White Wedding

“Madam!” the security guard called after me and I got a little leap in my heart. I probably wasn’t supposed to be in here. Hopefully I could just leave and there would be no trouble. I turned to him as he approached in a thick navy uniform. “Yes?” I said. “Where do you stay?”  he asked. “Just down the way there” I responded with a quiver in my voice. “I am a volunteer.” He smiled and took my hand, then shook my hand warmly. I was only a little taken back at the change. “You see, Madam. I want to marry white person. White woman.” He said still smiling with questioning eyes and a soft voice. Like a teenager in a designer shoe store. “I want to, Madam. Can you give help with this one?” He was perhaps the 15th person in Africa I had met who had expressed this sentiment. Fear evaporated and my heart sunk. Usually, I would just nod and laugh quietly, say I was married and go on my way. Usually. But today, I couldn’t do it. Here was this nice looking, hard working, aspiring young guy with big sincere eyes wanting a white wife. Any white wife. And why? Because he believed she would be rich? Because it would give him street status? Because for him, black was just not good enough? His own culture, so much more rich and real and awake and alive than he would ever know, was the soft ruddy red dirt in between his toes waiting to be paved - so it could bake and crumble in the sun. And on it he trod unthinkingly as he trotted up to me. Judging from the pleading hope in his eyes, he would have probably married me on the spot. I could have been a spy or sociopath, but I had the skin to get in and that was a risk he was willing to take. T sell out of his own world and into what he thought ours could offer him. His with all of its struggle and strife. Ours with all of its lies and loneliness.  Colonialism bore its ugly teeth out from behind his boyish smile.

“No! No you don’t want a white wife!” I cried desperately. “White people are not always good! Please believe me. You are African, be proud. African women are so beautiful, why not an African woman for you, sir?” He looked back at me without changing his expression, like a four-year old who I just told in an overexcited voice to write a term paper on Apartheid. “No, Madam, this I will do, I will marry white person. See? I need white wife for me. Can I give you my contact? And you can help me with this madam?”

Sigh. With a sick heart, I defaulted as usual and told him I was late to meet my husband but if I met any other white women I would let him know. Which of course I wouldn’t.  He thanked me with a big smile and said yes, we would talk later. Which we wouldn’t. And as I walked along the winding red ribbon of the path that laced together a wild fabric of silky green trees, I trailed a little bit of hope behind me in the dust.