Book reveals Challenges facing African Married Couples in US - PART 3 of 5 | Voice of America - English
A Nigerian academic and naturalized American citizen has written a book to advise his fellow immigrants in the United States about how to avoid divorce. Dr. Ernest Ndukwe says moving to the US from Africa often places great strain on a marriage. He?s done intensive research into the factors leading to the breakdown of Africans? relationships in the United States. Dr. Ndukwe?s book offers reasons for what the academic describes as a ?divorce plague? among his fellow African immigrants in the US.
With an academic background in geology and environmentalstudies, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe readily acknowledges that he isn?t a likelycandidate to pen a book on divorce. Nevertheless, having himself endured aseparation three years ago, and being convinced that the experience of being animmigrant to the US contributed greatly to the failure of his marriage,Ndukwe?s convinced he?s qualified to write on the subject. ?Thousands of books have been written about divorce,? saysthe part-time lecturer at various American academic institutions, ?but duringmy research I realized that very few have been written about the uniquestresses and strains that the marriages of immigrants ? and especially Africans? suffer when they settle in the United States. I have tried to fill part ofthis gap.? Ndukwe?s also a senior environmental quality analyst atthe State of Michigan?s Department of Environmental Quality. He arrived in theUS in 1977 and married in 1999. The union ended six years later but producedthree daughters. Ndukwe says they, and another daughter from a previousrelationship, provided further motivation for his book. ?Rightnow, (my kids) are still very young, ranging from five to ten years old. I hadto write this book because I wanted my children to know what happened.Eventually when they grow up and they?re able to read and understand, I wantedthem to know what happened between me and their mother,? Ndukwe says, and thenexplains further, ?When a four-year-old kid is saying ?Dad, why don?t you loveme it really hurts. That?s one of the main reasons I wrote the book ? not toattack their mother, but to try to explain that when people get divorced, it?snot because they don?t love their children. It?s because they themselves can nolonger get along.? Ndukwe,who grew up in the district of Onitsha in south-eastern Nigeria?s AnambraState, emphasizes repeatedly that he didn?t write the book in order to ?takerevenge? on his former spouse. ?Ireally have no bitterness?. I wrote the book not from a selfish point of view?.I wrote it in an attempt to make people understand the reasons why two peoplewho are from other countries come to the US and then begin to grow apart, forvarious reasons. Immigrating to a new country, and adapting to a totally newculture, is very traumatic and sometimes marriages do not survive that trauma,?he reasons. Asregards divorce rates among immigrants in the US, and especially Africans,Ndukwe says the news is ?not really very encouraging?. Their divorce rate isreally increasing.? Ndukwesays very few Africans are comfortable with discussing divorce, which is?highly stigmatized? across his home continent. ?Giventhe cultural background that I come from, divorce is not something that anyonereally talks about. It?s very, very rare (in Africa),? he maintains. ?Overthere in Nigeria (and in many other parts of Africa), people will do just aboutanything possible to make sure that divorce doesn?t happen.? Mostly,says Ndukwe, this ?saving of collapsing relationships? is undertaken not byregistered marriage counselors, as in the US, but by family members who ?lendsupport and do their best to mediate between the spouses.? Butimmigrants in America don?t have access to their extended families, and so hesays ?everything breaks down and divorce is often inevitable.? Ndukweknows what he?s speaking about. He has eight brothers and sisters and what hecalls a ?massive? extended family. ?Comingfrom such a large family is something that as an African I cherish. This issomething that I value immensely, and it?s helped me through dark periods in mylife, having the support of my brothers and sisters. But when my wife and Imoved to the US, we could no longer count on this. This, I believe, was a majorfactor in the breakdown of our marriage.? Ndukwesays divorce is ?very easy? in the US, compared to Africa, and this alsocontributes towards rising incidences of official separation among immigrantsin the US. ?InAfrica, it takes a long time for someone to organize and go through a divorce.Over here, someone quickly runs to a lawyer, hands over money, and gets a pieceof paper and next thing you know, you are in court and your family is breakingdown.? Heexplains further that the scenario in America, with both spouses often havingto work in order to ?just make basic ends meet,? also contributes to divorceamong African immigrants in the US. ?Youhave the husband and the wife working, and they have to work so they can make aliving to support their family. Many times the (immigrant) families don?t havethe luxury for just one person to work. That creates a lot of pressure, a lotof stress, on the families,? he says. ?InAfrica, the wife (mostly) stays at home, makes a home and looks after thekids?. Things are more stable, and marriages survive more.? In the United States, the family unit is often forced tosplit up because of ?necessity for economic survival,? Ndukwe says, andbabysitters take care of small children until they?re ready to go to school. ?Africans find this situation very difficult to deal with,and they often think they are failing their family, and it leads to the parentsfighting all the time and eventually divorcing,? he explains. For his book, Ndukwe researched marriage and divorce amongimmigrants in the US from all parts of Africa, but says he ?naturally?concentrated on Nigerians living here. Hesays, ?Based on what I studied, Nigeria has one of the highest divorce ratesamong all the immigrants in America.? Ndukwethinks Nigerians especially seem to ?really mourn the loss of their culture andare really affected by it and their marriages deteriorate.? Buthe also suggests other reasons for a particularly high rate of divorce amongNigerians in the United States. ?Money.Greed,? he states emphatically. He says Nigerians in particular seem ?veryattracted by the materialistic side of American culture?. They seem moremercenary than others, placing higher value on money.? Nigeriansin the US, Ndukwe asserts, are especially prone to falling into what he callsthe ?trap of materialism.? ?Myresearch shows that greed is a major reason why immigrants divorce. In Africa,while materialism is definitely growing, it is not even close to what it is inAmerica. Some Africans?are greedy. They take their eyes away from the essenceof marriage, and they put their eyes on materialism and material things.? Ndukwe also takes note of the ?cultural habit? amongAfrican men living in the US returning to their home countries to marry someonethere and then immediately returning with their new wives. This, he says, also?often results in marital problems? when the wife struggles to adapt to her newsurroundings. This is what happened with regard to his own marriage,Ndukwe acknowledges. ?Westay here (in America), and we go (back to Africa) and within a month or two orsix months, we just marry somebody (there). The person doesn?t really know us,and we don?t know the person. That?s a major issue,? he explains. Thenew arrivals in America, says Ndukwe, often struggle to adapt to a ?totallyforeign culture,? as well as having to become accustomed to married life. ?Formany immigrants, there is an additional stress that has to do with getting usedto the American culture ? what is called ?acculturation.? That is a problem formany people.? Africans show love through action? not words andflowers! Inelaborating on the phenomenon of acculturation, Ndukwe refers to the preface tohis book, where he writes that the three words ?I love you? are ?very strange?to most Africans. ?WhenAfricans first arrive here in the US, they are indeed struck by the fact thatAmericans seem to find it very easy to tell one another, ?I love you, Ndukweexplains. ?Growing up in Africa, people don?t go around saying, ?I love you.?In the African culture, love is not something you just talk about; it?s notsomething that you just say; it?s really meaningless (to talk about it). Themost important thing is how you demonstrate that love: How you take care ofyourself, how you take care of your children, how you take care of your family,how you take care of your parents.? Hesays most African immigrants he spoke to for the purposes of his book are ?amazed?at the great emphasis Americans seem to place on husbands often giving flowersto their wives. ?Again,this is one of those cultural differences. In Africa, I don?t see men givingwomen flowers all the time ? maybe once in a while, like on Valentine?s Day,and that?s that. But here, giving flowers and things like that ? and alwayssaying ?I love you? ? are big deals in relationships.? AsNdukwe?s book explains, rifts are caused in many immigrants? marriages in theUS as a result of these cultural differences. ?Often,the wives expect the husbands to behave exactly like the American men, and theAfrican men refuse to do so. The women then say their men don?t love them, andthen the marriages suffer?. And before you know it, they are using those culturesto divide themselves. And they forget the culture from where they came?.? Justbecause most African men don?t often give their wives flowers and purr ?I loveyou? in their ears, Ndukwe asserts, that doesn?t mean they don?t love theirwomen. ?We just show our love in other ways, like providing for our partners,?he repeats. Hecertainly advocates that immigrants in the US do their best to adapt toAmerican culture but also urges them to retain the ?positive parts? of theirAfrican heritage. ?LikeI said in the book, I?m hoping that they don?t use those aspects that are notpart of our culture to destroy their relationship. I just wish that couplescoming from Africa will realize that they should take what is best from theAmerican people, and from the American system, and take what is best from theNigerian or from the African culture?. And meld them together to make theirfamilies grow.? Inhis book, says Ndukwe, he stressed how important it is for Africans living inAmerica to keep their ties to their home countries ?through regular visitshome,? and also to maintain their ?self-esteem as Africans. Not by rejectingAmerican culture; no. But by assimilating the positive aspects of both Africanand American culture.? A strong theme running through the Nigerian academic?sbook is a repudiation of violence against women. ?Unfortunately,some African men I have spoken with still seem to think it?s quite okay to useforce against women; they think it?s their right as husbands, that theirculture allows them to do it,? Ndukwe says. He adds that while husbands who assault their wives backin Africa ?more often than not? escape punishment, this is not the case in theUS. ?Whereasyou can get away in some African contexts with using violence against women, inthe US you will not get away with it. You will be punished severely. This is ofcourse how it should be, even throughout Africa. No matter how angry a womanmakes a man, he should never lift his hands against her,? Ndukwe advises. Allthrough his book, he counsels battling spouses to do their best to treat oneanother with kindness and respect, ?as difficult as it may be.? He says, ?It is bad enough divorcing, without having allthe remorse attached to knowing that you were mean to the mother or father ofyour children.?