Playing the Nursing Card
By Eucharia Mbachu
Washington D.C.

 Why do some African women venture into the field of nursing? Two facts come to mind. The first is the nature of the division of labor since the fifties when the post World War II opened avenues of social change and job possibilities for educated African women. The other is the challenges of de-colonization and the effects of globalization in many African societies. With respect to the first fact, be it noted that the gender arrangements of the period after the Second World War witnessed the increase in the number of African women going to school at the higher level of literacy. Being quickly drafted for marriage by many parents of those times and suffering from the patriarchal tendencies that saw no professional careers for women beyond teaching, secretarial work and nursing, many a women from urban homes found the higher areas of social mobility in these careers. The second fact which is becoming increasingly obvious in many African countries is the emergence of an African Diaspora making nursing the golden gate for career stability and mobility. If we look at the trend since the beginning of African migration to the United States and Britain over the last fifty years, we detect two major tendencies. In the decade before independence the small faction of African women who went to Britain and the United States to study nursing were destined for the urban and occasional regional hospitals of governments in their countries. Such nurses were highly prized and their chances of leaving the country for better grazing grounds were nil. The arrival rate and the service rate allow them to secure jobs and to get married to better and more educated husbands. There are many examples of such women who occupied the role of bedfellows of the generation of African leaders of the independence movement. But because of the paucity of their numbers such women would lead lives that are radically different from the second and third generations of African women who ventured into this field of labor.
 

The women who came in the post-colonial era had the opportunity to study in European and American colleges and other centers of higher education in larger numbers. This generation of Africans who studied in the West, has been called by a prominent African writer, as the children of the Cold War. Like the third world counterparts, they found opportunity in the West because the Western powers were desperately competing against the Soviet Union . In light of this set of circumstances, many African found their way into the halls of learning in America and elsewhere. Nursing and medicine were favorite pastures for ambitious African women and men. The nurses who traveled along this path have evolved differently from other Africans who went to other fields of study. Trained in a field that has global arenas of opportunity and living in an age of migration and globalization, the political changes in African societies gave new views about return to homeland and Diaspora living to these African nurses and doctors.
   

On account of this phenomenon, critics of the African brain drain can cite United Nations and World statistics on African brains abroad and African remittances to the mother countries as both discouraging and anti-African. The number of African doctors working or teaching in the USA and Europe is much greater that the total working and teaching on the continent. The situation has become even more damaging if we take the frightening figures cited by Tandayi   Motsi of the Zimbabwe Herald “the government has found itself in a situation whereby it trains personnel for other countries”. President Robert   Mugabe in response criticized Britain for "coming at the dead of the night to steal" nurses, doctors and pharmacists. "We have created the environment that allows that upliftment of nurses.” That’s why even Britain comes in the dead of the night to steal our people," he had said. It is estimated that at least 70 000 highly qualified Africans leave their home countries annually. President Mugabe ’s opponents described the effects of autocratic rule as a reason for nursing and medical services brain drain in that country. But truth be told, Mugabe may be the worst culprit in the language of his opponents, but the disease of African self-destruction is beyond Zimbabwe and the malady I explore in the remaining paragraphs of this piece is a source of sorrow and pain for those who care and a warning for those who look for a better Africa where scientific and technological are handmaiden of the New Africa.

 Writing about the second phase in the post colonial African engagement with the nursing profession, one is struck both by the transformation in numbers of African women in the field and by the impact of globalization and Diaspora living in the life and times of African nurses. What is more intriguing in the manner in which the emergence of an African Diaspora has changed the opinions and attitudes of African women nurses is how they deal with their jobs and their men. Because they are badly needed in the job market they enjoyed both aerial mobility and social mobility. This is to say, such nurses can relocate if and when they found their social environment psychologically difficult or financially attractive to go elsewhere. As a result of this capacity to change one’s circumstances, bonding with their men has also gone through changes.  Conversations with many nurses have led me to arrive at a number of observations and working nurses on the job can shed ample light to this phenomenon. There is certainly the attraction of earning a living with greater social and aerial mobility. Most African women would confess that their choice of nursing has given them the capacity to earn a living, and if there is a need to earn and learn at the same time, they can handle the situation. Sometimes this social calculus gives rise to a series of mental calculations about job security and marriage stability. Some nurses have taken advantages of their job situation to outmaneuver their female rivals in the sense that they could obtain jobs easier that their rivals and they know fully well that men looking for financial and sexual stability can count on them.. It is indeed this attractiveness of the African nurse that makes her the coveted grape that is widely sought in certain African circles. But this very source of attractiveness could also become the poisoned arrow of love that divide and break families. Like the sour grape that the fox hated for not falling down, the African nurse could be so considered. There are many African men who go fishing for such precious jewels, indeed, many an African male has gambled by importing a bride from the village or regional strongholds in the fervent hope of recruiting a hen that lays the golden eggs in America . Some have been quiet successful and their marriages have given rise to a series of issues who are now prosperous in American and British societies. Others have been trapped in the quicksand of hasty calculations and conflicting interests between imported bride and Americanized bridegroom. As a result of the social and psychological calculus of the imported bride or the locally married nurse a phenomenon that is still not widely understood and appreciated among the Africans in the Diaspora beg for understanding. Hopefully this posting would open the magic door that shed ample light to the puzzled and mysteries of the African nurse in the Diaspora. A number of issues are linked to this fact and one must point them out so that those dealing with African female nurses and their families can dig deeper for both communal development and individual self-understanding in the Diaspora.

The first issue that awaits greater discourse and articulation is the impact of globalization and migration on the African nurses. Can we say that these significant forces have changed their lives for good and their destinies are inextricably linked to precarious marriages and the agony of lagged key kids?  To the contrary, as I argued above, some families have worked this familial equation quite satisfactorily. Yet, while acknowledging this fact we must not overlook the lingering crisis that has made a growing number of young Africans trapped in single- family situations and the absence of the thriving extension that has made family life financially difficult and psychologically distressful. Another point to note is the impact of modernity, globalization and gender on the lives and times of African nurses. In order for us to understand and appreciate this situation we must relate what has been said above to the social changes taking place in the world. These changes are not only local in the US , but they also have consequences for the nurse and her husband living in the U.S. and elsewhere. Globalization has made it possible for domestic difficulties between man and wife to be broadcasted far and wide. Not only are the cell phone and the home phone tools in the hands of the angry couple looking for familial support here and there in their feud, they also make life painful and deathly for the couple. Anyone who follows closely divorce court reports in any major metropolitan center with sizable African Diaspora population would find some interesting stories. Nigerians, Ghanaians, Liberians and Sierra Leoneans would dominate the scene in terms of family feuds involving nurses. In our attempt to unravel the mysteries of these African residents in the United States with respect to the impact of globalization, one must state here that globalization has not only created these Diasporas from various African countries, it has also bled many African countries of their brain power. It is true that many of these immigrants found life too difficult at home and the lack of political security for the politically ambitious makes it imperative for them to stay abroad. This reality makes it categorically clear that many of these men have often found themselves in status inconsistency situation. This is to say, many of
them are children of globalization whose lives have been made miserable because they are financially dependent on jobs that are below their education. Hence the large number of African men working as taxi drivers and security guides even though they possess advanced degrees.

 Washington   D.C. has been identified as the home of the largest number of taxi drivers. One local newspaper once covered the saga of an African graduate from a local university who served as a taxi driver for several years. Through policy intrigue and manipulation of a newly established government in his home country, he resolved the pain of status inconsistence by securing the job of a Charge des Affairs of his country in Washington . Globalization has also created the conditions and circumstances that make the life of the African nurse attractive but sad in terms of the dynamic interaction between the aspiring nurse and the set of circumstances before her. Many of the women who ride this horse called globalization have almost always developed false ideas about their destination called America . Thinking that she would be Alice in Wonderland once her beloved husband abroad helped her reach the land of milk and honey, this girl from the village or the small town in Africa entertain many dreams. Unbeknown to her the husband to be is a struggling man who may still be in school or has graduated but lack a professional job. Upon arrival the hidden reality hits her in the face and she gropes clumsily for cover and hope. Sometimes, she gives consolation to herself because of the dream of getting her degree in nursing. As long as this dream flickers and her mind is filled with big dreams of a better tomorrow, she would persist in her daily struggle with life.

Globalization not only creates a sea of temptations for peoples from the developing countries, but it always builds castles in the air for men and women who are not realistic enough about job opportunities. Some of the female nurses often find themselves trapped in a relationship that exposes them to the immigration difficulties of the host country or to the unpredictable status of their husbands. In cases where she came at the expenses of a fairly successful husband abroad the aspiring nurse sacrifices and persists in her studies in the hope that once her studies are over, she would live to reap the benefits of her struggle and the financial help of her loving husband. In most instances this imagined love affair falters and fails miserably. There are many reasons to explain how the forces of globalization conspire to uproot families in this venture. Sometimes the ambition of the woman in school or out of school propels her to think beyond the marriage.

This is where this sea of temptations could easily seduce and drown her. Exposed to a new culture and working with strange men who are attracted to her, she sometimes falls into the hands of a lover from her home country or elsewhere. This temptation has spelled doom to some of these marriages.

Besides the processes of globalization which have created all the difficulties for the nurse and her man in the African Diaspora, there are also the challenges and opportunities of modernity. Moving from a village environment where shame and guilty are conflated in the psyche of the person to a modern American or European environment poses another set of problems for this nurse. Some of the nurses combined new knowledge about medicine and health on the one hand and the art of deception acquired from American media and television, on the other to complicate their lives and to wreak havoc to their spouses. Gradually removed from the subtle and not so subtle powers of family shame and honor and determined to acquire wealth and material success at all cost many of these nurses create for themselves a new lifestyle. This is to say, banking heavily on the opportunities created by novelty through such means as birth control pills, she sometimes undermines her relationship with the sponsor at home or the welcoming spouse here in the West through sexual relationships with other lovers or potential suitors. This is dangerous business. It soon becomes the source of gossips and fist fighting between the woman and the man. Stories like this are widely known among families with such combination. Not all families with such arrangements fall into this quicksand of familial disintegration.

But while relating the availability of the pill and the opportunities of modernity in America to the emergence of such personalities among Africans in the Diaspora, we must also pay attention to the fact that changes in the gender question in the West has also made globalization, modernization and feminist analysis partners in the understanding of the dilemma of the African female nurse in the Diaspora. Knowing fully well that the legal system has become more supportive of the women, many of these nurses most often take full advantage of the situation. They press their claims against the men who sponsored them from their villages. Most of the women who abandon their husbands and their beds do so on the grounds that their husbands are too dependent on them and the necessities of modern life makes it difficult for them to shoulder the burden disproportionately. Real or imagined, this attitude becomes the mantra of the disillusioned nurse. Yet, in addressing the problems of the African nurse and her circumstances in the West we must pay attention to two things that have serious consequences for the African Diaspora here in the West and the African communities on the continent. The first issue is the life and circumstances of the children of these nurses. The divorce cases listed in the courts of the metropolitan areas resided by African immigrants have caused some observers to worry and to call for greater scrutiny among the members of the Diaspora.  What are we doing to ameliorate the lives of the children caught in this web of family feuds and status inconsistency?  One can say that lack of knowledge or education of people back home about the realities of life over here contributes greatly to this mayhem. Therefore, In order for this to take place, the African immigrants who are likely to fall into this quicksand must avoid the false self-promotion that reaches their villages. Comments have been made about these materials in articles published at home and in Diaspora newspapers and magazines. This issue is not unreported due to the lack of public education about this aspect of 419 marriages built on the deception of the hospital and the fast dollar, but on the lingering hope of many African men that a wife from one’s village is the best queen to have in an American bedroom.

The victims of this failed marriage between the nurse and her partner are the children in a single family home where life is nasty, insecure and uncomfortable. Not only are the children alienated from one parent or the other, they spend their days waiting for a mother laboring for wages at a hospital or a nursing home sometimes running from one double shift to other. Many of these children from such homes are often poor performers at school and among the many sociological names they carry with them “the lagged key kid.” Condemned to arrive at home without the presence of both the father and the mother, and exposed to all the dangers of a modern society, these kids often find themselves in the haven of a neighbor willing to help or a friendly relative willing to give protection to a beleaguered relative. There are very few Africans who are integrated in the Diaspora community and yet do little or nothing about this phenomenon. Those who know should speak about the tragedy and offer advice to the affected. The persistence of this situation is detrimental to the future of young Africans from the affected families. The future of these children rests in us and their successful socialization in stable and responsible homes offers us a great possibility. I consider this an African imperative if the African Diaspora is going to serve as an effective bridge linking us to the fruits of science and technology in the twenty first century.

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 23.07.2007 07:54

akuluouno  Villager

# 2 Dear Eucharia, You have written well. My heart goes out to the children bred under these circumstances by couples trying to make ends meet. I just wish that some restraint can be exercised by these couples aware of their Africn culture and history which encourages tolerance and patience for the sake of the children. :frown: Posted by akuluouno| 23.07.2007 09:02