facts or in illusions? Like most African women in America, Nkechi now sees her husband as a jerk. Why is that? Are African men in America more of jerks than their counterparts in Africa? Does it have anything to do with the culture shock that the Western world exerts on the Africa souls? Has the equilibrium shifted? Is there problem in the balancing?

How many African women have partners who persistently criticize whatever they do? Partners who call them names, disregard their thoughts and feelings? Partners who prevent them from going to school, seeing their friends or family, having a job? How many African women have partners who control their finances, pressure them to have sex or get jealous easily? How many African women have partners who threaten to hurt or kill them or their loved ones? Partners who kick, hit, push, choke or throw things at them? How many African women have partners who scare them in any way? How many African women would rather have these kinds of partners than have no partner at all?

Nkechi is one of these African women. She is being abused in every sense of the word. She does not think it is her fault, but she is ambivalence to leaving. She feels ashamed and embarrassed of the abuse. She is not alone. There are many African women in the western world, just in the same position as Nkechi. To these women, they know that help is available but coming from Africa, the kind of help that is available is not the kind that is in rhythm with the dictates of African culture. It is a dilemma that Nkechi faces every day.

At the tail end of his life, Sigmund Freud wrote that he had studied women for 35 years but the only question that he could not answer was “What do women want?” Just like Freud, I profess ignorance of what women want. Personally, I feel that men and women are too busy bashing each other that they have no time to invest in the understanding of themselves. The battle of the sexes looks like an endless one with no side ready to put down their sword. In the western world, women have made substantial progress in life. The question then is whether such progress was in that area which Oscar Wilde called ‘the triumph of matter over mind’?

As I pick up from Blockbuster a copy of Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt’s movie, “What Women want” I hope to finally find the answers.

For Tuwanda though, that would be too late.

As for my friend, Herbert, we never talked about the incident. For a few weeks after, he did not show up too at the Laundromat he used to visit on a daily basis. He never called. Later he returned though without his usual enthusiasm. Our friendship, or what remained of it, survived because we adopted the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.

It has been over ten years since. This month in Atlanta, Herbert will be coming to my book signing. Maybe it is time to ask him abut the incident that happened in the summer of 1997. But will that help me to understand in any way what women want?