[size=28pt]When there is no mate, [/size]
By Kemi Ashefon
Published: Sunday, 17 May 2009

For Kate, the past weeks have been hell. ”Ironically, it was my 35th birthday and I was summoned by my mother for a family meeting,” she said. ”Though I guessed it had to do with my status, I never knew it would take another turn. She told me that I either present a husband on or before the end of June! Failure to do this, she said, would see me packing out of her house. This was no joke because she wept and confessed to have been an object of mockery among friends and relatives. I was angry and went to see a very close friend of my mother who lived close-by. Had I known what was in store for me at her place, I would not have gone to see her. She said exactly what my mother said but with a promise to match-make me with one of the teachers in her private school. So, who did my mother want me to marry? Steven, a married man who was not ready for a second wife? A man who would beg me to abort pregnancies in my 30s? I broke up with him last year when he insulted Ken, a friend. If he didn‘t want me for marriage, why is he blocking other younger men from dating me? Ken was a friend to my colleague and asked me out but after a year, I knew he was not ready to marry me. He was always postponing engagement and introduction dates. For over 20 times he promised taking me to his mother but failed. Whenever I asked to be taken to see any of his relatives, he would refuse. After all entreaties to see his mother failed, I knew he was not mine and I let go of him. The last suitor would have been Greg. He wanted marriage but his mother wanted a Yoruba bride. She threatened to disown him if he married ‘omo Igbo‘. Do I dump my Anambra birth certificate for a guy from Ondo state? Though he loved me, he had to obey his mother. I have started a house-hunt and I am ready to get an apartment of mine since getting a mate between now and the end of June is not realistic.”
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Chukky

JUST SINGLES 17 MAY 2009

Benedicta also wanted another flat. This time not because of her mother but her neighbours. At 37 and still single, she had been careful about relating with neighbours especially the men. ”Except for the bachelors who I relate with very well, I hardly greet married men,” she confessed. ”I moved to my apartment last year and I enjoyed the serenity till lately when my neighbour became very nasty. Her children were always in my flat to watch cable television. That did not bother me because I loved kids. This gesture must have opened a room of friendship between their parents and me. Last week, as I alighted from my car, their father walked up to me and asked after the state of stocks. Being a stock-broker, I was ready to market some products to him and we talked for about 12 minutes. Just some few minutes after I entered, I had a visitor – his wife. She was fuming and spitting fire! She called me names – prostitute, old mama, husband-snatcher etc. She accused me of sleeping with her husband and called me a witch! Though I didn‘t utter a word, I stopped talking to other married women (three of them) in the compound and I observed that their husbands didn‘t greet me again. I knew I was ridiculed because of my status and I have employed the services of an estate agent. I must pack out of that compound,

Men are not excluded from the must-get-a-mate saga either, at least not Mike. ”I was surprised when a ‘powerful delegation‘ arrived from the village to see me,” he recalled. With just a few months to his 40th birthday, he was not surprised to see them. ”I was only surprised at their words. The oldest man in our family, who headed the ‘delegation‘ made me realise that I must get married before August or the family would announce that I am impotent! Immediately, I ruminated on who would be the bride-to-be. Nkechi? Of course not! She was my mother‘s friend‘s daughter and very proud. Anytime we met, she would boast about her work as a banker and other property she had acquired. I had told my mother many times that I would not marry that proud girl. Maybe my family wanted me to marry Agnes, who they all knew. Everybody in the family loved her but they refused to realise that I was not happy dating a lady who did not know how to cook well! Her dishes were tasteless and she would sleep on a bedspread for two weeks without wash. To my siblings, I was unfair to Agnes but I knew there was more to marrying a woman than the family loving her. I have employed a matchmaker to get me an educated girl who is employed, neat, young and would bear children.”http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200905171873525