The Lifestyles of Nigeria’s Foreign Wives

In a hospital in Enugu, a Venezuelan is midway into labour when the power fails. Fortunately, her husband’s mobile phone is handy and he turns on its light. It is by this light that the woman delivers a baby girl. Venezuelan Katiuska Rios, previously accustomed to uninterrupted power supply, never imagined she would give birth […]

In a hospital in Enugu, a Venezuelan is midway into labour when the power fails. Fortunately, her husband’s mobile phone is handy and he turns on its light. It is by this light that the woman delivers a baby girl.

Venezuelan Katiuska Rios, previously accustomed to uninterrupted power supply, never imagined she would give birth by the light of a mobile phone in an Enugu hospital. But that was exactly what happened.

For an average Nigerian woman, this is not a very unusual occurrence for Katiuska it was “quite an experience.”

Yet, there are many women like Katiuska, married to Nigerian men who are living in different parts of the country:Abuja, Kaduna, Port Harcourt and even Jos. They come from all corners of the world as well.

Because they are considered racially “white” they always stand out in a crowd in the market, at hospitals and at social gatherings. Yet they strive to live a normal life. But calls of “oyibo” or “baturiya” often stand in the way because of the way people relate to them.

Their yearning for acceptance in the place they have chosen to make their home is challenged by many things, one of which is their skin colour. Suzanne Maduka (not real names) is a native of The Netherlands. She has been living in Nigeria for seven years with her husband. She said being addressed as oyibo does not, in the least, please her.

“I think it is racist,” she says. “Though I am conscious that it is not intended to be that way, it is making me conscious of my skin colour. Why must you make me conscious of my skin colour when I don’t make you conscious of yours?”

Surprisingly, this sentiment is shared by most of the women who spoke to Sunday Trust. Most of them have retreated into themselves. It is not easy getting them to agree to an interview and many only consented if their names and certain personal details are not published.

In whatever culture or country marriage is a challenge. But for these women, the challenges are manifolds. One person with a deep understanding of these challenges is Professor Kanchana Ugbabae of the University of Jos. She is an Indian married to an Idoma man and has been living in Nigeria the last 30 years.

She has had occasions to write about cross-cultural marriages, drawing from her experience. When approached, she referred me to her article in a book Seasons of Life edited by Elizabeth Gyuse (New Life Publication, Jos, 2001). In her piece titled “Married Cross-culturally” Prof. Ugbabe identifies three phases these women pass through.

The first, she says, is in the early years during which the woman gives up everything to adjust and be accepted. Having met her husband over three decades ago in faraway Australia as foreign students, Prof. Ugbabe recounts giving up her live as she had known it to “take great risk and haul [herself] into unknown territories.”

She was born and bred a Hindu and found her faith at odds with her new environment and circumstance. She gave it up and took up her husband’s (Christianity). She made other efforts as well. “I started wearing wrappers, single and double, tried my hand at head-ties and learned to cook Benue soups with unfamiliar ingredients,” she writes.

Katrina Sabo (not real names) lives in Kaduna with her Nigerian husband of 35 years. She is from an Eastern European nation and met her husband (who is from Nigeria’s Middle Belt) in 1972 when she was a student.

“I have learnt to understand and speak Nigerian languages, which enables me to relate with my family and friends better. I generally enjoy eating Nigerian cultural cuisine and I cook a number of such dishes, I equally enjoy wearing Nigerian cultural attires occasionally,” she says.

Suzanne has a similar experience. She loves trying out traditional fabrics but uses them to sew things she is accustomed to wearing.

For Katiuska, it is always positive when her traditional wears are appreciated. “It is always positive when people say, oh it’s nice. I feel so happy.” She has also been learning Igbo, her husband’s language. She is not fluent but she could get by and, in many instances, this has helped in public places.

All these efforts the women are making to feel accepted in a home that is very, very far from the homes they are used to. The importance of being accepted is summed up by Suzanne who says: “I found it very important. Very important. I think it is important for your family that you are accepted and for your husband also.”

Tough Choices

Three decades back, Kanchana, was a regular Indian girl who lived a regular Indian life. But then she went to Australia to study and her life had never been the same since. She met a Nigerian student in a University in Adelaide and they became friends, then fell in love and decided to get married after a three-year courtship.

She was torn between her parents and her love. “I threw caution to the wind and opted for love,” she writes. That love brought her to Nigeria, an “unknown territory.”

But in Nigeria she still had to make tough choices. She gave up her Hindu beliefs and her vegetarian diet on which she had been all her life to start eating meat and fish. She has managed well for three decades now.

In Katiuska’s case, she met her husband, Gandi Obiefule in her native Venezuela, an oil-rich South American nation, while she was working as a journalist in Caracas, the capital. They dated for a year and one morning, he woke her up with a ring and asked her to marry him – after his usual morning devotions.

She agreed and came down to Nigeria to meet his family, after he had met hers and they had approved. The wedding took place in Enugu with a reception in Venezuela.

“I still remember it. People say it is the best wedding in Enugu, but I don’t know why,” she says laughing.

That was a decade ago and they have been living in the country ever since. Leaving her family was not the only difficult choice she had to make. When she was pregnant with her first daughter, she was moved to London to learn English and enjoy the medical services there. She decided to come back and have her child in Nigeria. She is glad she made that choice, she says.

In the case of Katrina, she met her husband in a university while they were studying in in the old Soviet Union. He is Muslim and she is Christian. They dated for several years and decided to tie the knot. But under the strict communist rule of the time, she had to apply for permission to marry a foreigner. Having to deal with the authorities was one thing; dealing with her immediate family was another.

“But, my family completely rejected the idea; they were shocked that I would agree to marry my husband and refused to give their blessings till long after we were married. It took them awhile to come round to the idea of my union with my husband, but with time they were able to see for themselves that he was a good man who genuinely loved me and who took care of his family,” she says.

It was easier with her friends, though, because some of her fellow students had already married foreigners and had seen her relationship with her husband blossom.

Suzanne, on the other hand, has been used to travelling. She was born in Barcelona, Spain, to Dutch parents and was bred in The Netherlands.  She had been working internationally for sometime before she met her husband, an international businessman, in a Kenyan boardroom. Their business relationship soon turned to love and they decided to marry after three years. They had a civil wedding in London and the church wedding in The Netherlands due to some difficulties.

“Because going through the paperwork in The Netherlands to marry a Nigerian was far too complicated and he already had a British passport, so it was easier to marry in London,” she says.

The fact that her husband had experienced living in a foreign country and being looked at differently helped Suzanne make up her mind.

“My husband had lived in Europe. He is conscious of being looked at differently and he asked me do I want that, can I live with it,” she recounts.

But for much of their efforts to feel accepted, Professor Ugbabe says foreign wives have a second phase that follows the initial euphoria. It is a complete swing back: the realisation that one is a “baturiya” and would always remain one. She says this comes much later in life.

“This is the period when one retreats into himself and says to the world ‘You make the adjustment.’”

According to her, women passing through this phase experience “identity crisis” where they see the world in terms of “them” and “us”. At this point the women try to draw their husbands into their personal enclave. And for those who manage to cross this difficult period, Prof. Ugbabe says there is a third phase where things level off because the woman has acquired “the wisdom and tolerance of age.” This is when they accept their husbands’ extended family as truly their own. But that is for women who endure that long.

Culture shock

Katrina had her expectations about Nigeria and Nigerians when she first came to the country. She says she was “expecting worse than what I found when I came to Nigeria.”

Her major surprise, however, was this: “The main aspect of my husband’s culture that really surprised me was the issue of polygamy and large extended families. This surprised me because I hail from a monogamous background we were small and tight family units.”

Over the years, her husband has had to resist the prompting by some relatives and friends to take a second wife, something that Katrina is completely unused to.

However, she is not the only one perplexed by certain Nigerian customs. Suzanne, too, has had her experiences. The practice of Igbo men building houses in the village they hardly live in is one of them.

“The house in the village has to be built, which doesn’t make any sense to me,” she says. And of course there is the practice of people she is not familiar with wanting to carry her children or take pictures with them.

She also finds the custom of women stooping to serve their husbands rather strange.  Katiuska also shares that sentiment. She does not understand men sitting down and asking their wives to get water from the fridge when they could easily reach it themselves.

“Women work a lot here. There, somebody will help you carry your things and open doors for you,” she says.

“Everything here revolves around the church. The second question is to which church do you go and based on that, if you go to the same church, we are immediately friends. I don’t know why that has to be so,” Suzanne wonders.

The importance of having children and Nigerian parents’ preoccupation with seeing their grandchildren has not been lost on these women who come from places with different mindsets.

“I think here you have more traditional things like to have a baby immediately after marriage and to have many children. If you don’t have a baby boy you have to have a baby boy. There are many things that get me confused here. It’s what God has given me that I am happy with,” Katiuska says.

When Suzanne was first introduced to her mother-in-law she too noticed the uncertainty her mother-in-law expressed concerning her desire to have children. “My husband’s mother was very worried because I didn’t want to have kids. I’m a career woman. But she’s happy that we have three.”

These women may find these demands and practices strange considering the climes they are coming from. It may also have to do with the way marriages are viewed in their various countries.

In Venezuela for instance, Katiuska says marriage has evolved from what it used to be in the past.

“Before we had a different perception but now it’s different. Before it was important to marry and have children and to marry at a young age. But now, from the 90s, things have changed. Women prefer to work and get their own things,” she says.

Suzanne too has noticed the way marriage is considered in Nigeria especially with regards to women. “In Nigeria it’s definitely important to be a married woman instead of not being married because you won’t have any respect. Secondly, a married woman with children. I feel sometimes for women who are not married.”

No doubt marriage is highly regarded in all Nigerian cultures and there is an emphasis on having children. But the patriarchal nature of Nigerian societies is not lost on her as well.

“I think here men are considered more important. If they want to show me respect they call me sir, and I say, hello, do you see the difference?” she laughs.

However, she acknowledges that they knew things would be different and the bottom line is for the couple to appreciate each other’s culture. “It is important that your husband appreciates your culture and respect your boundaries. You cannot marry a person without respecting their culture as well. You don’t have to take everything but you have to appreciate.”

The children

Bringing up children is a challenge. Bringing up mixed race children comes with its own set of challenges. But where their mothers stagger through life like exiles in their own homes, the children easily adapt to life in Nigeria. Being born and bred in Nigeria and not being used to any other place makes it easier for them to accept Nigeria, with its many inadequacies, as their home compared to their mothers.

“They are without conflict, at least that is my experience with our children,” Prof. Ugbabe notes about her three children, all now fully grown. “They fit easily into the world they have grown up in, whatever the hardship may be. They may have a stronger sense of belonging to their father’s culture. While we alien wives complain bitterly about the lack of water in the taps and the electricity cut, the children happily carry buckets of water and play by candlelight.”

This development, she adds, may affect the relationship between parents as the children and their tolerance to the lack of amenities and closeness to the extended family are more in tune with the father, causing the mother to feel more isolated.

The mothers, not used to the shortage of social services, have a tendency to protect the children from being passed round from one relative to the other. And while some of them look forward to trips to their husband’s villages, they are apprehensive about their health and their children’s.

Like Ugbabe noted, the children grow into the consciousness of who they are but they are also conscious of the mixed races they come from. Suzanne’s children for instance would often ask if a relative mentioned in conversation is white or black.

When I asked her if her children are conscious of their mixed race she says, “I think they are conscious because they call themselves light brown but it doesn’t come with judgement. It’s just the recognition that you have different colours.” But she adds that they are not at all confused about their nationality. “They know Nigeria is their country.”

Katrina’s three children were exposed early to the fact that they are of two races but the fact that the parents practiced different faiths was yet another angle to the situation. One of her daughters, Salene (also not real name), 32, explains: “I definitely went through a phase when I was very young (give or take from when I was 5-10) that I used to get confused when people would call me names from both sides. I didn’t understand why but in time I learnt that most of the people that did this were ignorant and generally didn’t know better.”

She also explained that her parents, being intellectuals, were very open and exposed the children to the facts about life and gave them the freedom to consider both faiths and chose individually whichever one suits them.

Growing up in Nigeria, Salene understands the many classifications of people: racial, tribal, religious, political etc and thus she takes whatever classification is made of her in her stride. “I am comfortable in my own skin and as I mentioned earlier, people will always refer to each other making references to a number of things…” she says.

Apart from her parents love and understanding, growing up in a community with a large number of “Niger wives” no doubt helped Salene and her siblings.

Katiuska’s children hovered about while I spoke to her. They played happily and chorused “Spanish” when I asked their mother what language she and her husband communicated in.

Languages are a major source of concern for parents in cross-cultural marriages. Katiuska’s children don’t speak Spanish; neither do they speak Igbo very well. Her first daughter had stayed a while in Venezuela so has a basic grasp of Spanish. She plans to take them on an extended holiday there so they could have a better understanding of the language. But their father, Mr. Obiefule is worried they don’t speak Igbo at all, Katiuska says. Special arrangements have to be made for their tuition.

Suzanne too has a similar difficulty. Her children have a basic grasp of her native Dutch and they take weekend classes to learn Igbo.

What is obvious is that the children are exposed to a variety of cultures as both parents want to impress something from the world they know on them so the children end up jumping from Igbo tutors to ballet teachers.

A different life

For these foreign wives, life in Nigeria has opened doors into a different life from what they are used to. The challenges of day-to-day living aside, some of them have found life in Nigeria interesting.

For Katiuska, it is the simplicity of life here that has appealed to her. “People are more simple here. Yes, I’m happy here. My life has changed a lot since we came to Nigeria; they have shown me many positive things here.”

But despite the appreciation of the simplicity of Nigerian lives, there is a sense of unease that pervades these women. The hardship here is eased by financial security without which they admit life would not be the same.

“You don’t want to be a poor person in Nigeria, let me be very clear. Now I have my freedom, live in Abuja, have the opportunity to fly out. If you are a poor person in Nigeria life will be very hard and if that happens then I would rather be in the Netherlands and enjoy all the social services,” Suzanne says.

She however admits there is a “more in-depth quality of life, something I don’t see in my sisters. People have more time for each other here. But I do miss a lot of culture [theatres, ballets etc] a lot of sports association and the exposure of my children to that.”

Essentially it is about making adjustments. Suzanne had to make adjustments to accommodate house helps and nannies and drivers into her “personal space” and Prof. Ugbabe had to make concessions on her privacy in terms of her possessions when she understood that “Nigerian culture is centred around people not possessions.”

But the single thing that runs through all these women is a strong love that has made them cross the oceans and cultural barriers to find happiness in a strange land, with their husbands. It is obvious in Katiuska’s eyes when she says, “I am here because of love.”

But Kanchana Ugbabe says it better: “It is only love that can take you out of your neatly ordered, familiar environment to take greater risks, and haul you into unknown territories.”

But no matter how much they are loving life in Nigeria, there will always be the odd things that they just can’t get used to.

“What I don’t like here, I can tell you: electricity problem,” Katiuska says laughing. When she delivered her second daughter by the light of her husband’s mobile phone it was quite a phenomenon and she had toyed with the idea of naming the child “NEPA or Nokia or Light.” Fortunately she didn’t and still has fond memories of that night.

“For me it was an experience because nothing bad happened,” she says.