November 2010 | Foreign Exchange

My mother wants grandchildren. This has been made clear to me in no uncertain terms. She has five children, so she’s hedged her bets pretty well, but as I am the only one of her spawn to have recently taken up residence in Lagos, the onus has fallen upon my head to bear seed first. Why? Because Lagos is the land where people meet, marry and make babies in the span of a year. The streets of Lagos are paved with eligible men. They’re arriving by the boatload off the shores of Ember Creek. Lagos is the veritable marital Promised Land.

Or at least this is what they told me.

In the year I have been back in Lagos, I have found one thing to be true: it is impossible to date in Lagos. It is not difficult. It is not tricky. It is downright impossible. This is true for several reasons. First of all, even with a population of almost 20 million, Lagos is a smaller town than Coffeeville, Alabama (pop. 389). You cannot so much as smile at the cute guy by the bar without learning that he and your best friend were embroiled in a passionate, if brief, love affair that ended in a fantastical shouting match at your cousin’s wedding last December, or that he is actually your second cousin twice-removed.

Once you’ve managed to eliminate all your relatives (and the men who will obliterate life-long friendships) from your dating pool, you are left with a dazzling array of posers, slackers, felons, perverts, dimwits and sugar-daddies to choose from. The poser won’t talk to you; the slacker will try to get you to buy him a drink; the felon will probably get you arrested for unwittingly smuggling his cocaine across the border; the pervert will try to feel you up; the dimwit will bore you to tears and the sugar-daddy will manage to accomplish all of the above whilst simultaneously being the actual daddy of your college roommate.

In the very unlikely event that you are miraculously able to extract a potential mate from this motley crew, the very city of Lagos itself offers a giant wrench for your best-laid plans. There’s a joke that’s often told about a man who drops his girlfriend off at the international airport for her flight to London. By the time she calls him to say she’s landed safely at Heathrow and claimed her luggage, he’s still stuck in traffic at the Chevron roundabout battling his way back home to Ajah. Between the ridiculous work schedules and the mind-numbing traffic, romance does not stand a chance. In the time it takes you to fight your way from work through the horrific traffic to spend some quality time with your newest love, he has started dating the girl next door, just out of sheer convenience.

Finally, there’s the matter of the married man. Forget the old-school married man; creepy, crusty and old enough to have been schoolyard pals with your grandfather. You’re too smart to be taken in by that guy. The 21st Century has given us the new breed of married man; early 30s, good-looking, mature and married for just under six months. These are the men who conveniently deem jewelry “unmanly” so there is nary a wedding band in sight. These are the men who would like to eat their proverbial cake and have it too. You are in a full-blown, committed relationship with this man before one of your friends realizes that your new love is actually her brother-in-law. By the time you are able to delicately extricate yourself from the situation, you’ve already been branded The Other Woman, doomed to singledom forever.

Dating in Lagos is not quite the bed of roses I was promised. Honestly, It’s more like a minefield. It seems, sadly, that my mother will have to content herself with my empty, as-yet-fruitless womb for a little while longer.