|
At an internet café in Senegal's capital Dakar, a Senegalese woman skims through men's online profiles, zeroes in on a thirtysomething Canadian and says hello. A few computers down, a young man browses through photos of foreign women.
They're looking for friends, conversations and possible romance just like internet chat users anywhere else, but Ndeye Mane Toure says many Senegalese also are looking for something more. She's hoping she might find the man who will lift her out of Africa to a comfortable life in Europe.
Toure, a 22-year-old college student, has already met a French man online who sends her more than a dozen text messages a day and says he'd like to marry her, but she says she's open to developing other relationships, perhaps with the Canadian.
In Senegal, where half the population is unemployed and two-thirds live on under $2 a day, many dream of reaching Europe or the United States where they believe a better life awaits. The desire is common throughout West Africa, where thousands have boarded open-air fishing boats or traversed the Sahara Desert on risky voyages to reach Europe this year.
Toure says she considers online dating a safer alternative to becoming an illegal migrant and trying to cross the ocean in a tiny boat.
But the internet presents its own dangers. So-called "mail-order brides" have become victims of abuse in the West, where they may neither speak the language fluently nor know the law.
After two foreign women who went to the US through marriage brokers were killed by their husbands in the US state of Washington, a national law was passed earlier this year requiring Americans to provide their criminal records -- including any history of domestic violence -- to the foreign fiancées they are inviting to the US
Virginia-based women's advocacy group Tahirih Justice Centre estimates that over one-third of the foreign fiancées admitted to the US each year have met their husbands through marriage brokers, amounting to 14500 women annually. In the past, mail-order brides have come to the US largely from Russia or the Philippines, but businesses are expanding to other parts of the world such as Africa.
In Dakar, Senegalese pack into small street-side internet cafes to use chat rooms or online dating sites. Internet cafes in African urban centres have become cheaper and faster in recent years as owners have switched to high-speed internet connections.
Toure says students use the internet to chat and to meet people, particularly foreigners, far more than they use it for research.
Valerie Tendeng -- who only gave her middle and last names because of the personal nature of the subject -- said she used to go to an internet cafe whenever she could spare $2, hoping to find a ticket out of Senegal and out of poverty.
"When you're young, you believe where you are is bad and things are better elsewhere," says Tendeng, a 32-year-old clerk at a Dakar bakery.
Then five years ago, she met a fiftysomething New York man online.
The American repeatedly told her that he loved her and that he wanted her to "live like a queen". Tendeng said she thought she might end up marrying him.
But a few weeks ago, Tendeng discovered that the man with whom she was considering spending the rest of her life had been hiding a disability that keeps him permanently homebound. She felt deceived, she says, and stopped accepting his occasional gifts of money.
Young people here nevertheless are logging onto online dating sites in ever increasing numbers.
One French dating site, 123love.fr, says about 12% of its users access the site from West Africa. That's about 200000 visitors each month from the region. Senegal tops the list along with Côte D'ivoire, with about 80000 visitors a month.
The demand goes both ways -- Miami-based Africanbrides.com provides contact information for African women for $13 apiece.
American and European men who use the service browse through photos, make their selections, and place their order.
"Are these ladies doing this just to get into the country? No! They are doing this to get more stability and security in their lives with a man they can trust and fall in love with," the website states.
Africanbrides.com representative Robert Funk, however, does say that one of the main motivations for African women seeking foreign husbands is to get out of their homelands.
"It's an intelligent decision," he says. "If I'm living in a desert and I'm a farmer, I would move to a more fertile ground."
Senegalese women surfing the web to meet men soon discover the downside of anonymous and faceless relationships.
"There is too much mystery, too many liars," Toure says of online relationships. After a few exchanges with the Canadian man, she decides from his manner of chatting that he is probably a Senegalese man posing as a Canadian to seduce women.
Tendeng says she no longer believes in using online relationships for a ticket abroad. She now calls the hope "a dream of youthfulness".
Relatives and friends living abroad tell her they are also struggling to get by, and that they often face racism. She says she's realised life elsewhere is not as rose-colored as it looks on TV.
Besides, Tendeng says the man never really gave the relationship a chance, because he refused to travel to Senegal for a face-to-face meeting even while insisting she move to the US to get married.
"Honestly, I can't love someone I've never met," she says. -- Sapa-AP
| 
