Reasons Why Mosquitoes are Way Worse in Ghana than in Canada

Subtitle: Especially when you're sleep deprived and have been doing nothing but essay-writing for the better part of a week.

Reason Number 1

Because the mosquitoes here are not like Canadian mosquitoes that are huge, slow, clumsy, and easily squishable.

Ghanaian mosquitoes are ninjas. They are tiny and silent and they will get you, but you will never ever see them.

Reason Number 2

Because with every single mosquito bite, I look at it, and in my head, I can't help but think, "I wonder if this one gave me malaria."

Reason Number 3

Because windows, doors, and other important holes in the walls here, never seem to seal.

When you don't have to engineer buildings to keep out -30 degree winters, I guess sealing these openings is not really a priority. Some places have mosquito netting, which helps, and I typically sleep under a mosquito net, which also helps. Unfortunately, in my current set up at Carmencita's, that is not possible. And even if it were, I can't bring my mosquito net downstairs to the dining room table where my essay-writing station is currently set up.

Reason Number 4

Because I may or may not be allergic to the saliva of the mosquitoes here. Unlike in Canada, my mosquito bites in Ghana have a strange tendency to leak clear fluid. Gross.

In conclusion: I am itchy.

Finally, a solution!

So, over the course of my time in Ghana, I've had to deal with a lot of marriage proposals. They came in many different shapes, sizes, and levels of awkwardness, and they were plentiful.

And the whole time, I found myself floundering around for something to say in reply.

I'm sure many of you are thinking, "Erin, why not just say no?" ...the answer to that is a little bit complicated.

I guess first and foremost, it doesn't usually work. "No" is not enough. "No" is often not actually believed (What do you mean, no? I offered to marry you!) and I end up having to answer questions like, "Why not?" and "Why don't you want to marry a Ghanaian?" which can be a little awkward.

Secondly, on rare occasions, the person asking is in fact joking, so just saying "no" really shuts them down and kind of makes life awkward.

Thirdly, since so many people ask me and they ask me so often, this must be okay. I mean... it can't be that that many people are just rude or socially awkward. This is normal. And given the responses I get to "No," I'm pretty sure that's not normal. I'm trying to navigate a whole set of social rules and protocols that are unfamiliar to me, and while to me, it seems obvious to just say "no," it seems like it's just not the thing to do here.

So, how do I handle this?

For most of my time here, I literally just laughed. I tried to actually speak as little as possible in response, and laugh as if it was a joke (which occasionally it was), and that got me off the hook about a third of the time.

The rest of the time I would say something like, "I'm already married," because "I have a boyfriend," is not actually legitimate grounds to refuse a marriage proposal. A boyfriend is just a boyfriend, you can still get married. Even with a fiancee, the fact that I'm across an ocean from them, or even just not in their immediate vicinity, means that I'm still fair game. But sometimes even that wouldn't work. On more than one occasion I've heard, "Ah, but you need a Ghanaian husband, for when you are here!" This may be because of the rampant stereotypes about white women (that we're all rich and promiscuous and only come to places like Ghana to get a tan and have a sexual adventure) or the different assumptions and values about marital faithfulness (a man who stays faithful in a relationship here is kind of like a man who voluntarily scrubs toilets at home; they exist, sure, but you don't ever really expect it). Either way, I have to laugh awkwardly and flounder around some more for a response more often than I'd like.

And don't even get me started on "I don't want to get married." Suffice to say, I've had bad experiences using this line. I've been accused of being a witch, called wicked (because women have to get married and have children, "It's in the biblical!") and legitimately thought to be mentally ill.

But I think now, as I reach the end of my time here, I have finally found the appropriate way to dodge these offers of matrimony.

To be honest, I should have thought of this from the start. Instead of trying to tell men why I can't/don't want to marry them, I should be reminding them why they don't really want to marry me.

I mean, sure, I'm exotic and attractive because of my whiteness in a society where white bodies are unreasonably fetishized, as well as my assumed wealth, but if you get right down to it, I would not be the wife that they think I would, and I am certainly not the wife that they want.

Winning phrase #1: "You wouldn't want me as a wife; I would make you wash your own clothes."

I've only had this one fail once, when it was pointed out to me that "It's just easier to do all the washing at once." Fair enough, I conceded, but I would still have my husband do all the washing half the time in that instance. This time, it was concluded that, "In that case, you need a washing machine to make it easier for you." And the man I was conversing with was nothing short of horrified when I said that that would be great, and my husband could also use the washing machine to do laundry half of the time.

Winning phrase #2: "You wouldn't want me as a wife; I don't really like to cook. You'd have to cook most of the time."

Again, I only had this one fail to immediately get me off the hook once, when it was suggested that either one of my sisters come to cook for my husband, or that we could get a second wife to do the cooking. To this I just laughed. There was nothing I could say.

Winning phrase #3: "You wouldn't want me as a wife; I would make you help take care of the babies. Feeding them, from a bottle of course, washing them, dressing them, changing their nappies. All of that, you'd have to do about half the time."

I never had any problems with this one. Just men pulling funny faces and making disgruntled, upset, and disgusted noises. This just made me laugh.

I would have also used a fourth phrase about having my own career and expecting to have the freedom to pursue it, the possibility of the whole family having to move because of job opportunities, etc, but I couldn't think of a way to condense that enough to not be a whole monologue about the status of women in Canada as compared to Ghana.

Honestly, with each of these "winning phrases" I would have loved to be right back in my awkward seat, floundering around for some new excuse, because the man had said, "Oh, that's not a problem. That's how it should be." But that never, ever happened.

Maybe by using my society's values about men's and women's roles in relationships as excuses to not get married, I'm reproducing stereotypes of foreigners being rigid and unwilling to adapt to other cultures. Maybe I'm exerting some of the power and privilege that I have because of my whiteness and foreignness and wealth in ways that I shouldn't.

But maybe, just maybe, I'm making just one of those men really think about why they wouldn't want a wife who wouldn't cook for them all the time, and why that was more important than the reasons that they wanted to propose in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, that's a baby step towards change?