Should African Mothers Be Patient With Their Unmarried Daughters?

 African mothers, then, are in a deep crisis. They immigrated to the United States with the hopes that their daughters would get a good education and fulfill the American Dream. But they never considered that, along with having all that modernity, their daughters would, like the rest of America’s young, empowered women, be so “late” in marriage.

 Granted, African moms are not alone in their hopes. But still, some of them seem particularly affected. What shall they do?

Well, first, they might accept that their daughters have not just a “double consciousness,” as W. E. B. Dubois termed it, but rather infinite consciousnesses, complicating their very blackness. If an upper middle-class girl has one or more African parents, for example, she has likely schooled in the United States or Europe — maybe even a generation after her own parents have.
And she has likely spent a fair amount of time in London via Lagos, a common lifestyle practice for those of formerly colonized African countries. If she has lived down South, say in Texas, for some time, she has likely acquired a George Bush twang for survival sake. If she has taken up a neuroscience residency in Boston (which, of course, she must, if she is African), she might now sound like Matt Damon’s sister. And the minute she wins an accolade in some not-so-diverse department (which, of course, she must, being African), she’ll be labeled the “first African-American” to have done so.
 In short, she is global. If she is living in a melting pot like New York, she is global on steroids. Naturally, global girls outgrow such local traditions as arranged marriages, dowry and bride price, which have not been exclusive to African 

 African moms need to accept that globalism has allowed their daughters to know the world better, and as a result, seek partnerships more wisely. This process of self-determination takes a tad longer to form than setting up an arranged marriage.

 If you’d never match a conservative Christian with a flagrant porn star, it’s not clear why today’s educated woman should edit herself in hopes of attracting a feeble idiot. Yes, she’d be married, but then she’d live only to repress herself for someone else’s ego — and what kind of message would that be for the children?

 You see, dear African moms, global girls need global boys. Not intimidated ones.
We can sit and try to make sense of why one kind of match would work or not work for a global girl, but we must concede that love is messy and unpredictable. Love is not like your daughter’s medical career with a blueprint to follow, or like a GPS map that can calculate the distance between Dar es salaam and Mwanza (i loved this part).
Yesterday’s woman wanted marriage. Today’s woman wants love — and marriage, if it turns out that way. Olivia Pope’s character in the TV series “Scandal” spoke quite unapologetically for today’s woman when she said: “I could probably give all this up, and live in a country house and have babies and be normal. I could. But I don’t want to. I’m not built for it. I don’t want normal and easy…and simple. I want…painful, difficult…devastating…life-changing…extraordinary love.”(we all do, atleast i admit i do,,wierd eeh?)

 Extraordinary love? Sometimes, dear African moms, that process is just a little more complicated than marrying your cousin like in the 18th century. So, you’ll just have to be patient."