erin.

I am like a photo negative of almost all the people around me. Not only is my skin really light with the help of my SPF 50, but my hair is light and getting lighter.

The word used for a white person around here is muzungu. I hear muzungu a lot.

The word does not have racist connotations in the Ugandan consciousness. It can be a bit difficult to get used to, particularly for Americans, who come from a country where shouting a term for a stranger’s race at them in the street could quickly turn into a very ugly situation. Here, muzungu is really just a descriptive term, and therefore I don’t get offended when someone uses it as an adjective to describe me. For example, if someone is trying to find my house, it makes sense to ask around the neighborhood where the muzungu lady lives. Or if they are trying to describe how I look, it makes sense to mention that I’m a muzungu.

The point at which the muzungu-ing begins to bother me is when it is used as if it is my name. Children and men I don’t know on the street are the most common offenders in this way. I am followed by shouts of “Muzungu, how are you?” and the constant question of the boda boda drivers: “Muzungu, wakadhi?” (“white person, we go?). Sometimes a kid will just yell out the word muzungu repeatedly, by itself. When used this way, it is no longer just an observation, but begins to sound like some sort of alarm.

The shouters are usually children, and they have never been taught anything other than what they are doing. I’ve actually seen mothers lean over to instruct little ones: “You say muzungu.” So I shouldn’t blame the kids, and usually I just try to solve the problem by teaching them my name. I even use my local name with them (Akello, it’s the name given to the follower of twins), because I figure that it’s much easier for them to pronounce and remember. I always instruct them to spread the word among their friends. Still, there are so many kids around that they haven’t all caught on quite yet.

Most days, I really don’t mind. I try not to let it get to me. I will always be a distortion in these surroundings. I’m an outsider here, and there are certain ways (a big one being my appearance) that, no matter how much I learn about and appreciate Ugandan culture and integrate into my community, I will never blend in. I also realize that, despite the colonial history of this place, and mostly because of it, my white skin gives me a huge amount of privilege here.

I have become so used to being followed by a chorus of “muzungu” that I am pretty good at tuning it out. But other times, when I’m walking home after a long day, awkwardly toting a pineapple and a kilo of yams, the last thing I want is to be accompanied the entire way home by screams of “muzungu!” that alert others that they too should come have a look and shout. I hate that on such rare days I find myself getting angry, even with cute little kids. (When the shouting people are adults, I have even less patience).

This anger bothers me most because I know it is misplaced. Yet some days I can’t seem to stop it. Those of you who know me know that I’m not someone who often gets angry. On these occasions, I often try to think through why I am angry after I arrive back at my house and set down whatever produce or live poultry I’ve been carrying.

I don’t think the word muzungu in particular is what sometimes makes me feel like hiding and not facing what’s outside the door to my house. The word is just there as a constant reminder of something else: the visibility. With visibility comes the rest: the constant scrutiny of everything that I do or do not do, the eyes, the comments, the laughing, the judgments. And the “Muzungu! Muzungu!”

Just because it annoys me when my community constantly points out the obvious fact that I’m a muzungu, the last thing I need to do is get angry and begin feeling sorry for myself. Oh, poor little white American girl! Voluntarily living in the middle of Africa with all your power and privilege and opportunity! What a hard life you have!

I still cannot figure out how exactly it happens, but at some point everything that is difficult about being here somehow gets wrapped up in that word.

I have been reading a book by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter who wrote some amazing things about his experiences as a reporter in Africa during the revolutions and coups of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. I just came across a passage in The Soccer War that captures some of what I’m getting at:

But I couldn’t be among them. I had a wolf ticket. You get that ticket when you cross a certain parallel. When you reach a place where you find out that you have white skin. This is a discovery, a sensation, a shock…Books about Africa used to get on my nerves: so much about black and white in them. This colour, that colour, and all the hues in between. When I finally went myself, I understood. Right away you find out what’s assigned to you, which line you’re supposed to stand in. Right away that skin starts itching. It either affronts or it elevates. You can’t jump out of it, and it cramps your style. You can’t exist normally. You will always be above, below or off to the side. But never in your own place. I was once walking through the black quarter of Accra. I was with a black student, a girl. As we walked, the whole street jeered. They called us the worst names; the cursing and the rage followed her. It was too much to bear. ‘I had five people and twenty blacks with me,’ an Englishman told me. It’s the ones like him that help build the myth. The total, absolute myth of the colour of skin, still alive and powerful.

It’s amazing how much of this still feels relevant, many years after it was written.

Whatever our color, we are only made to truly feel our skin “itching” when it creates ripples in our environment, when it elicits a reaction. There comes a time when suddenly, all the unseen values and assumptions that have always silently been fastened to us are revealed. And once the curtain is drawn, we are left to clumsily step blinking into the too-bright sun.