About Perets

Perets Nimpoza (1959) was born in Burundi. He studied at the University of Bujumbura and has a degree in History. He moved to the Netherlands in 2000 and took a bachelor’s degree in teaching French at the Hogeschool Rotterdam.

Perets taught French and history in Burundi. In Holland, he taught French at a secondary school. Currently he has temporary administrative and translation jobs.

Perets lives in Utrecht with his Burundian wife and five children. He is an attentive observer of Dutch society, which keeps surprising him.
 

In Burundi, marriage is one of the most important events in one’s life. So I understand why a man is nervous when he proposes marriage to a woman. But what I don’t understand is why Europeans do their proposals in public.

One day, I was watching a French TV show. A guy and his girlfriend were invited as guests. At a given moment, the man fell on his knees. At first I thought he was praying to God, but he wasn’t. He was making a marriage proposal in front of millions of viewers. The girl said yes and both seemed very happy. But for me it was an outrageous thing to do. What if she had said no? 

In Burundi, marriage is a family affair. Proposals are just not done in public places. A marriage is announced during a small party where the families of both sides meet each other, drink and eat. The family of the boy asks the family of the girl if they approve. If the answer is positive, the two young people are then engaged. It is very rare that a proposal is not approved, but first everyone wants to be very certain before the news ‘breaks’.

In 2005 I met Jeroen, a Dutch man in Rotterdam, who told me a funny story. To surprise his girlfriend he came up with a brilliant idea: to propose marriage to her in a huge supermarket using the shop microphone so all the shoppers could witness the event. So the young man and his girlfriend went to the supermarket. At a given moment he said that he wanted to get an article from another part of the store. But instead he went to a counter and asked for the microphone. “Attention, attention,” he said. Everyone in the supermarket could hear his voice clearly.

“Nadine, do you want to become my wife?” he asked. Many people in the supermarket were surprised to hear the announcement and looked around to see if they could see a very happy girl. But she could not be found. Jeroen had expected Nadine to look for him and say: “Yes, of course!”. But nobody said yes. 

After 20 minutes, he finally found Nadine. “I asked you something very important, but you didn’t give an answer. Why?” 

Nadine didn’t know where he was talking about. “I heard nothing. What was it?’ she asked before going to another shop to buy something for herself.

Dutch people may find this a funny story and perhaps feel pity for Jeroen. I see it as proof that it’s a very silly idea to propose marriage in public.