Leave me alone! I am already married....or am I?
on The Road Less Travelled (Cameroon), 27/Jan/2010 10:00, 34 days ago
Being proposed to should a romantic moment forever etched in ones memories as a beautiful occasion of love being professed and reciprocated...not in Cameroon. I receive marriage proposals daily whether they are yelled at me from across the street, asked of me from the man selling me carrots, or requested by my moto-taxi driver at the end of my ride. Definitely not romantic, definitely not memorable and definitely not at all related to love.As a single white girl I am a target for marriage proposals because everyone wants to move to Europe or North America and they see me as their ticket. Little do they know that even if they were to be successful in marrying me, it would still be unlikely they could move back to Canada with me. Canada’s immigration laws make it difficult and expensive for unskilled or under skilled husbands or wives from developing countries to immigrate to Canada. The Canadian sponsor is responsible for supporting their spouse (or relative) financially when he or she arrives. You must be able to show that youhave income sufficient to financially support the spouse for three years from the date they become a permanent resident.In an attempt to reduce the amount of unwanted attention I receive I have began telling people I am already married. When a guy walks up to me on the street and asks for my phone number (they do actually do this) I can politely say that my husband does not like me to give out my phone number and surprise surprise suddenly I am less interesting and the guy walks away. At the bakery when the men who work there try to teach me Fulfulde and they ask me where my family is I can aptly say“Gorko ha sare” which means my husband is at home. I use this sentence frequently in situations at the market, at the banana stand and on the street. It definitely helps to lessen the marriage proposals although some guys don’t care if I already have a husband and are more than willing to still marry me. My landlord for a while kept ‘harassing’ me, he kept stopping by my house to chat, asking me to go over to his house for dinner and inviting me to accompany him to N'Djamena when he travels there to buy stuff, but after I casually mentioned one evening that I didn’t hear him banging on my gate the evening before because I was chatting to my husband who is in Canada, he has stopped bothering me.Caroline and Greg encouraged me to create a back-story about my husband to answer questions I may be asked such as“where is your husband?”, “why didn’t he come with you?”, “how could you come here for two years without him?”So let me start by introducing my fictional husband. Meet Super Spy Michael Westen– based on the character from the television series Burn Notice! He is an international spy working for the special forces. He travels a lot and is currently doing some undercover work somewhere classified. Given he was going to be away for a while, I decided to come here to volunteer. His work prevents him from coming to visit. What I like best about Michael is that he has MacGyver-ish type skills and can make a shotgun out of a twig. He and I really bonded over our mutual fondness for yogurt (particularly blueberry).Anyways, I hope he is still alive. I haven't heard from him in a couple days. He is probably just preoccupied with other things like breaking out of a prison in Turkmenistan.