More geographies of home: Modern African
I've been back in Europe for a little over a week now and suffering from culture shock.
It's hard being in the minority again even if since we are so conspicuous because of our skin colour, now in France we have become the "visible minority".
A few days back and I'm finding it hard dealing with French racism: brash and aggressive. At least the British keep their meanness to themselves and get on with it.
Maybe it's because I'm coming back from "home" that i find it hard to shut up and brush the humiliation off.
Saturday, I went with two of my sisters to the birthday of a relative in Neuilly, "ghetto chic" of Paris: the wealthiest borough of France they say. Four generations of relatives present, Black, White and all sort of Browns. African food and champagne. We had a real good time.
Which ended the minute we left the building. In the street: eight Black young people and already a (White) woman commenting very loudly "they are invading us".
The walk to the underground: the streets growing quieter as we're proceeding, pedestrians crossing the street to avoid us, people staring and whispering. A wall of hatred we all physically felt .
Stark reality check. Of course I'm not a person anymore, since I've stepped back into Europe I'm a Black Person. More melanin, less humanity. Guilty until proven innocent of being inferior.
I didn't realise how much of an identity crisis I was going through until I went back to Togo.
How much my soul was weary, how mentally tired i was of living as a Black Person in the Diaspora.
In Togo I wasn't a Black person! I was just a person and it felt good just being a person.
Being me in the place I was born in but didn't grow up in hasn't always been easy. I got questioned about what kind of African I was, having spent so much time in Europe was i actually still African.
I spent weeks thinking about it, thinking about me; over-analysing things and myself (as i tend to do). The answer came while I was spending some time in villages around my home town of Notsè. Places where when you introduce yourself you give your name and the place your family comes from.
Places where I remembered i belonged to a lineage, a history and a geography.
Places where people were grateful to me because i had been away but I was back.
Places where they made me feel it was OK to be like them but different because our world in Africa has become bigger as the same time people in the West thought their world was shrinking into a global village; OK to re-create, re-new and re-define what it is to be African.
Places where I realised taking in the new/different doesn't necessarily mean giving up the old/home.
Yours truly: Kékéli, Authentically Modern-African
It's hard being in the minority again even if since we are so conspicuous because of our skin colour, now in France we have become the "visible minority".
A few days back and I'm finding it hard dealing with French racism: brash and aggressive. At least the British keep their meanness to themselves and get on with it.
Maybe it's because I'm coming back from "home" that i find it hard to shut up and brush the humiliation off.
Saturday, I went with two of my sisters to the birthday of a relative in Neuilly, "ghetto chic" of Paris: the wealthiest borough of France they say. Four generations of relatives present, Black, White and all sort of Browns. African food and champagne. We had a real good time.
Which ended the minute we left the building. In the street: eight Black young people and already a (White) woman commenting very loudly "they are invading us".
The walk to the underground: the streets growing quieter as we're proceeding, pedestrians crossing the street to avoid us, people staring and whispering. A wall of hatred we all physically felt .
Stark reality check. Of course I'm not a person anymore, since I've stepped back into Europe I'm a Black Person. More melanin, less humanity. Guilty until proven innocent of being inferior.
I didn't realise how much of an identity crisis I was going through until I went back to Togo.
How much my soul was weary, how mentally tired i was of living as a Black Person in the Diaspora.
In Togo I wasn't a Black person! I was just a person and it felt good just being a person.
Being me in the place I was born in but didn't grow up in hasn't always been easy. I got questioned about what kind of African I was, having spent so much time in Europe was i actually still African.
I spent weeks thinking about it, thinking about me; over-analysing things and myself (as i tend to do). The answer came while I was spending some time in villages around my home town of Notsè. Places where when you introduce yourself you give your name and the place your family comes from.
Places where I remembered i belonged to a lineage, a history and a geography.
Places where people were grateful to me because i had been away but I was back.
Places where they made me feel it was OK to be like them but different because our world in Africa has become bigger as the same time people in the West thought their world was shrinking into a global village; OK to re-create, re-new and re-define what it is to be African.
Places where I realised taking in the new/different doesn't necessarily mean giving up the old/home.
Yours truly: Kékéli, Authentically Modern-African
posted by Kékéli at 00:49
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