Yoo-hoo! Mzungu!
A co-worker lends me his news magazines about Africa; I'm interested in keeping abreast of the news from Africa (I used to listen to the BBC World Service's Network Africa -- just ended this year after a 40-year run -- and Focus On Africa over the Internet, before mine employer blocked most streaming media), even if sometimes I'd rather take a pass owing to the volume of bumf I'm reading on my own. (I once made the mistake of declining his magazines, and he guilt-tripped me by acting as though he'd just caught me drowning his favorite puppy; apparently I'm pretty much the only person at work who shares his interest in Africa and is willing to talk about various current events there with him -- his own kids can't be arsed to read even his National Geographics, much less a news magazine.)
Anyhoo, he's lent me the current issue of Focus On Africa (the Oct. - Dec. 2012 issue [Vol. 23, No. 4]), and the thing that's brought me up short is a letter from Henry Lembeng in Douala, Cameroon (p. 58), in response to Nam Kiwanuka's column in the previous issue, "Mother Africa" (irritatingly enough, it's not archived on "Auntie Beeb's" site; however, she cross-posted it to XO Jane's "It Happened to Me" column), which recounted the story of her mother abandoning her (and her three siblings and father) when she was 5 and then lying shamelessly about what a good mother she was after she met her again when she was 17.
Kiwanuka mentioned in this column, briefly, how she and her siblings were vilified in Uganda and Kenya for being mzungu, or white or half-caste ("My mother’s brothers would say that when we grew up, we would clean their children’s homes and be their servants"); she wrote more extensively in the column before that ("Black and White Issue", which she's posted on her site) about the racism that she faced from Africans (and, after she moved to Canada, from a Jamaican).
Kiwanuka's "Mother Africa" column moved and saddened me; it also elicited a rather surprising insight from --- Oh, hell: let me just quote here in its entirety Henry Lembeng's letter, as published in Focus On Africa:
"Reading the article 'Mother Africa' by Nam Kiwanuka in your July - September issue filled me with pity. In Cameroon, people of mixed race -- mzungus -- live in paradise. Women aspire to have mzungu children because of the good treatment reserved for them. Men compete fiercely to marry mixed-race women and women compete to be impregnated by mzungu men. In Kribi, a beach town, women offer themselves freely and happily to white men to have mixed-race children. In fact, our two presidents have been married to mzungu women. How I wish Nam was born in Cameroon."
*blinks*
It should come as no surprise that neither of the top two travel articles returned on a Google search for Kribi mention this rather -- arresting -- feature of the locals' racial attitudes.
I suppose I wasn't surprised that whites, or more specifically, the progeny or descendants of whites, are so excoriated in East Africa; but it did surprise me that at least some West Africans would be so astonishingly open to at least brief intimate encounters with whites, given that the vast majority of Africans captured and shipped as slaves to the Americas (and certain Caribbean islands) came from West Africa.
But prejudice is a door that swings both ways: it can be a very good thing indeed if it swings for you, instead of against you.
Anyhoo, he's lent me the current issue of Focus On Africa (the Oct. - Dec. 2012 issue [Vol. 23, No. 4]), and the thing that's brought me up short is a letter from Henry Lembeng in Douala, Cameroon (p. 58), in response to Nam Kiwanuka's column in the previous issue, "Mother Africa" (irritatingly enough, it's not archived on "Auntie Beeb's" site; however, she cross-posted it to XO Jane's "It Happened to Me" column), which recounted the story of her mother abandoning her (and her three siblings and father) when she was 5 and then lying shamelessly about what a good mother she was after she met her again when she was 17.
Kiwanuka mentioned in this column, briefly, how she and her siblings were vilified in Uganda and Kenya for being mzungu, or white or half-caste ("My mother’s brothers would say that when we grew up, we would clean their children’s homes and be their servants"); she wrote more extensively in the column before that ("Black and White Issue", which she's posted on her site) about the racism that she faced from Africans (and, after she moved to Canada, from a Jamaican).
Kiwanuka's "Mother Africa" column moved and saddened me; it also elicited a rather surprising insight from --- Oh, hell: let me just quote here in its entirety Henry Lembeng's letter, as published in Focus On Africa:
"Reading the article 'Mother Africa' by Nam Kiwanuka in your July - September issue filled me with pity. In Cameroon, people of mixed race -- mzungus -- live in paradise. Women aspire to have mzungu children because of the good treatment reserved for them. Men compete fiercely to marry mixed-race women and women compete to be impregnated by mzungu men. In Kribi, a beach town, women offer themselves freely and happily to white men to have mixed-race children. In fact, our two presidents have been married to mzungu women. How I wish Nam was born in Cameroon."
*blinks*
It should come as no surprise that neither of the top two travel articles returned on a Google search for Kribi mention this rather -- arresting -- feature of the locals' racial attitudes.
I suppose I wasn't surprised that whites, or more specifically, the progeny or descendants of whites, are so excoriated in East Africa; but it did surprise me that at least some West Africans would be so astonishingly open to at least brief intimate encounters with whites, given that the vast majority of Africans captured and shipped as slaves to the Americas (and certain Caribbean islands) came from West Africa.
But prejudice is a door that swings both ways: it can be a very good thing indeed if it swings for you, instead of against you.