When "Will You Marry Me?" Feels Like a Threat

Written by Joni Roberts

Traveler, storyteller, and public health advocate

I was standing with one of my students in western Kenya when she looked at me with wide eyes and said,

"I think he was serious."

Earlier that day, a Luo man had approached her.

She was beautiful.

Confident.

Black.

Young.

And to him, she looked like she belonged.

He complimented her.

Then he told her she would make a wonderful wife.

He talked about marriage.

About taking her home.

About how beautiful she was.

And then he walked away.

She was shaken.

Not flattered.

Not amused.

Terrified.

She genuinely thought this stranger might try to take her back to his village and marry her.

When she told members of our local community what had happened, they laughed.

Not because they were laughing at her.

Because, to them, the situation wasn't dangerous.

It was predictable.

"Oh," they said.

"That's just how Luo men are."

"He didn't mean anything by it."

"He was just talking."

The more they laughed, the more uncomfortable she became.

Because she wasn't laughing.

She was trying to understand whether she had just escaped something dangerous.

And that moment has stayed with me ever since.

If you had asked me a year earlier how I thought I would spend my sabbatical, I would never have guessed I'd become fascinated by courtship.

Yet here I am.

Collecting stories.

Not because I was looking for them.

Because they keep finding me.

By the time this happened, I'd already been approached by men in several countries.

I'd already heard the declarations.

The compliments.

The marriage proposals.

The promises.

I'd already learned that many conversations begin at one hundred miles an hour.

"You are beautiful."

"I've never met anyone like you."

"I want to marry you."

"You are my type."

"You are different."

After hearing it enough times, I learned to hear something beneath the words.

Not necessarily truth.

Not necessarily deception.

A script.

A performance.

A culturally familiar way of expressing admiration.

That doesn't mean every man is insincere.

Nor does it mean every interaction is harmless.

It simply means I'd learned to interpret these moments differently.

My student hadn't.

Why would she?

She was thousands of miles from home.

In a country she'd never visited.

A man she didn't know had just spoken about marriage after only a brief conversation.

From her perspective, that wasn't romantic.

It was alarming.

And honestly?

It made perfect sense that she felt that way.

One of the biggest misconceptions about travel is that cultural understanding somehow erases fear.

It doesn't.

Understanding usually comes later.

Fear comes first.

Especially when you're a young woman.

Women spend much of our lives making rapid safety assessments.

Do I smile?

Do I ignore him?

Do I keep walking?

Should I tell him I have a boyfriend?

Should I say I'm married?

Should I leave?

Will saying no make things worse?

Those calculations happen in seconds.

We often don't even realize we're making them.

Travel doesn't erase that instinct.

If anything, it heightens it.

Because now you're making those calculations in a place where you don't fully understand the rules.

That experience changed the way I think about study abroad.

We spend a lot of time preparing students for food.

Transportation.

Language.

Currency.

Health.

Packing.

Culture shock.

But I wonder how often we prepare them for gender.

For courtship.

For the possibility that someone may call them beautiful before asking their name.

Or joke about marrying them before asking where they're from.

What do we tell students when persistence means something different in another culture than it does back home?

How do we prepare them without reinforcing harmful stereotypes?

How do we validate their fear without telling them they should fear everyone?

Those are much harder conversations.

But I think they're the conversations we need to have.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about traveling is that two people can experience the exact same interaction and walk away with completely different truths.

The Luo man may very well have intended nothing more than playful flirtation.

My student experienced genuine fear.

Both realities can exist at the same time.

Intent does not erase impact.

Impact does not necessarily reveal intent.

Our job isn't to decide whose experience is "correct."

It's to create enough space to understand both.

When I think back to Wycliffe in Kenya, I laugh.

Not because he wasn't persistent.

He absolutely was.

But because, by then, I'd learned the rhythm of the dance.

I knew how to smile.

How to redirect.

How to hold my boundaries.

How to enjoy the banter without mistaking it for obligation.

My student hadn't learned that dance yet.

And she shouldn't have been expected to.

That's exactly why preparation matters.

Not so students become cynical.

Not so they become fearful.

But so they have context.

Because context doesn't eliminate discomfort.

It gives us language for it.

And language is often the first step toward confidence.

What I'm Still Wandering...

How do we prepare students for cultural differences in courtship without reducing an entire culture to stereotypes?

How do we validate a young woman's fear while also helping her understand the local social script?

When does persistence communicate admiration?

When does it communicate entitlement?

How much of feeling safe comes from understanding the culture around us?

And perhaps the question I return to most often:

What responsibility do educators have to prepare students not only for a different country, but for a different set of gender expectations?

I don't know that there are easy answers.

But I do know these conversations belong in our pre-departure orientations just as much as passport reminders and packing lists.

Because understanding a place isn't only about learning its history.

Sometimes, it's about learning how people say,

"I think you're beautiful."

And how to respond when you don't speak the same language of courtship.

I am still collecting data.

And I am still wandering.