LONE, LORN LONDON
Sousa Jamba finds that
it is not easy for an African to meet a girlfriend
WHEN I was told in Africa that people in a Western metropolis could be lonely, I did not believe it. I imagined London, for instance, with ten million people, which was double the total population of Zambia, where I grew up. I imagined that if any one felt lonely he would simply walk out and talk to people. After three years in Lon- don, I have come to discover that it is not that simple.
One of the first things I wanted after a week in London was a girl friend: someone I would write poems for, take to films and symphony orchestras. I had once read a short story by an African writer in which he described a romantic walk with a charming white girl on Hampstead Heath. I too hoped to take my girl friend there.
I went to the local McDonalds in search of a girl friend. I ordered myself a King Burger and a family size orange juice and settled beside two girls. As I ate the burger and sipped the orange juice, my eyes switched from the Sun to the two girls. I noticed a funny story in the Sun and showed it to the two girls. I thought this was a way of breaking down the barriers between us, in order to start conversing. The girls giggled over the story and left, not wanting to say a word to me.
I had to think of a strategy. In Zambia, my contemporaries and I had adopted what we then considered an impressive way of starting a conversation with girls in the street. On approaching an interesting girl the proper thing to say was: 'Hello Baby, did I see you somewhere in Washington or was it in Tokyo? Paris perhaps?' The girl would then allow herself a little titter and say she has never been out of Zambia. Of course she knew that the boy had never been out of Zambia, either. But that was part of the game. The next thing was to say how beautiful she was. The line for this was: 'If Roses were black they would be like you.'
I tried this strategy in London; just the first lines, that is. It failed. The girls would simply answer no and give me an angry look. I befriended a Nigerian student who claimed to know the way out of my dilemma. He said he knew the way to ingratiate oneself with British girls. His line was: 'Hullo, I come from Nigeria.'
Whenever my Nigerian friend repeated how sound his advice was, it was as though I became seized by fits of jingoism. I told him that nothing short of death would make me say that I was not an Angolan. He would look at me, shake his head, and say: 'It is your problem my friend. These people here are very stupid. They've never heard of Angola, so they will think you come from one of those countries where people walk naked. But Nigeria, they all know it. I mean these people fear Nigeria. Tell a girl that you are from Nigeria; the first thought that comes to her mind is money. I mean we have money.'
I told this to a British girl who just wanted to be a friend of mine. She said my Nigerian friend was a Male Chauvinist Pig. British girls, she said, went for love. I asked her how I would come into contact with them. She said nightclubs. But before going to these nightclubs, she said, I was to divest myself of some attitudes which, she suspected, were common to most African men. British girls, she said, hated sexists and men who were too proud to show their emotions.
I went to a nightclub ready to dance attendance upon my would-be girlfriend; and to break into tears once overwhelmed by love. The Empire in Leicester Square was filled on this night with Japanese tourists who danced with their cameras strapped to their necks. At the entrance, a few steps from the cloakroom, couples were kissing passionately. I saw a few black boys — I took them for Africans — kissing British girls. Soon, I hoped, I was going to join them.
In Africa, people never kiss in public. A woman who allows herself to be kissed in public is said to have loose morals. Every- thing (moral or immoral) is supposed to be done indoors. But we considered ourselves civilised. At the school I went to, for instance, we used to kiss girls at the back of the hall when films were being shown; and at night after prep, we escorted them to their dormitories and kissed them good- night, in full view of the junior boys who, it was said, were 'crypto voyeurs'. (The guy who coined this term was said to have had the habit of memorising a whole page of the dictionary, then tearing it out and using it as toilet paper. After the dictionary, went the rumour, he intended to get on to the Bible). So if I found myself a girlfriend, there was nothing wrong in kissing her in Oxford Street, for it was admissible in the Western culture of which I considered myself a part.
I asked several girls to dance with me; they refused and walked away. I went back to my British friend and told her that I had tried my best at the Empire to no avail. What was I going to do next?
She said the Empire was not the right place for someone like me (I had presented myself as a poet); that .it was full of tourists. She gave me a list of proper clubs. But there was another drawback — my clothes. It is very easy to tell an African man by the clothes he wears: they tend to be bright-coloured and oftentimes baggy. My British friend told me that London girls prefer duller colours. If, however, I was to present myself as a student, then a ragged pair of faded jeans were preferable. My friend is what I later came to be told counted as trendy. I declined her advice and stuck to my checked trousers, bright shirts, and bright shoes.
I never gave up the search. One day I saw a beautiful girl who enthralled me. I went to her and said: 'Hullo, have I seen you in Washington before?' She looked startled. 'I was actually born there. Where in Washington did you see me?' I began to scratch my head and confessed that I had never been there. That night, I went home and wrote a poem in which I compared her beauty to that of the mighty Victoria Falls. She was to become my girlfriend for over a year. And then we split. I was once again back to square one.
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