"Don't Bring Us A White Woman for a Wife"

“At the farewell feast, my parents and other relatives piled me with advice, instructions on what to do, what not to do.

            ‘Make sure you don’t bring us a white woman for a wife,’ Auntie Eteti said. Her face bore a mischievous expression, a look that implied I was the sort of rebel to surprise her and other relatives by taking a Caucasian bride. Everybody fixed yes on me, reading my reaction.

            ‘What have white women ever done to you?’ I asked my aunt, laughing.

            ‘Did you hear me say they did anything to me?’ she said.

‘Don’t you think there are good white women?’

‘I am sure they are,’ she answered. ‘Every people have good and bad women. But we want a wife whose tongue we can understand.’

Eleti was the only one of my father’s siblings without a scintilla of formal education. She spoke no English, even though—like most Nigerians—she understood a few basic words of the language. I sensed that her stipulation that I not marry a woman with a foreign tongue was not exclusively—or even primarily—about language. Her concern was much deeper: she didn’t want me to have a wife who would disdain or reject the bonds of kinship she and other kinsfolk considered sacrosanct.

I promised not to bring home a wife she would not approve of.

‘Ehen!’ she exclaimed, relieved.”

Okey Ndibe

Never Look An American in the Eye, 2016, p. 33.