Of love and the Nigerian man

Okay so the funniest thing happened to me on the ride home from work this evening. There I was in the car absolutely quiet because my head was pounding after a hard day at work. I had just left my desk without shutting down my computer because I had so much half finished work and couldn't bear to lose the progress I had made on each one. As I sat in the car, I kept trying not to look at my phone as it vibrated on the seat indicating yet another email or bb ping or text in the unending stream of human communication. In the midst of this, I remembered that I hadn't paid my nepa bill and this was about the time of the month when they would usually come to physically disconnect electricity cables...then my mind wandered to the amount left in my account and all the bills I was yet to pay and how much I would have left etc.

Next thing, after what seemed like a long silence, my phone vibrates and I check it. It's a chat from miss j. Naturally, it becomes priority. It simply reads: "oroque bobo, I like you gan o". I try to scroll up to see if I missed the beginning part of the text, but that was it. No preamble, no summary, no 'but' 'because' or 'however'. And so I gave what I considered was the most natural reply: "what did I do now?".

I know all the girls reading this will be rolling their eyes and raising their hands in final surrender to my absolute naïveté, and all the guys will be acting like they could have done better, but for real, what was I to say? Next thing she goes on about how I'm a typical Nigerian man and how I just "fell her hand" with my gross levels of unromanticism etc etc. I kinda laughed it off but I did feel that I shoulda seen this very easy trap from a mile away. Apparently, she says there was this survey that asked Nigerian women to text a simple "I like you very much" to their Nigerian male partners and that most likely than not they are bound to get responses like "what did you do now", "did you bash the car again?", "tell me how much you need this time" and (my absolute favourite) "i dont have money for now". well, at least i am in good company. Naija is hard jare...love be the last thing on a nigger mind. :)

But for real, this brought to mind something i had read about how men are wired differently from women. men are more practical and everything must fit into something they already expect or are familiar with. women are more emotional and expect no rationale for an emotion like love. Its perfectly normal to a woman for someone to love them from the blues just because...but for men, there's got to be a catch with everything. and i think this creates the balance that the next generation needs to grow up normal. so, to all my brothers reading is, consider this a heads up. when your madam suddenly loves you from the blues for no apparent reason, just love her back first and then go back to the routine "what is it again" mode. You can thank me later.