1 Ill Marry When I Wan (2/2)

I once asked an African man what contribution he would say he made to the American society after 20 years in America. He snapped, ”I did not come here to contribute any s.h.i.+t. I came here to make money.” He has a house in his hometown of Mbaino in which he would never spend up to

I'll Marry When I Want

200 days from now till he dies. He had been sending money home ever since he started working, and the demand has only increased. His children understand bits of his mother tongue but cannot say water without p.r.o.nouncing the letter t. To him, he is accomplished.

I respect the man's idea of accomplishment. But my idea is a little wider. I want to marry who I want, when I want and how I want. I want to graduate from preaching. I want to advance to that di cult practical level where I have to implement what I preach. I want to try to establish that ideal African family we have been ghting for. Because that is the frontline of this battle of America, their America.

The other day, looking at America, their America and all these battles that African men and women face in this land, I e-mailed the African woman I hope to marry. In my letter I stated my creed. Here are extracts:

”My dear, I am writing this from the very bottom of my heart. I was touched yesterday when you said I had changed. It wasn't because you were right, rather, it was because I had been debating the very opposite... While a part of me may be half-dead, a signi cant part is still half born. I don't know what is dying but I do know what is being born. The labour of its birth has been going on for so long. Sometimes, I cry for a stillbirth, rather than an endless pain of labour without any fruit.

”...Sometimes I see myself as rewood. I see myself trapped inside the three-legged metal that holds the pot in the chimney area of the kitchen. I notice the coal underneath me. I feel their warmth - their simmering. I could see Mama picking the grains of rice, was.h.i.+ng them, and getting them ready for cooking. But being a very dry rewood, I catch re. I start burning before Mama is ready. Question: How do I learn to simmer until Mama is ready?

And what if Mama doesn't intend to cook immediately? Or she chooses to use the microwave?

”...I am looking at a lot of philosophical questions; what good is a road if it will ultimately not lead to happiness? Where did I come from? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? What kind of person do I want to be? How should I live? What really matters? Do I want it to be said that I dreamt? Or that I achieved my dream? That I tried? Or that I accomplished?

”I am undergoing a critical search for meaning. I am trying to respond e ectively to the forces of nature I face. I try to be principled without being an extremist, exible without being brittle. I want to be resigned but not uninvolved. But most importantly, I want to love more than I want to be loved. There had been so many beginnings in my life with so few nishes. I feel like a failure when I know that I have not fulled the duty that comes with my privileges, especially when I feel it is divine in nature. The responsibilities that come with rights. But most importantly, I am ghting to face faith, my faith; and reason, my reason, equally. Finding the balance for these elements is the very ground of my battle.

”... I do not feel that the danger is that I am changing. Rather, it is that I am not. It would have been a sustainable situation if I was not being told that the only way for me to remain the same is to change... I have vowed to follow this story of you and I to the end. I will juggle my obsession, if that is what it is, with my thought. I will develop my images and hold on to my perceptions. I will maintain my attachments and solidify my clinging. To the world, I may be a one-person army ghting a cause of a lifetime. But there will be peace in my grave if once in a while you remember that I love you.”

In other words, I will marry when I want.

<script>