KWENU! Our culture, our future

Save our sisters

CRYSTAL OMOIFO

New Jersey

Sunday, January 28, 2007

“Let’s talk about the hidden pressures that are driving families to this point of insanity.”

On January 4, 2007, someone brought this to my attention: Another Najia woman (Nurse) killed by her husband. The Washington Post staff writers wrote on Tuesday, 1/2/07: A Burtonsville woman was found slain inside her home early yesterday, and police arrested her estrange husband last night after a frantic search for the man and the couple’s three young children that ended in a brief car chase…. Emeruwa, 41, will be charged with first-degree murder. Her name is Ochulo.

In Lagos, Nigeria, I was twelve years old when I witnessed a man brutally chop a woman to death with a machete. It was a horror that will forever remain with me. When I read the article from The Washington Post, even though I didn’t know the deceased woman, I felt like I had seen this before. Husbands here in America are butchering more and more Nigerian women, and we can no longer ignore the precarious marriages in our communities.

The dynamics of Nigerian marriages in America is complex. n the Nigerian culture, mainly traditional, the man repressively rules; even in the 21^st century, women are still struggling to raise their voices. This orientation is being transposed into the American society and, of course, the result is tragic.

The Nigerian man has yet to learn how to live with an assertive woman; some have resorted to extreme violence to control her. The rate of domestic violence in Nigerian families in America is alarming. Someone might say why don’t these women leave? It is that not simple. There are several mitigating factors. At the first sign of trouble, all fingers point to the woman, making her feel ashamed for even voicing out that the marriage was in trouble; lack of support from a community that is denial, cultural and religious beliefs, friends that would ostracize the woman rather than offer support; family members that would rather preserve the institution than protect the woman’s life, and the pressure on the woman to make it work at all costs. Some have had to pay with their lives.

I write because I know several women at breaking points. We are in our 30s, 40s and 50s, highly educated, work laboriously to sustain our families, and yet afraid to speak on the unjust treatments from our spouses. Outwardly, we don smiling faces, but are drained emotionally and spiritually. A friend said this, “When we go to parties, we come garbed in the most colorful attires. We shout when we dance. We not only dance to the music, but also dance to the drums in our aching hearts. And when it is over, we go back to our private hell.” We have tears in our eyes, but afraid to shed them else our pretentious life would be exposed.

The women at the highest risk are the ones who have been sold into a sort of slavery disguised as marriage. These are women married to men who live in America, likely to have divorced an American woman, goes to Nigeria to remarry. They most likely seek out a professional woman, especially in the medical field. The rationale behind this is to get a woman with a good potential of bringing in high income (nurses who can work double or triple shifts, doctors, pharmacists, or lawyers). While living the American dream, made possible by her income, the men forget one thing, economic wealth brings empowerment. The husband who now carries a sense of entitlement over the woman’s existence is in shock when she begins to assert herself; it is tantamount to a slap on his face. He cannot take it and goes for her jugular. These men who have refused to embrace the ideologies of a progressive society are like timebombs, waiting to detonate. I write because the women in these precarious marriages who cannot leave for reasons best known to them need to develop a method to manage this madness if they want to stay alive. Best of all learn to control their tongues.

I write because no child should see his or her mother or father in handcuffs, or mourn the death of one parent by the hands of another parent. Ochulo is dead; Emeruwa goes to jail. What happens to the three children? If there are no relatives in America, these children may end up in the foster system. This causes me to shudder.

I abhor the actions of Emeruwa and others like him, yet I empathize with them. The Nigerian man in America is in constant turmoil. His existential anxieties could be overwhelming; he faces pressures from here and Nigeria. He is expected to build a mansion that surpasses his father’s or the next Johnbull and at the same time maintain a home next to the Jones in America. He is expected to care for his nuclear family here and the extended in Nigeria; the demand often causes him conflicting priorities. He wants to show his peers that he can afford an ostentatious lifestyle when he’s really up to his neck in debt.

The Nigerian boy-child has been raised on pedestal, more so if he’s the first male; everyone caters to his needs. He comes to America and faces a kind of discrimination that nothing in his experience ever prepared him for; he distressfully finds out in a short time that he is perceived as any Tyreek Jackson from the hood, until he proves himself. Unfortunately for him he cannot share comradeship with his African-American brothers because he’s not as passionately involved in the struggles of the aftermath of slavery. He goes back and forth to Nigeria, the only place he can be himself. He receives a royal treatment; maids, servants, chauffeurs, beckon to his call. The exchange rate of the dollar makes anything possible in Nigeria. The girls are ever so tempting; she’s ready to give him any pleasure of his choice. He is at a state of euphoria until he returns to America where no one really cares if he has a title or what rank he places in his family tree.

He has to take out the garbage like everyone else. He cannot commit to where his lives because he believes his American house is temporary, so he neglects to invest in his neighborhood. He doesn’t participate in block parties, PTA or neighborhood associations. He is a stranger in the community in which he has lived for the past ten years and would probably live for another ten. He does not understand his America-born children; they speak a different language. And him who has never cultivated a co-partnership relationship with his wife, or how to be openly affectionate without being labeled a woman-wrapper is left to carry these burdens alone. I feel for the Nigerian-born man; at the end of the day his innate desire is to validate what his culture has trained him to be. No wonder he snaps when his wife tries to introduce an authenticity that does not meet the traditional role of a woman.

I did not know Ochulo, yet her death is call to all of us to address the issues in our marriages. Instead of gathering in meetings to talk about Nigerian politics, let’s talk about the hidden pressures that are driving families to this point of insanity.

14 January 2007

Editor’s Notes: “Brothers, defuse,” a piece published on www.kwenu.com on 21 January 2007, made extensive reference to the then unpublished article above. Due to readers' demand, and to enhance the debate on this critical issue, we herewith publish the article in it entirety.

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