AFRICAN DATING TIPS
By Uncle Dagana

Hi folks,

When we launched Matrinex.com earlier this year little did we know that we were opening the proverbial Pandora’s Box. In the last seven months or so of our Website’s grand entry into the field of African dating, we have been bombarded with questions and enquiries about what it takes to keep an African date. As you very well know, there is a limit to everything – including endurance.

It is in response to these numerous enquiries that we launch, today, the maiden edition of our Blog – African Dating Tips – in the hope that we will be in a position to address some of the anxieties and concerns of our numerous clients and well wishers all over the world.

Let me warn some of our readers that the tips we intend to give are simply what the word implies: tips. They are intended to serve as guidelines for dating African women and not hard and fast rules of general application to all and sundry. As any veteran in this business of dating will tell you, there are no universal laws in dating. What applies beautifully in situation one may crash disastrously in the next situation – and that is understandable. Everybody is unique and has different levels of tolerance, patience, understanding and the ability to forgive and forget for the sake of a relationship.

So welcome to our African dating tips blog. We hope you find it useful but if for any reason you find it boring and unreadable, please reach out for your mouse!

AFRICAN DATING TIP #1

African marriages and dates are unions between two families!

If you are new to African dating or marriage this is one point you must consider seriously before getting involved. Most cultures in Africa, be it North, South East or West, regard a marriage not just as a union between the bride and the groom as in most other cultures, but a fusion between the two participating families. On the surface there does not appear to be any problem, but in practice it can be resource-sapping, unless you are a Bill Gates!

You may not have heard of this but there is this ugly family monster called extended family system in Africa. The extended family system ensures that every bride has a retinue of uncles, aunties, cousins (both paternally and maternally) who in turn have children and grand children. When you add these to her siblings, what you have is a bouquet of children and grand children from all sources waiting to go to school at the expense of you and your wife.

If you are lucky, and very few people are that lucky, they stop at asking you to pay their way through school. Those who are not so lucky and they are in the majority, end up wanting and succeeding in staying as non-paying guests of your family – sometimes for life! The result is that the standard of living of your own family is compromised to the extent that your own children have to play second fiddle to these children of your wife’s uncles, cousins and whoever else. The things men have to endure for love!

If these extra burdens fail to bring you down financially, then wait for this. Your wife naturally becomes pregnant. What to do? Her mother in the village has to come and baby-sit your newborn baby – for six months! Naturally, your mother-in-law must come along with your wife’s last sibling. After six months, your mother-in-law goes home but forgets a vital hand luggage! You come home from work one day and discover, with some relief, that your mother-in-law has finally left for home but you soon discover to your chagrin that she deliberately left behind your wife’s 11 year old sibling. Unknown to you, the poor girl has no intention of leaving – ever – because she is now used to a new standard of living. Chances are that your own wife is party to the conspiracy. Your wife’s 11 year-old sister is now the newest member of your family set to explode at the seams.

For those who are in love with African dates and/or wives, it is not totally bad news as this author is trying to make you believe. Remember, I said earlier on that in matters of marriage and dating there are no universal rules and regulations of general application. Not every African wife will saddle you with responsibilities even before you are ready to settle down to a life of marital bliss. Come to think of it, has anyone ever told you that African women are the most hard-working and painstakingly resourceful women on this planet – yes, believe me.

African women do not sit down cross-legged in their living rooms and wait for their men to provide everything. Those of them who went to school, and there are many of them who now go to school, are prepared to work full-time in an office, engage in a trade part-time in addition to being a housewife 24/7! As any housewife will gleefully tell you, being a housewife is more than ten times more difficult than being the man of the house. It is only in Africa that the woman comes from her office job, dead tired, throws her office paraphernalia on the bed, dashes for her kitchen just to make sure dinner is ready for the family. While in the kitchen, she keeps one eye on the food and the second eye on the kids – of all ages! Don’t ask me what the man of the house usually does while the wife is slaving to keep the home – most of the time nothing – sweet nothing!

Now you know why the traffic is unusually heavy with people queuing to have African wives.