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Romance: African style

Is the average African man romantic?

His pick up lines seem to be comprised of calling you “fine girl”, “Chale you fine O!” and telling you “Nne m, your laps are warm”. After hearing lines that ran the gamut from “You dey make my bodi shake jim,jim” to “your nyansh set well”, one must wonder is romance dead in Africa?

Or is it that we as women need to re-adjust our romance barometers. When I was growing up, I read western magazines like Cosmo, Hello, etc and I had no idea of how much western media influenced my life. Reading about great love sonnets and poetry by Keats, Shakespeare and the like…”A rose by any other name…” I thought true love was defined by the flowers and gifts he gave you and how beautiful his words to you were, after all that's what we saw done in the media.

The first time my fiancé called me omalicha tomato m, my beautiful tomato I thought what an bush man, but after comparing the role the tomato plays in Nigerian culture to the rose in western culture, I have to admit that calling a woman a tomato while wholly unromantic in the western sense can be truly romantic in the Nigerian sense.

By calling you a tomato, he is saying you are not only beautiful; a tomato's skin is smooth and ripe and appealing, but you are also indispensable; without the tomato, there would be no rice and stew, no tasty soups, no jollof rice!

So now when my sweetheart calls me omalicha tomato m, I say you got that right!

Although I would like flowers once in a while. At least ofu mpulu hibiscus (one little hibiscus)

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