The Thing Around Your Neck - Marriage and Faithfulness in the Nigerian Culture

In Nigerian culture, marriage is not typically something chosen by two in love; marriage is arranged between a man and a woman by their respective elders.   A few of the short stories in The Thing Around Your Neck, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shows readers the different cultural norms Nigerians follow in regard to marriage and loyalty differ tremendously from that of typical American culture.
The chapter "On Monday of Last Week" demonstrates the idea of loyalty to a spouse despite his/her absence from the spouse's life for several years without much explanation.  In this chapter, Kamara and Tobechi are the main characters, a married couple from Nigeria, that are living in separate countries for several years.  Kamara patiently awaited in Nigeria for her husband to invite her join him in the United States to work and help support their new life together.  While this is a norm for a couple who is a part of the Nigerian culture and trying to immigrate, people from the U.S., for instance, may view the separating of one's spouse for many of years odd and have thoughts (or even actions) about infidelity throughout their years apart.  But in the case of Kamara and Tobechi, their separation was a very typical plan that many other Nigerian had probably had to follow as well to successfully immigrate and rebuild their lives together in a new country.
Another norm of Nigerian culture is the act of arranging marriages.  This is demonstrated in the arrangement of a marriage between Chinaza and Dave in the chapter "The Arrangers of Marriage."  Dave, a medical school student in the United States, has agreed to come back home to Nigeria to please his parents are marry the girl of their choice, Chinaza. She, as well, is being forced into the arranged marriage by her aunt and uncle who see Dave as a future success.  Once introduced, Dave and Chinaza had only two weeks to get to know each other before becoming wed. While the marriage does not turn out to be successful, a reader can infer that neither Dave nor Chinaza was too heartbroken about the failure of a marriage they shared because the two were never truly in love.  Even though their arrangement is not ideal, it is the norm and what they both have grown up expecting to have one day.  On the contrary, people of the United States grow up expecting to marry someone they love, not someone chosen for him/her.
One could say that there are pros and cons to the marriage norms in Nigerian culture.  The faithfulness that couples display is definitely an aspect of the culture that outsiders would definitely want in their own respective relationships.  However, arrange marriages to people that are not of the same or similar culture may see it as a forceful trap that could make life for people wedded by arrangement a living hell.  It is all about prospective and what one has grown up seeing as a norm.