By Priscilla Mangwana
What is it with us women and having men to prove their love by buying us material things? We hear statements like my husband doesn’t even care.
Imagine he bought me some perfume on my birthday! I didn’t realise one had to prove love by buying material things. In the Diaspora in many cases women earn more than men. This is because the Zimbabwean man found it difficult to do nursing which was normally a spring board to a lot of other things one would have wanted to do.
<br.
This was a big problem. The word nurse itself is feminine in character. Then comes all those funny caps nurses used to wear in Zimbabwe. Now you ask a Zimbabwean man to be a nurse! Jokes immediately start to fly around when they start mocking him calling him such feminine names like “sister” or “matron”!
Of course with our alpha males being given such titles are not only considered insulting. It’s considered demeaning and possibly the worst thing you can ever call a man.
Now, compare that with how a lot of women feel complimented if someone says, “Uya Murume chaiye” Unless of course they are addressing matters of beauty and decorum, where this will be considered disrespectful and rude. Anyway, the point is that some men who came to the UK avoided training as nurses for these reasons even though they worked as healthcare assistants!
This I have never understood. One works as a nurse’s assistant for 9 years but if you ask him to train as a full registered nurse they will freak out and feel insulted. I will speculate that, some of them hoped to go back to their big executive professionals they had in Zimbabwe. Training as a nurse would probably be confirmation that it was really over. I have to add that there are a lot who trained as nurses and still went back to their careers.
Now in the most funded of all British Corporations! The NHS. They are now the executives they were at home but in the health service. Some made it as well without taking this route. Now where were we?
Ah, yes. We said the UK somehow favoured women. Therefore from immigration status and financial stability or it seems so. The Zimbabwean man who tries his best to make a living for his woman or family even if the wife earns more is a good man. This type of a man is still out there. Then there is that man who would rather live off his woman. He contributes little or in many cases nothing. The one who enjoys drinking and never looks for a job. This guy has made me wonder where they came from.
For that’s not the man I grew up around. That one enjoyed the greeting “Titambire!” because they never came home empty handed. Please don’t replace this man with the scrounger who always forgets his wallet at home when he goes out with his girlfriend. Guys, the forgotten wallet is an over-used and cheap stunt. It is so transparent that the girl sees right through you. Don’t do it. I have been off the dating game for over 20 years but I can tell you this; you are driving the girls to the vanity filled West Africans who love flashing mainly ill-gotten wealth.
This is where the rot starts. You hear all sorts. Who told my sisters that there is no better evidence of a man’s love than when he gives you expensive things? Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice when you get some nice things from your loved ones. And as a mother that includes from my children. But I am not going to say someone is romantic just because he bought my mother a house! No. It would be nice gesture but not evidence of love.
May be I am the conservative Mai Munya. But I have been taught that, being romantic is being able to express love and or affection. For me it’s the small things gestures. The attentiveness and the right sentiment at the right time and place. Not the ostentatious pageantry that come from someone with money to burn.
A friend in her late 40s told me that when “he” looks in her eyes and smiles casually, she feels the palpitations and butterflies even after so long together. When he holds her hands lovingly across the table, to her this is being much of a romantic. She said she would take this any day to someone who gives her keys to a new car and leaves to go hang out with his friends every day. Idealistic? Let’s explore the many issues teased out in this instalment in the next piece. Priscilla is Wife, Mother, Nursing Manager, A Social Anthropology student and Vice Chair of Zanu PF – UK Women’s league. She writes in her personal capacity.
Comments
About Author
