As I write this, another female has come out of the woodwork to claim intimacy with the world’s number one golfer. This brings the tally to 14 but that is like a leisurely stroll when you compare it to basketball great,Chairman of the Board aka Wilt (the stilt) Chamberlain’s total of 20,000 women by the time he was 55; or even when you compare the notches on Mr. Wood s’ club to those of the young lady of 23 who sat next to our own Cheta Nwanze on a bus ride to New York and said she had slept with 50 men in the six years since she lost her virginity. (See Cheta’s blog Sex Education, 234next.com) But this game of numbers is not the most significant thing that has struck me out of all the hoopla about Mr. Woods and his sexual indiscretions.
Here in South Africa, over there in the United States and in our own dear motherland the suggestion has been made, even though tongue in cheek, that Woods committed his first error by marrying a white woman. He should have found himself a black one, African African, African American or African European and none of this embarrassing inconvenience would have occurred. The reason: black women don’t make a fuss about sexual fidelity, they don’t expect it and are far more, “understanding”, I think is the word.
So here is the topic for our debate today, ladies and gentlemen:
The challenge- Black Sisters are more forgiving than their White counterparts. It’s Sunny mamas versus ice princesses. Discuss.
A couple of decades ago, I set myself the task of attempting to define love in polygamous terms. I approached it with the European traditions of courtly love and romance firmly in the background. This is the tradition that dominates most romantic female notions about love the world over, most likely because it does place the woman being wooed on a pedestal. It is a settled matter that in general a Nigerian man who is seen as being too attached to his wife is a butt of ridicule, a woman wrappa. Given this one can understand the attraction of being viewed from a different perspective.
Straining to find a meaning that would elevate and distil the qualities of polygamous love I came up with this theory. A love shared is a love multiplied. The more you give, the more you get. The love you have for one woman does not in any way diminish the love you have for the other three or four.
It is a love that truly appreciates individuality. No need to take affront at the advent of another co wife. After all, it is not personal. Yours is yours, hers is hers.
Don’t look for logic. There isn’t any, even in Elin Nordegren’s culture which says a love shared is a love diluted, debased,dishonoured, and finds no redeeming quality in the concept of group sharing and caring and, does not have the imagination to conceive of the possibility that there might be some redeeming pleasures, even for women, in practicing same.
But I digress....
Logically then, the whole concept of sexual fidelity and the value accorded it in each system of marriage has to be widely variant. One might also consider Asian cultures where arranged marriages are the norm and divorce rates generally lower than in United States. Affection is expected to grow between the couple blossoming possibly into something more passionate at a later stage. The conclusion surely is that love takes many forms, travels different roads to reach its destination. This is so even when that journey can be traced back through European history to its origins there as an institution that was conceived as a proper vehicle for the transfer of property and the perpetuation of wealth among the landed gentry. This is a corollary, perhaps, of the many wives, lots of farmhands’ version of the origins of polygamy.
But I digress again,having meandered down this much beaten path of tracing where love ends and money begins. I must say that a number of Nollywood movies I have watched, do a convincing job of explaining how love and money work. In Hollywood, as in Elin Nordegren’s case, according to news reports from America, a decision to end her marriage to Tiger Woods will be the beginning of a very financially comfortable life, based on what Woods will have to “settle” her with according to the terms of the prenuptial contract and the divorce laws of whichever state she decides to sue in.
In Nollywood though,whether you sue in Lagos or Bayelsa you leave with what you came in with, if you are lucky.Divorce is not a profitable business down in the tropics for women and it is not a surefire thing that marriage is either. So how do the sisters maintain their cool without resorting to cave man tactics with a golf club?
The secret is buried deep.
And you won’t be hearing it from my lips...
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