Living like a goldfish in a fishbowl with no rocks, caves or fake plants to hide among, I feel like I’m continuously being observed. It’s as if there is one giant neighbourhood watch program underway and I have been scribed as the main suspect. I know this is a sheer reality of living abroad, being a Mzungu minority, but at the same time it can feel extremely uncomfortable from time to time. I was just thinking today while walking, that I felt like some strange animal on display at a Zoo. Walking the streets, eyes continuously staring in curiosity, children screaming “Muzungu Muzungu” (white white), being asked why my skin is this colour, so ugly, why is it not brown like everyone else. While it is for the most part playful in nature, I now feel through these experiences, that I now wholeheartedly understand the inner emotional crippling that racial discrimination causes.
I passed one young man, and said hi to him and smiled, asking how his day was going. He stared at me with the most hostile eyes, burning me deeply to the core. A look of hatred, a look of disgust at my presence in his space. We maintained contact for a good 15 seconds and his face and energy has found itself engraved in my mind. It is a frustration when you want to just be yourself and be open and expressive and you meet a wall of assumptive preconceptions from others. It may be he was just having a bad day and my friendliness was an annoyance, or it could have been a deeper racial stereotype of me just being another white visitor to his native land, a link to a colonial past that still has scars in the minds of a painful history. It is these kinds questions that float through the mind of a visitor to a distant land. I am however, noticing that this sort of contemplation is pointless and serves me no purpose but to further cloud an already confused mind. Haha However, they are thoughts that are hard to avoid, in a time when one is trying to find their place, their position, their sort of niche in a new land.
I wonder if it will ever be possible for this fish to jump outside of the bowl!!! Only time will tell..
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A lens into my adventures and travels in Uganda. I will try to be as open and honest about my time here as possible, with no reservations. It is my greatest intent to discover and relay the positive side of Africa that our media rarely ever shows.
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2 comments:
Hey my little fish... Reading this blog has flooded me with all the feelings that I felt in India, the constant feeling that all eyes are on you, and a lot of the time they weren't kind eyes. It's an annoying feeling sweetie, and frustrating at that, because really, you just want to scream "I'm a good person and just want to know you"... but the world isnt always that openminded sweetie, shit to think that there is still so much racism in our own country... and we pride ourselves on its multiculturalism. Just remember that it only takes a small pebble to make a ripple in the ocean (or at least a lake... hahaha, I totally ripped that off someone else eh... lol... seemed appropriate). The only real change you can create pooh is how you approach life and all that it throws at you, "be the change you want to see in the world"... dont worry, everyone will come around and eventually see what an amazing being you are and pretty soon your lonely little fish bowl will become so full, you'll have to move to a tank...
I miss you greatly Pooh... xoxo
Hey Ty. I have had many similar experiences. Some good - ending in laughs, others in hostility - ending in a scowl.
I had a good one today though. I was visiting Catherine's nieces this afternoon and they were doing their hair. African hair is soooo different than Newfie hair :) But instead of just staring at each others hair not knowing what to do I asked them to braid mine and it was fun. They said things like 'your hair feels like silk, but why is your scalp turning red?' (they pull hard on the braids). So I told them that although my skin was pale it marked very easy - hence the red blotches on my scalp. As an even more humbling step to bridge the gap, I also pointed out how blemishes show up on pale skin even more :( We all laughed hard at my expense there, but it was worth it for the moment. We were all just girls doing our hair.
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