Awkward but Normal: A Conversation with a Beninese Man

Date: 9.29.10
Setting: The village marché


BM: Hello yovo!

LG: I’m not “yovo,” I live here. I’m a professor at CEG Daagbe. Call me Melissa, not yovo.

BM: Ah, you live here! What a wonderful opportunity for me! I’m very happy to have you here, and I hope that we can have a friendship. We will talk, and God willing, you will marry me.

LG: Uhhh… what?

BM: We will marry! I love white skin (rubs my arm). I want to marry a woman with white skin. I don’t like black women.

LG: Oh, I’m sorry, I’m already married.

BM: You’re married?? You’re too young to be married. How old are you?

LG: Twenty-two, and I’m definitely already married. My husband lives in the United States, but he will visit me here soon.*

BM: Ah, but do you have children? (If you don’t have kids, the marriage isn’t really considered legit.)

LG: Yes, I have a little girl.

BM: What’s her name?

LG: Uhhhhhhhh…lex. Alex.

BM: Oh, okay. Give me your phone number.

LG: What? I can’t, my husband is jealous and he will be angry with me if I give you my number.

BM: I will give you my number (writes it on the first page of my brand-new notebook). You will call me tomorrow.

LG: I’m sorry, I will probably not call you tomorrow, because my husband is jealous and he will be angry.

BM: Just for calling? You can call me. I will visit you at your house.

LG: Do not visit my house, that is not appropriate. I probably won’t call you, but maybe. If my husband says okay, but he won’t because he’s jealous.

BM: You must call me. We will be friends. I want to marry a woman with white skin.

LG: I have to go buy a vegetable. Goodbye.



*The next person to mail me a photoshopped picture of me with a husband and a small child will be my favorite person in the world. Bonus points for a creative and/or hot husband (can’t be Obama, Bush, Jackie Chan, or Brad Pitt, because they’d probably recognize them).