I have no mirror. The sweltering heat has turned my hair into a permanent state of frizz beyond any means of containment. And I have this weird rash forming on my upper arm that looks freakishly similar to SpongeBob SquarePants. Perhaps most attractive of all, though, is the fact that I have the strong scent of a high school boys locker room. Not that I have intimate knowledge of the odors of a boys locker room--I have only heard the horror stories--stuff Hitchcock couldn’t dream of.
Still, my grizzly appearance and foul musk have not frightened away my would-be husbands. That’s right. Since arriving in Mozambique, I have been proposed to more times than I can count. Mrs. Bennet would be appalled at how I have turned marriage proposal rejections into an art form.
My first proposal, a man offered to slaughter a cow in my honor if we could get married. Ok, I’ll admit it. I was a little flattered. What gal doesn’t appreciate a good cow? Ladies, forget those half-assed Casanovas with their chocolate and flowers! Wait for someone who comes a-knocking with bovines.
Despite my initial susceptibility to flattery, I have since come to find these incessant propositions incredibly annoying. Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking, You’re thinking to yourself. “Duh, Margaret, they can’t possibly resist you because not only are you a whittler of wit, but your ethereal beauty is also powerfully disarming.” Touché, my wise friends. I can’t fault them their good taste.
The sad truth of the matter is, though, that it has almost nothing to do with my charming personality or (under normal circumstances) Ava Gardner good looks. (My wannabe hubbie and I rarely speak more than two sentences to each other before he pops the question. And ummm…remember my earlier reference to a boys‘ locker room. Yeah, I smell like a communal jockstrap and look even worse!)
Instead, most of their desire resides in the fact that when they see me, they see “white” and “American” and automatically the cash register in their heads goes ka-ching. They equate me with opportunity. My site mates here and most of the other girls in my training group can swap stories for hours of bad Mozambican pick up lines. Men have wanted to marry me so I could take them back to America with me, so they could learn English, or as one gentleman told me, “Margarita, you are tall like a man and look like you would have big, strong babies.” Ohhh. Be still my beating heart. The poetry. A regular Oscar Wilde, that one.
And it’s not just Mozambican men who want to rush to the altar either. Many male Peace Corps volunteer friends here have received similar proposals from Mozambican women.
Shucks. I hope I am not making all Mozambicans out to be these opportunistic nymphomaniacs with Charlie Sheen-sized libidos. It’s just that here, most people wear their hearts, and their hormones, on their sleeves. They say exactly what’s on their minds, and that in no way excludes the times when their heads are in the gutter. Verbal filters and subtlety are nonexistent. If they think your baby is ugly, they will tell you. If you have a giant zit on your face, they will point right to it and tell you. And if they want to marry you because you’re white and they think that will lead to a better life, they will tell you. Or (in my particular case) if they just want to marry you because you look like you would reproduce linebackers, you bet your britches they will look you straight in the eye and tell you. It’s not done out of cruelty or malice. They just say what’s on their minds and what they believe to be true.
The implications of this brazen forwardness on the Mozambican sexual culture and its link to the HIV prevalence rate could be the topic of a series of anthropological and socioeconomic books.
For now, my solution to this problem is to explain that I, unfortunately, already have a namorado (boyfriend). Yes, that’s right. I’ve invented a fictional boyfriend back home. He’s lovely. He’s six foot three and a dead ringer for Marlon Brando circa A Streetcar Named Desire. He’s an Olympic qualifier in the Pentathlon, speaks fluent Urdu and quotes John Donne. Anyway, there are some people here who always ask about him. They are hoping he will come visit me in Mozambique. I explained that it might be difficult since he is currently splitting his time between Lake Como (he has a modest little villa there) where he is working on his memoirs of which Paramount has already purchased the rights to and Antarctica where it appears he has discovered a mutant penguin species.
Blatant lying? Okay, yes.
Outlandish? Of course. (My Mom always did tell me I had a very wild imagination)
A tad bit pathetic? Maybe. But, it’s not like I have a blow-up doll or anything.
I instead prefer to think of my boyfriend as an effective defense mechanism and a means to set an example. If he and I can illustrate fictional fidelity in a place where multiple concurrent partnerships rather than monogamy are the norm, then I think my delusional hunka hunka man is accomplishing something here.
Once I start picking out the fictional colors of my fictional wedding to my fictional namorado, then I’ll know I’ve got bigger problems beyond my creepy cartoon-shaped rashes and caveman hair. But for now, I’ve decided that if it helps me demonstrate that a young woman can come to Africa by herself without a man, live here without a man by her side, work here without a man, function without the need or intent to find a new man, and try to make a difference without a man. Well, then I am just fine with using my imaginary boyfriend to explain to my hopeful Mozambican suitors why I just can’t accept their cow.
