Why 'mzungu' is the word of the week

When you get to Africa, one of the first words you'll learn in Kiswahili is mzungu, and that’s because you will find people shouting that word at you around twenty times a day. They say it in different ways: sometimes happy - mostly when it’s kids - and sometimes it almost sounds like swearing. Sometimes it sounds more like sharing information - I honestly have no clue why they feel the need to shout ‘white person’ at me, like I wasn’t yet aware of that fact.

This whole mzungu thing has been getting on my nerves, because to me it represents a big gap that I am constantly reminded of. Other than that it somehow makes it hard to travel in the way that we love to do that.

The way we like to travel is to not by hovering over a country like a bird, kind of looking at it from afar, enjoying the view but not really experiencing the country. I find many people enjoy this hoovering. They travel thousands of kilometers without actually getting out of their bubble. They interact superficially but won’t be able to answer basic questions about the country they have visited, nor will they have gotten to know locals. They will have made friends from all over. They will have seen hotels and National Parks - and don’t get me wrong, I am not judging that way, it is just not ours.

The way we like to travel is rather to dive into the country, really being part of its people. Learning some local language, interacting with locals. Getting to know what makes them proud and what pains them. What they think of their government. What they think are viable solutions to their problems, if they have any (mostly they do). We wanna know what they eat, where their rituals come from, how they party and how they work.

In order to do that you have to connect with them. You have to talk and laugh with them and most probably you have to do stuff you don’t really want to do because it’s so completely different from anything that you are used to at home.

And these experiences are part of what makes travelling fun. Experiences you never even thought were possible, regardless if they are good or bad.

Being a mzungu going to Africa, you already know that you are the exception, and you already know how privileged you are. If you aren’t completely oblivious to what goes on in the world, you know you will be (with reason) seen as a bag of gold. You know you have the color of money, as an Englishman - who has actually lived in Africa for decades and therefore probably knows what he is talking about - on the local ferry stated it. Being constantly reminded of that fact by hearing the word ‘mzungu’ 646 times a day does not make this any less obvious.

And it complicates things if you want to immerse yourself in the culture and want to build relationships that resemble a friendship, because if someone sees you as a bag of gold, he can’t possibly see you as an equal nor can you establish a balanced relationship. Or at least I would think it’s a challenge.

The Kenyans we have met have mostly been friendly, although I have to say there is something in their way of communicating that isn’t the most polite. They are not the most open minded, extroverted people that have walked the earth. But then again, neither am I.

I find it really difficult to relate myself to someone else here, because I am constantly aware of the color I have and what the other person probably thinks when he sees me. In every interaction I wonder if they think I am a spoiled little brat and even if I know they are right, I somehow feel myself making an effort to not sound like one. In every conversation I am conscious about how I speak about money, how my experiences in life will sound to the other person, how my comments might come across as superior or if maybe the other person does not know what I am talking about, because he has no idea what life is like in a rich white country.

So, I am very cautious with my words and at the same time I am, maybe forcedly, trying to establish this equality but knowing that there is none. You can have the urge to say ‘oh, but in the end we are all the same, our differences are small’ and this may be true when you talk about race, but not when you talk about where you come from and where you grew up.

Because I know that the moment I was born I was probably about three million steps ahead of the person I am speaking with in terms of opportunities and privileges. Which makes a comment about we are all the same pretty lame.

The kids have been hanging around with some very, very poor children. The first two days were amazing. They played football, they played with sticks, they ran after each other. Sometimes they would just sit in front of each other, laughing, touching each other's faces. They made vehicles out of pieces of wood. It was romantical, cliche maybe even. Kids don’t need to speak the same language to be friends. They don’t need to have the same background or colour and they don’t care about countries or flags or other things.

Yet, after two days of very dedicated playing, Guy made the innocent mistake of taking some of his (and he did not bring many) toys out of his backpack, so they could all play with it. The result? Eight children gathered around the door of our hut, desperate to see, touch and play with more of those amazing toys they never in their lives even knew existed.

Guy and Eli did not expect any of this, because it never occurred to them that there would be kids without toys. So even though they played nicely, there was and would always be this immense gap between them. A gap they don’t even know exists.

The innocence with which our children play with the other kids in the evening sun, the sort of play that makes your mother heart melt and for a few moments you believe none of that gap nonsense, or at least that children are able to close it - that innocence does not really exist because we live in a guilty world.

We live in a world where most Kenyans are practically unable to see us as normal people because really we are not. We are spoiled, incredibly rich people. Rich in a way most of them cannot even begin to imagine. And then we come to their country, and they think they finally get some money out of us, but then it appears we aren’t only rich, we are also greedy. We bargain, we tell them off because we can’t give money to all of them, we can buy some ugly necklaces but not all of them. We can give some shillings to a dude that gave us wrong directions, but we can’t keep giving money to every person that ‘helped’ us in some small way. Or at least I don’t want to. I don’t want people to see money when I walk up to them to ask them if they know a nice restaurant around.

And then I feel guilty for thinking ‘I don’t want’ because again, it sounds privileged. Surely they don’t want to be begging white people for money all day long, but they don’t have much choice.

Sometimes it even seems that our way of being nice actually makes things worse; like Guy taking out some of this toys just gave way to some ugliness. The kids see something small and suddenly they want more, suddenly they don’t share with each other anymore, suddenly they become greedy like us.

In one of his books, Noah Yuval Harari talks about happiness and how most people can live quite happily even with very little, but become unhappy as soon as they realize there are other people better off than them. As long as you don’t know what else is out there, you just don’t seem to look for much else.

I am guessing most Africans in Africa must have lived a lot happier before they were colonized by white rich people who wanted to be even richer, showing them what being rich means and knowing they won’t ever be as rich as them.

As you will have understood by now, I’ve experienced quite a roller coaster of feelings. At first all I do is feel sad because seeing all this poverty and desperation makes me feel all the more privileged. Then feeling sad makes me feel guilty because I am not in a position to whine about my situation when my situation is the privileged one.

Then I want to help and save everyone for a bit, but not very long because I realize I can’t, and also I somehow get annoyed by the fact that people expect me to save them at least a little bit, and they can’t seem to just be nice without wanting something in return.

As a result I go back to sadness, because I realize that this is probably what real poverty does. You don’t care about being nice anymore. You don’t care that you rip off people because you need to eat and you don’t care that a mzungu tells you to piss off. Courtesies are a luxury you cannot afford.

So, the last couple of days I have been trying to see through all that and most of all I have been trying to not take everything so personally. To put a brake on the urge to immerse myself too much, and rather do it the hoovering way for now. This makes it a bit lighter. Also, maybe the overview from afar gives me more perspective than being pulled into all these very complex problems that I have no solutions for anyways.