Saratu is absolutely right – this is very good Damjan bait. Let the record show that I just referred to myself in the third person for the first time in print. This must mean that the link is good enough to trigger an out of body experience.
As her eyes darted around the appropriately named Jolly nightclub and bar, she admitted that she faced an uphill struggle. The competition is ferocious. Apart from a solitary Chinese man, quietly sipping a beer at the bar and a group of young men playing pool, the favourite after-work drinking hole is overflowing with groups of young women, chatting excitedly.
“It is early, Chinese men work hard and come later, they not lazy like Tanzanians,” Zaina said. “Problem is many, many girls; me not really their type. I am tall and slim. They prefer small, fat ladies with paler skins,” she said, confiding with a whisper that some of the girls were busy applying skin-lightening ointment. “They buy it in Congo — we call them the Michael Jacksons.”
What a perfect name. Just like Michael Jackson, these ladies aren’t fooling anybody. But, when a country is as poor as Tanzania, then anything is worth a shot, right? Maybe not. If the attitudes I’ve observed in China are anything to go on, mixed marriages will not last past the expiration date on those Chinese men’s passports. Better figure out a way to make them stay in Tanzania.
Thank you for making your flickr stream available for commons use.
About the Author
Ha ha! Good comment. Out of body moment! I like it. Oh and I like Michael Jackson too!
I guess women from poor countries will always be attracted to the financial stability that Chinese men offer. You mention that mixed mairrages like that tend not to last. Is that because the women leave, or because the men find out that they aren’t what they first appear to be?
Wayne
Yeah i dont see chineese men fallen for the marriage after the sex. These women need to learn from the Chineese and become hard working. good post though
This is very sad in many ways, but I had to smile when you mentioned the skin whiteners. A decade ago I was in a city in the Philippines and picked up a couple of bars of soap. When I got them home I saw that they were skin whitening soaps, which I had never even heard of before. Anyway, I had a little laugh at myself, being born white, and next time I was at the supermarket I went back to the soap shelves. Many if not most of the soaps were “whitening” soaps, but I did manage to find a normal soap after a bit of a search.