Don’t congratulate me on going to Africa

So, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Really, just a lot of things. I suppose I ought to preface this with what I experienced in America before coming here. The perceptions and reactions of others and my own.

So, at one point, I told you I was going to Africa. At one point, I told myself I was going to Africa. I probably told you, though, that I was going to Rwanda (a small country in East Africa, I’m sure I said). You probably had to look it up on a map, and I did too at one point. I can remember calling my mom Fall of freshman year and telling her about this program and how much I wanted to do it. She then proceeded to talk me out of going that Spring, thank god. I remember knowing that the genocide remembrance week activities were going on at Hendrix each April, but for some reason, I didn’t actually go to the events. Even when I had already applied to come here. Because that’s all we know of Rwanda, of Africa, right? Violence, bloodshed, terror. Poverty, small children with distended bellies with flies crawling undisturbed around their mouths and eyes, AK-47s, black people, villages with mud brick houses and thatched roofs, women with baskets on their heads, babies on their back, and colorfully printed dresses on their bodies. No one ever thinks cities with sky scrapers, security guards everywhere, an obsession with cleanliness, French fries for every meal, business suits everywhere (even in the middle of the savannah in a refugee settlement on a dirt road), boarding schools, internally developed development strategies, delicious fruits, gorgeous scenery, music videos, domestic help, and a more exercise than you can imagine.

Back to pre-departure reactions though. The most memorable was also the most hilarious. I told a neighbor’s grandma that I was going to Rwanda…that’s in Africa. Her face completely fell and her mouth dropped open. I laughed. In an old lady’s face. I had to. It was hilarious! “I’m studying abroad next semester,” I had told her minutes earlier, much to her delight! Marvin was with me at the time and had just mentioned that he was going to England. Oh but why can’t I go somewhere safe like that? Another favorite, but not really, was after clarifying that Kigali is one of the safest cities in Africa (which, can I clarify how true this is? Please?), I was told simply (humorously and sarcastically of course, but I know they believed it) that that’s like saying…it’s the best out of entirely terrible options (there was some metaphor, but apparently I’ve chosen to forget it). Well yeah, you could say that, but come on, it’s Africa. And it’s the implications present in Africa that…honestly…they’re just so pitiful. I could call them stupid, stereotypical, misplaced, and completely wrong, but no one realizes that until they come here. They’re just pitiful. And honestly, I can’t really blame them too much. Sure, I can sit here and make fun of misinformed Americans, but I don’t really think I can blame the individuals, as much as I would love to. I suppose I’ll go the route of blaming institutionalized racisim, sensationalistic media, the fact that we learn colonial to civil war American history a billion times but only look up at the rest of the world and go “oh, I guess you’re there too. Whatever” once during our educational career, and a culturally inherent ethnocentrism. America, after all, is the center of the world, right? But really, let me please just tell you one thing.

Africa is not monolithic. It’s an invented concept. It exists only in the mind. Your mind, the collective western mind, and the minds of Africans themselves who are grouped together because the rest of the world has done and continues to do so. I mean, please tell me what Tunisia and Swaziland have in common. And I challenge you to find them on a map. What does Twi (shout out, Kelly!) have to do with Kinyarwanda? What is Africa, and what is an African? Is it a continent or a stereotype? Are they just black people and others don’t exactly count if they’re anything but? Are you *really* not an African man if you didn’t grow up herding cattle in the hills of Uganda (Love you, Muna)?  Africa is not one thing. Africans are not one people. Show me a starving child, and I’ll show you my siblings who turn up food because they don’t want to be fat. Show me a wealthy warlord, and I’ll show you one of my babies with cerebral palsy who lives at an orphanage. Show me al-Shabab or Boca Haram (however you spell those) and I’ll show you the tons of nuns I see every day. Africa is not one thing. There is no “African culture.” There are more than just black people. I’m friends with an Egyptian, Pakistanis, Europeans, Americans, and native Rwandans. Hell, beyond here, I’m friends with white South Africans and black Americans. As my friend Zoe put it, “If I was born in South Africa and then moved to America, does that make me African American?” I mean really. What is an African? What is Africa? Yes, those two things exist. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to promote some sort of cheery global village, “there’s only one race—the human race” sort of idea. I don’t believe in that either. I’ve definitely been made cynical to that idea here. I just want you to realize that the Africa you think you know is wrong. Hell, the Africa I think I know is wrong. No one will ever have the whole picture. It’s the whole “you can’t step in the same river twice” idea. The thing I love most about Africa is… (someone please rewrite the Pocahontas song).

And honestly, I don’t even like using the word Africa anymore since it’s lost a lot of its meaning to me. I’ll say East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, North Africa, the horn of Africa, Francophone Africa, Anglophone Africa, whatever. Maybe even sub-Saharan Africa, though I think that’s just something people say to politely refer to that place with all the black people and all the problems. I’ll only say Africa when I’m mad, generally. I only really know East Africa. And at that, I only really know a bit of Uganda and Rwanda. And at that, I really only know Kigali. So please don’t ask me how Africa was. I know you’ll be saying it jokingly and just to emphasize that I went to some place “super crazy, dangerous, and undeveloped,” but please. Ask me how Rwanda was. Or even Kigali. Because I can’t tell you about anywhere else.

And so now I have to go back. Or soon, at least. And I have to face the stereotypes again. The monolithic comments. And honestly, I don’t think I’ll handle them as well this time. Last time I laughed knowingly, understanding that people thought I had something to fear. I reassured them when they thought they’d have to send me with a gun and come bail me out of an African jail (love you guys, promise). And see, there it is again. African jail. Not just any jail, a terrible, awful, no good, very bad jail. I consoled them when they worried about my health and safety (there are freaking soldiers on the street here, yall. Armed with huge guns, and they’re everywhere. Kind of terrifying). I can’t say I’ll be as forgiving this time.

But I suppose I’d be lying if I said I never had any concerns myself. I thought I was going to live in a simple house. Cement, I guess. Wouldn’t have been too far off. Only I lived in a Rwandan mansion, essentially. Still cement. I thought I’d have to do my laundry by hand all the time and douse myself in my 40% DEET bug spray. Turns out I have helpers that do literally everything and I’ve hardly touched those two bottles of bug spray. I don’t even really use my mosquito net that often. I wasn’t too concerned for my safety. Any more than I would be in any other big city. I thought I’d rarely have internet. I spend 4 hours in a café every day. I have a ridiculous lunch break. I thought the food or the water would make me super sick. I thought I’d have to follow those iodine and boiling rules to a T or face…the Rwandan version of Montezuma’s (Kagame’s?) revenge. My small pharmacy in my suitcase has largely gone untouched. I thought I would have to dress as conservatively and professionally as possible because that’s what the packing list said, right? God, I miss my nike shorts and short dresses. Pre-Rwanda me was pretty hilarious. And a really terrible packer.

So I’m just going to have to laugh. At the monolithic (I think that’s the nice way to put it) questions when I get back, at the “feed a poor starving child in Africa” commercials (because really? Would you want some old white dude to walk through your neighborhood, just pick your child up out of nowhere, put them in front of a camera, and make up some sort of sob story about them as they walk away? Like really? That seems so weird now. And yes, I know poverty and starvation exist. But really. Just think about it). I’ll have to laugh at the lack of news coverage about positive things happening here, laugh at the terrible and expensive fruit, and laugh at how really, no one is going to care that I came here. I find this hard to believe (because I’m just so damn cool, right?), but that’s what they tell me. And I’ll just have to laugh at how coddled American kids are (and American parents. You have real diapers and 2.5 kids, yall).

Oh, and turns out there are actually mud brick houses with thatched roofs and flies crawling all over the kids. But the former are few and far between (or just in Uganda), and my babies don’t give a damn about the latter. They just want you to keep pushing the merry go round because that is so much fun, sha!!! Oh, and I’ve seen black people. White people are weird. And I am so getting one of those dresses made!

Anyway, back to the title. Don’t congratulate me for coming here. To “Africa.” I’m not brave, I’m not daring, I was just curious. If you want to congratulate me for something (though I’m an introvert and that’s wayyyy too much spotlight for me. Just ask me questions or put up with my rambling), congratulate me for getting into a new culture, congratulate me for not bleeding too much when I did my laundry, congratulate for getting up at 6 every day and going to sleep by 10 like an old person :P Congratulate me for learning to laugh at men who, after approximately 10 seconds of acquaintance, profess their undying love for me or men who fondle my hair (yup, couldn’t think of a better word. Pretty appropriate) as they walk by. Lord, or for drinking milk that tastes like smoke. But not for getting on a cushy plane, living with my family, going to school, and playing with babies. Anyone could do that anywhere. No “but still”s. It’s a place with people and things. If you wouldn’t congratulate someone for going to Canada, south Dallas, or Dubai, please don’t congratulate me for coming here.