When you are new in a city, people generally ask you the same kind of questions, where you come from, where you have been before and whom you are working for. All these interrogations can seem pretty common and you would think they don’t involve particularly complicated answers. Well, it depends…
First, when in Africa, where you come from doesn’t have the same meaning than in France for instance. Like, to me, I came from London, this is where I lived when I was sent to Nairobi, and this is where I took the plane. London is one of the main capitals of Europe, and to me Europe is where I am from. Otherwise I was born in Paris and I have a French passport. For my interviewers, where I am from is more like where my grandparents are from, where does my name come from, where is my family living.
Then where I have travelled to implies: where else have I been in Africa? And is it my first visit in Africa? Well, I always answer, I have been to Algeria a few times and to Egypt. But ‘where in Africa’ actually means where in Sub-Saharan Africa. ‘Because North Africa is not really Africa’… you will hear. ‘Egypt is Middle East’, another will add. Well, this is not completely untrue, but geographically both countries are on the African continent, aren’t they?
Where I have lived before includes France, Czech Republic, the US, I mean Florida, and the UK. Here I don’t even bother mentioning Czech Republic, people generally don’t have much to comment about that.
About France, people here know the country has colonised a huge part of Africa, that Paris has the Eiffel Tower, and that terrorists now threaten to target the country.
About the UK, well it is the former coloniser, London has Big Ben, and terrorists targeted London in July 2005. And people from Britain are supposedly cold, distant and closed up, Kenyans say. Or rigid. They are the opposite of African, to sum it up. But British influence remains huge in Kenya, from the driving side to the language, including the plugging system and the administration and the way they name streets and houses, and so many other things. And British Kenyans are very well integrated in the country as well as Indian Kenyans, whose ancestors arrived from British Indies during the colonial times, especially to work on the Mombasa-Nairobi railway.
People from Europe are called Mzungus in Swahili. It means White people but it also carries a lot of associated ideas. Like most East Africans think a Mzungu can’t dance or drink like an African, and that Mzungus don’t adapt very well to Africa. My Burundian friend says I am not a typical Mzungu woman; he says I got adapted very quickly. And he thinks other Mzungus wouldn’t have come with him in the typically African places he took me too. Well, there is no generic answer to this.
About my travel, I’ve recently been to Georgia and Armenia, I say, the cigarettes I smoke come from Armenia so I mention it when I offer one to a new encounter. Oh, where is that? They reply. Not easy to explain in East Africa... Eastern part of Europe, Southern from Russia, at the border with Turkey? Former Soviet Union? Not very relevant for my new East African friends. Next.
Well, when we start talking about whether Africa is a cultural shock or if we talk about food specialities, I noticed I starting talking about my trip to Haiti. I did it a few times. Oh, I only went once, for a week. But then people get more interested. Oh really, Haiti? How is it like? Great people; the first ever Black nation to become independent, etc. 1804! Haiti’s food I reminded it as delicious. When I was there, I was reporting on the food crisis, I visited Cite Soleil townships and I remember the food as delicious, how strange is that? But from the amazing fruit plates from the Montana Hotel to the little house that tried to be a restaurant at the corner of Delmas Road, the food was available for foreigners like me and was absolutely delicious. The taste of paradise. I must say the Burundian meat I have tried is nothing compared to a Haiti fishmeal. Tusker has no taste at all compared to a glass of Haitian Rum. And people I have met want to know how is Haiti and there are proud of its people. They connect with the destination.
And then I interviewed a Haitian man at the UNICEF building on prevention against diarrhoea in East and Southern Africa. He asked me where I was from and if I had already been in Africa before, etc. When I said I had been to Egypt, he said it’s not really Africa… When I quoted Haiti, it opened a new door in the conversation.
I mentioned the people I know from there, he almost knew all of them, writers, filmmakers, and journalists. I said I had only been to Port-au-Prince once, in Petionville and in Cite Soleil, but that I wished to go again, especially in Cap Haitien and Seau d’Eau… I remember reading an article of the pilgrimage in this part of the island. He said he was from Seau d’Eau, that he grew up just very near the place and one of his dreams was to buy a house there; he said he thought it was paradise and that he’d like to take his wife. She is from Morocco and she has never been to Haiti, her husband’s homeland. She is actually scared to go, according to him.
Well, maybe North Africa isn’t part of Africa, after all, and maybe Haiti is. It’s emotional geography that matters here.
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