Awuor Onyango

I got published in Body parts Magazine. 

I’ve suffered too many heartbreaks in the hands of friends and relatives to have faith in my ability to survive a romantic heartbreak.

That’s it.

There’s no evil Ex who did me wrong. There’s no great romance that turned sour while I slept and rot away in my dreams before I woke. There's no grand betrayal that left scars in my love-struck Irises and changed forever how I could view the world. Not in a romantic sense anyway. 

Family can love you in ways so wrong and hurtful.

Friends can disappoint you in ways so profound and malicious.

I don’t want to have to date a white guy because no black guy understands my worth.

It was a drunken, lazy saturday afternoon when I said this to my friend. This is a complex thought to have. This can easily be misconstrued as racist (it is not). This deserves context.

A few hours before I worried about this to my friend, I had met Heinz. At first, I thought the worst conversation I could have had with Heinz was about his white saviour mentality and how it actually has its roots in and continues to feed white supremacy. I was wrong.

Even more hours before I met Heinz, I was sitting quietly at home with that nagging feeling that I had some deadline today but couldn’t remember what it was I was meant to do. My friend called and demanded that I show myself in public because people were wondering if I was still in the country.

Two days before that I had officially broken up with a friend because our interactions were no longer sustainable on my part. It had somehow affected my belief in the kindness of people.

And so I was sitting there with Heinz, who, for some reason I felt I had to entertain because well, unbelonging cannot be eased by increasing the number of mirrors. He was thick with foreign-ness, which is something I can relate to. When I was deciding whether I should bring up the white saviour in the room, Heinz mentioned that he had a girlfriend working in the area. This was unremarkable, both as a statement and a truth but then he added that his girlfriend was not the mzungu; this became slightly more interesting but could also pass for unremarkable given the statistical probabilities of two white people finding each other in a society full of coloured people as is Nairobi. However, Heinz then added that his girlfriend was beautiful but African men don’t appreciate her because she’s dark skinned. The demons of exes past was awoken.

I was no stranger to the complexities of that statement; black girl, beautiful but she doesn’t know it, dark skinned therefore even if she is attractive then she is not conventionally attractive, the only person who realizes or tells her that she is in fact beautiful is white boy. Women will say “she won herself a white man”, men will say ‘she betrayed the motherland, she’s a gold digger, what does he have that we don't?” and she will be there knowing the only person who ever recognised that she was beautiful and looked at her in the way of romance novels happened to be white, she will say “it is love!” and society will say “it is a hatred for your people”...she will see the unfairness of everything and perhaps hate her people.

The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, ‘What else are women for?” — W.E.B. DuBois

I have written before around this quote, that the imperative is that either women are pretty or that they find something to make themselves of use. The black woman is of great use, the white woman is of great desirability; however, feminist thought contends that women can be both or none because they are people, and people transcend, subvert and redefine purpose according to their own will.

I’ve been in this exact dilemma. I am not conventionally beautiful, which means that I am not white or near white...that is what being dark skinned is. I can also say that I have had people be shocked….SHOCKED...that they are attracted to me, given that I am not conventionally beautiful (people of most races, most of these people having been white). I can also say that I am not allowed to use the word pretty because I am not light-skinned or dainty enough to use the word pretty when referring to myself. I’ve had a friend of mine point at someone and say “She is pretty, You are beautiful” and it did not escape me that skintone and flowery dresses aside, we were both beautiful.

I have had people make inglorious assumptions about my sexual history because I am dark skinned. The further from near white you are, the more eroticized your body is. Someone once complained that if white women do it, they are being strong and empowered standing up to the man like that! Go Miley Cyrus! Go! But if black women do it then they are ratchet whores who need to get their shit together. Imagine this in the context of colourism, the darker a woman is, the closer she is to being a ratchet whore who needs to get their shit together; Rihanna is so ratchet, but not as ratchet as foxy brown or Azelia Banks. I have felt this distinction all too well in innumerable ways.

Black women are maternal beings in touch with nature, they are mystics with wide child bearing hips and the strength to carry economies and villages and families and worlds on their backs, the darker you are the harder it is to subvert this. White women are pretty dainty beings that need a lot of taking care of, they run through meadows in flowing clothes and pout wonderfully with little pretty thoughts in their heads, the whiter you are the harder it is for you to subvert this.This is what the patriarchy will have you think. Where you fall in this scale is what society will allow you to be; your near-whiteness is the key to your desirability. Are you the maternal erotic creature from whom the earth springs forth or are you the dainty ethereal creature from the sky sent here to be protected and treasured by men? Are you India Arie or are you Britney Spears in her teen years?

I have worried that someone I was interested in would not find me attractive because I wasn’t light-skinned...worried enough to not approach them at all. I was once offered bleach by a house-help when I was nine. TLC came along with their hit song Unpretty, and I learnt to question who society was to make me feel unpretty. I have been with someone who made it a point to tell her friends how stunning and exotic a creature I was; to this day I investigate with great suspicion anyone of another race who shows interest in me. I refuse to be fetishized, I refuse to be the Sarah Baartman of some white boy’s investigative fantasies into the differences between white women and other women. I refuse to be a #KenyanVagina or #AfricanVagina. I refuse to be the “that one time I dated an African, like a real one from the side of the continent where they’re like really black” in some white liberal’s powerpoint of how liberal their whiteness is.This is a racial decision on my part, not a racist one. On the other hand, I worry that I am not what the mainstream white-controlled media say is beautiful, and that this message is so subversive and widespread that my only option is to be the dark skinned erotic creature with the child bearing hips. Pretty hurts, yes Beyonce is right, and she can sing that because she’s pretty, but there is more to women than the archetypes their skin colouration imprisons them in.

At around thirteen, I was often warned I would not find a husband if I continued being myself. Incapable of muting these parts of me down, (the sins included my height) I decided I don’t want a husband. And so I found myself further and further away from the strong erotic sensuality of the dark skinned woman and her capability to nurture nations without so much as a complaint or demand for equality. I was never going to be the white woman with her seductive dainty ethereal capacity for eeking protection from the male and even nature itself. Many women can only be affirmed in relations to these two points...that they are pretty, or that they will wash your underwear and not complain about it. And for those of us who are not the pretty one… and rest assured we have opinions on your unseemly expectation of washed underwear, we are left to sigh to our friends on drunken saturday afternoons

I don’t want to have to date a white guy because no black guy understands my worth.

(If not despise)

That you were absolutely fine

Blaming 

Pretending

Deceiving

Using

and

Shutting me out

Don’t you know 

how to draw lines?

Isn’t that 

your job?

Shouldn’t you have stopped 

before 

you tried to make me feel

like I’m crazy 

(if not despise)

The way

You laugh in stead of scream

to hide

your demon breath

and the fucked up things

you say as “jokes”

Your laughter stinks

of the rotting scars

you try to hide

(If not despise)

I resent the way you try and break everyone you touch

You touch

You get insecure about others’ wholeness

You try to break them into little bits easier for you to digest

No

Not everyone

Me

I resent that you TRIED to break ME

ME!

Why are "men" more deserving of forgiveness than "women"? Why are "women" more deserving of blame than "men"? Why must we applaud a "man" for "being sorry" but remind a "woman" she can't move on from that one time she did that thing?

       “How are you finding your classes Aurore?”

 I had told her to call me that because it comes close to my name and means the same thing. I’m meeting with the Law School dean about my progress… rather, my lack of. I arrived late for this semester and have been in a halfhearted fight with some lecturers who won’t let me into their classrooms because I TOLD them I was late. If I had snuck in quietly quarter way through the semester none of this would be happening. I am hoping to use my charms to get Madame Brais to coerce them into letting me sit for the exams. I haven’t really been to class either. I’ve been locked in my room using the English channel for white noise…and the noise has been white! Sometimes it’s talk shows by that guy who does Survivor and that Ricky Lake who used to be good at talking but now excitedly interrupts her guests as if scared that at any moment someone will tell her the show has been cancelled. I find myself waking from an illusion to catch entertainment news about American celebrities.

 Once in a while I float out of my thoughts to find that I had been watching Days Of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless, shows I am surprised are still on with characters who have all slept with each other and really just stare awkwardly at the screen waiting for the all-powerful scriptwriter to kill them off. During the weekend I switch to one of the French channels and watch an omnibus of The Simpsons, Family Guy and Cleveland Show/American Dad. When I have time I read through some Law book or another, always with a bunch of highlighters in hand, hoping to make the words bleed rainbows. 

Well, some lecturers wouldn’t let me in their classes. 

 I wonder about my French accent as I speak. She seems to understand what I am saying, so I suppose I am a successful fraud. 

“I wanted to talk to you about that. It seems we can’t register you for this semester since you came late.” 

No! She has to be on my side! My friend told me to cry if I have to, if I don’t pass this semester then I have either failed my year abroad or confined myself to Québec City, much longer than I can stand. None of these options seem viable. I remember my inability to cry; I have to find another way.

 “I didn’t come late of my own volition.” 

I announce, thinking Africa > Kenya > Elections, things she can Google and confirm but won’t have to because I am so convincing she will believe anything I say…a half-truth will do! Halftruths always do! 

Look, it’s an election year in my country and there was some violence in Kisumu and that delayed me a bit, obviously. Nothing I could do about electoral passions boiling over! 

I don’t think anything on my file says I am from Nairobi. Even if it does, my father was directly involved in the Kisumu nominations… so involved, in fact, he didn’t seem to notice me stay home a while longer! 

“That is unfortunate! Why didn’t you call or email?” 

I don’t understand why she won’t just call the lecturers now and tell them I will be sitting for the damned exams! I aced Constitutional Law last year, without ever stepping into a class and given the fact that I sat almost half way through a different exam before realizing I had not signed up for Maritime Law all together. I don’t see why I am being barred from the set of frivolous non-entities that I picked for this semester! Something wet slides down my right cheek and then I become an incoherent English speaking puddle that she is struggling to comfort. Backup is called, phone calls made and my peaceful non-existence shattered forever. I will be seeing the school’s only English-speaking psychologist on Wednesday. Until then Madame Brais will feed me, call my room to check that I am breathing and implore me to take a walk in the snow that’s higher than my knees, sludge that somehow gets to my feet every time, and fog that feels like an eternal night club with only a smoke machine and no lights. I will drink one mocha and feel satisfied for a week because the floor of my bedroom is a black hole that threatens to swallow me forever and eating is overrated. It also takes an average of six months for the human body to eat itself, so as long as once a week I ingest something, I should be able to live a bit longer. No one seems to understand this. The psychologist asks me to see the doctor, after a handful of questions that seem to lead nowhere. I walk to the doctor’s little office and meet the receptionist.

 “You’re from Kenya?” 

She smiles really wide; it means nothing.

 “I was in Kenya in 1990. My sister and I were on safari there. I would love to go back! Such a beautiful country.” 

I was born in 1990, I manage to say. I don’t even know if the words come out because I am crying again. I don’t know if it’s because I regret being born or I miss that place I was in before birth, or the innocence of childhood, or Kenya. Maybe I am jealous that she gets to remember Kenya in 1990 when I don’t and we were both there! All I know is something this lady said is making me cry and she might never talk to another patient again after this! The doctor will see me now; this irks me because all I want to do is be invisible. 

“What is wrong?” 

I am tired 

“You look tired.” 

That’s because I am.

 If I had the energy I would shout at him, but there are so many screams stirring in my chest, I am afraid I will burn his face off if I make a sound. So I talk to him as if he is a timid mouse that needs soothing from all that is wrong in this world.

 “What are your thoughts on life?”

 Is he a doctor or an existentialist philosopher on a secret mission? “He’s trying to find out if you are a suicide risk,” someone says.

 We wouldn’t want you to commit suicide here you know. We’d have to honour you in some way so as to make the school not look bad, and like we treat our international students poorly…and that takes money and PR. 

He doesn’t say this of course, but the thought of my face plastered all over the Canadian news slotted somewhere between the pothole that the neighbourhood in Montreal is complaining about, and the sandwich fight that is now an attempted murder case because one of the participants was ‘deathly’ allergic to tomatoes, is enough to make me want to smile and say ‘I am all better now.’ 

Existentialist with empiricist leanings and when I’m really going at it I get a bit solipsistic. I thought I liked Ayn Rand but objectivism isn’t for me.

 I shrug. I don’t know how to say that in French, if he needs me to say that in French I will just announce that it is a deep, recalcitrant ennui that has me by my throat. I find it hilarious that I cannot say it in French! Existentialism is inherently linked to Sartre, Empiricism to Descartes; both are French men, there is of course my Kantian Romanticism which remains unaccounted for, and my Camusian Absurdism. He nods his head and smiles. I’ve been using my words as swords lately… mostly because I don’t want to see anyone or smell them or sense their troubles or be interested in their lives. It was Sartre who said that hell is other people; I believe him. 

You get to go home with antidepressants. 

He doesn’t say this either, just hands me a prescription and asks that I go to the mall and get these drugs. True to form, I go back to my room and switch on the TV, sitting on my bed… the only gravity defying floating island that keeps me from sinking into the black hole. My coat hangs on the door and makes the shadow of a lion. Lions; the laziest of the privileged male species in the world! Human males cut a close second…both are exalted for nothing. This coat is an asshole! And my subconscious is obviously too Sigmund Freud for my own liking. 

 I had felt such a deep sense of betrayal when I got home and realized that I had just bought a red winter coat. Under the strobe lights of the shopping complex, it had been a delicious tangerine hue…and my skin looks so very edible in tangerine and my English winter coats were no match for the -60 degrees Celsius of Quebec city. I came home and it was red. RED! I loathed the colour! I avoided people who liked it…they always seemed to thirst for blood to dip their toes in. They always had a murderous intensity…I always hit a wall with them; I didn’t know if I had put this wall up, or they had. And here I was with a RED winter coat; if I didn’t hate the mere sight of people I would have taken it back…but now this is what shielded me from sharkjawed snowflakes that yearned to bite into my flesh. 

The phone rings…my room phone never rings. I never gave anyone this number! It’s the first of many of Madame Brais’ calls…calls to make sure that if I feel like killing myself I do not.

 “Suicide is alarming. Suicide creates alarm. Please, don’t kill yourself”.

 I do not feel like killing myself…I wonder if maybe I feel like killing myself but I’m the only one who doesn’t know, and one day I will wake up and find a knife in my chest and scream ‘You Bitch!’ at my own betrayal. I was once friends with Yukio Mishima, and I have half-heartedly asked people who disappoint me to consider suicide by sepukku; a sword to your spleen! I have casually said a sword to your spleen. 

“How do you feel about going home?” 

I do not relish the fact. Sure, I hate Law School and this place, and if I had energy to spare I would hate everyone…I hate this place so much I will not die here! But going home? I count my words before I say them.

 Listen, my dad has a lot on his mind and I am not good at failing in anything in case you haven’t noticed…

 “You hate what you are doing here.” 

It’s been weeks I think, of being cajoled into seeing the psychologist once or thrice in a week, and calls from Madame Brais and finally convincing myself to buy the drugs as long as I bought art supplies as well. I don’t need a doctor;  I know how to get myself out of a funk. Usually some writing, some drawing, some painting and sunshine do the trick; I’ve been here before in England. 

“Your drawings are incredible.”

 I smile at the compliment; I’m not good at swallowing them. 

I’ve never been to an art class in my entire life. I do love art galleries though.

 I suppose I am too tired to be my usual guarded pithy self.

 “Do you paint?” 

Not really.

 “We have an art school, you can go there and try it and see how you feel about it.” 

The thought of being in a place with people makes me want to crawl back into my room. I don’t know why I can’t stand the sight of anyone anymore. I shower at 4 am because no one is around then. It takes so much energy to pull myself together enough to walk to the vending machine and buy something to eat. When I do I feel like Batman…as if I have to leap from shadow to shadow to avoid being seen or recognized or pulled in by humanity. And here is Marcel, the psychologist…with his eyes always prying into me, and his Québécoise English always curious in his tongue, like a glass of wine being tasted and judged insufficient, and his valiant efforts to get me to be comfortable and talk. I always imagine what I will tell him when I am on my bed…but by the time I levitate mercurially into his office I am so tired and angry at having seen people that I do not want to say anything.

 “Can I buy one of these drawings?” 

Why would someone want that particular sketch? It’s a woman being accosted by humanity; they have no mercy on her. She is naked and on her knees, holding her head to the ground begging to be left alone but a crowd gathers anyway; staring at her with their lives. I look up at him; is he a schadenfreude? I never look up at him. I am always looking at the collection of stones that he has in a bowl, or the ‘primitive’ statuettes he’s lined up from some Inuit collection or outside the window. Today he’s won something…my curiosity.

 “I love sketches…they seem more authentic and imperfect…more artistic.” 

 I stare blankly at him. Who am I to judge if he derives pleasure from other people’s pain? I had learnt the word when I was ten, watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire; it had felt delicious in my mouth. I think of Schopenhauer…Arthur, I call him, as if we had known each other intimately; He had said that to envy was human but to savour schadenfreude was devilish. People eat all kinds of things on this earth, things you couldn’t put on a menu. Some people eat shame, others pain, others eat curiosity and imagination, others still ambition. I had always held tight to these pieces of me, wore my shame like a crown and wielded my curiosity and ambition like a grenade… would today be the day I give my pain away? Perhaps he can rid me of it.

 “You’re very artistic…even the way you talk…” 

He announces softly to me, even though I barely speak to him. This is where it’s going. I could now announce that I am either Salvador Dali incarnate or his secret lovechild with Sam Beckett, which, though empirically and scientifically impossible…pfft science! Or I could nod my head and say something…milder. I had told him before that I pictured myself sliding on the snow and cracking my head open…and the thing that displeased me most about this possibility was that my red blood would stain the white snow and I personally found the contrast between red and white devastatingly ugly.

 “I think I have a high functioning schizotypal personality disorder.” 

I sigh softly. Let’s move this along then shall we? If you want to eat my pain then here it is. Either he doesn’t know what that is or is curious as to how I would come to that conclusion. I do not tell him that I first suspected it when I was four years old, that at seven I was half convinced I was a sociopath. He pulls out the DSMV and I continue to talk; I want to get to the part when we sing kumbaya and dance around a fire. 

I feel cajoled into emotional bonds, including those forged by my family. I don’t think I’ve ever made a friend in my life… I’m just put in an awkward position where someone decides we’re friends and I have to play along because I don’t quite understand the rules. I sometimes wonder how I would feel if I didn’t feel so responsible for everyone else’s feelings. Would I love them? Is that sense of responsibility love? That sense of having to shield them and/or comfort them from the harshness of this world? I do not like intimacy…I find it to be violent and invasive. I don’t think I am delusional; it’s just that everyone else thinks in a linear manner and I think…laterally, for lack of a better word. I think in explosions and expanses, and they think in straight lines. I also happen to think that I’m simply ahead of my time but would have been better placed in the past. I believe in William James’ multiverse theory; that I inhabit the same space/time continuum as Arthur Schopenhauer and Frantz Fanon. I believe the secret to immortality is in art and writing. I do not like the colour red or people who do. Sometimes I ask them if they like the colour red…other times I just KNOW that they like the colour red, and I avoid them as if they want to crush my heart in their hands just to use it as a stress ball. I hate the fact that I am going to be successful and that this success is going to be mine alone; that there are people who will be left behind, that I will have to donate to charities and volunteer so that I do not feel bad about my own success. I want everyone to succeed; to this extent I believe I am an anarchocommunist…or at least that’s what Malatesta told me

 He looks up from the book, nodding his head

 “Malatesta? 

Errico Malatesta?

 Is that your friend?” 

He, Bakunin and I hang out sometimes…so I suppose he is.

 I don’t mention that Malatesta died in 1932, I don’t even remember when Bakunin died…and I shrug away the mention of my arguments with Kropotkin about anarcho-communism. I love the DSM-V; The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. I sometimes like to leaf through it and laugh at what is considered madness. Schizotypal personality is characterized by irrationality and intimacy avoidance. I’ve never cared much for the bounds of rationality, because I am always trying to stretch them. Intimacy avoidance…I could write the book on how to do it while looking like you’re an open book; hiding in plain sight is always the best option.

 “Your intonation… it’s flat.”

 I am too tired to pepper my voice with false hope.

 Part of Schitzotypal personality disorder, I point out.

 “Also part of Asperger’s.” 

He adds, as if seeing me for the first time. Have I heard of Asperger’s before? 

“It’s in the autism spectrum… sort of anyway.” 

He explains. Marcel flips through the DSM to the Asperger’s page. I can’t be wrong about myself can I? But then, he’s the one who went to school and studied these things. Autism? My phone is in the habit of ringing. I once looked for the plug that makes it function but couldn’t stomach the thought of Lise, as Madame Brais now has me calling her, bursting through the door because I didn’t pick up my phone. My room has been mine alone since I got here…and my paintings are here now; happy paintings about drowning boats and women who have the heads of chickens and the proportions of tsunamis, paintings about the darkness that I sink into in order to forget my existence, the way I find the world distasteful, the aches I would have felt had I not met the one person who understood most of me. My phone is ringing…I brave the troubled sea that is my carnivorous floor and reach for it; the journey tires me. It always feels like sharp pieces of my broken mind seer onto the soles of my feet when I step on the floor. 

Daisy? 

Hi? 

It’s my big sister; she convinced apartment security to give her my room number. This isn’t particularly shocking. I come from a tribe of Amazons. Where we get the strength to trudge through whatever is on our path, I do not know. Tears on my part; I never wanted to disappoint anyone. 

“Come home. We love you.” 

I have never known love to give one freedom. To the best of my knowledge love is always used as a noose around one’s neck; do not go too far from us or you will die of it. This was the tag at the end of the tether; I was being pulled back into place. If you’re going to die do it to my face! I can’t even speak past the joy of hearing her voice and the reminder that I have a family that I need to take care of. I picture my niece at the funeral. The first time I met death I was seven years old. I stared at my uncle, ashen and sleeping in a suit, and I wondered when he would wake up and stop everyone from crying; I do not want that for her. I picture my best friend shouting

 “I can’t believe this bitch is dead!”… 

I always die before he does; I always leave people behind. 

Okay,

 I whisper through my tears. I was going home. I had no energy to fight her or argue. I was going home.

 “How do you feel about going home?” 

More like how do I feel about you emailing my family and scaring them into demanding that I return? I do not say this, I smile… I always smile; that is where all my secrets go.

 Good… I mean I’m a failure and I will cause them nothing but trouble…but they asked for it.

 “What will you do once you get home?” 

Stare at the sun. 

“With your life, that is.” 

Life is meaningless, it doesn’t matter. 

But you should do it anyway, 

Gandhi adds in my head.  

Swear if I could wring the optimism out of you Mohandas! 

I hide this silent conversation with Mohandas Gandhi behind a deliberate smile. I can tell my answer is insufficient; he is searching for something, some sign that he has succeeded in our interactions. 

 “Are you going to go back to Law School?”

 I hadn’t thought of it. I would want to finish what I started…but… 

No.

 I realize now that the reason my floor was a gaping black hole was because my floor was really a metaphor for my Law career. I already had a job lined up and a future as an ICC judge just waiting to unfold, if I did not get out now, then I would never get out. 

“Will you go to Art School?” 

Ha! 

I think of the art schools at home. Nothing comes to mind. Will Art School even have me? What will I tell them? That I started drawing because I was depressed and my schadenfreude psychologist thinks I am talented even though his own taste in art is a bit questionable? I think of smiling my way back to a London art institution with my “I’m an ethnic, black girl from Africa with a dream of greatness and you want me to be your alumna if you’re going to keep luring Africans to study here” face. It didn’t get me into Oxford Law (I suppose their quota was filled) but it got me into an English Law and French Law degree…so who’s to say it won’t get me into a Fine Arts degree?

 I would love to go to Art School. 

I would also love to see my father’s face when I burn the possibility of being an ICC judge in his face and ask him to pay for me to study Art. My father… I didn’t want to disappoint anyone yet here I was! I am ashamed. I have to go back home, I am told. What will I tell my family?

 “The best thing you can do now is be with your family, see the sun…” 

Remember you owe them a responsibility to be happy and content with a life you’re not a fan of; he doesn’t say this. He also doesn’t say

 ‘Go die there!’ 

Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is about the ‘Blackness of Blackness’

And a congregation of voices answered ‘That blackness is most black brother, most black…’

Ralph Ellison; Invisible Man

A few weeks ago I asked my friend Cherrypie if he considered himself black, if he identified as a black person. We were having a four hour argument in Java about feminism and post-race worlds, disagreeing on both vehemently. He unseriously proposed that all races should sleep with each other and produce non-racial babies, and I asked him if he identified as black because he was a product of such a marriage, not so kindly pointing out that there had been at least decades of interracial marriage globally and still not one single aracial child had been produced. I do not think that because something looks like a snake then it obviously is unless it announces itself to be so. So I asked Cherrypie if he identified as a black person because I have found that blackness is not the phenotypic accident we are told it is; it’s not your skin.

In my humble opinion you are not automatically a black person because your skin tends towards the darker hues of humanity, you express blackness in the same way you express your sexuality and your gender; either following a pre-provided list of narratives, or charting your own narrative of the thing. There’s a list of attributes appended to black people (people who express blackness) and therefore even when a white person (or lets face it, other people of colour as well) sees your skin colour, it is not this that disgusts them but the attributes they append to this; the allegations include but are not limited to savagery, primitivism, laziness, field-niggerisms, love of watermelon and chicken, backwardness, aggression, poverty, corruption, miseducation, violence, overt sexuality especially viz dancing/music, failure to absorb their supremacy etc. These things do not come through phenotype, it is in this way that I understand race as a social construct rather than a phenotypic one.

The Kenyan walking down Cabral street is not accosted by her/ze/his blackness because they seem to look like everyone around them; they might worry about colorism i.e. am I too dark to be thought of as attractive (if female or female-expressing) or am I too light to be thought of as attractive (if male or male-expressing) but they do not get that itchy claustrophobic-in-your-own-skin feeling you get when you’re surrounded by white people (liberal or conservative) and don’t want to come off as niggerish (America mostly) or backward/primitive (Africa/Carribean) or having a council estate mentality (British) among the various forms of negated blacknesses that make you a danger to them, or even worse, a spectacle. There exist, in Nairobi (that is my watering hole) places that you can walk into and feel black, feel the allegations and accusations being painted against your skin. You don’t need to say anything, nor do you need to actually do anything, you are already guilty.

I remember vividly a time in Nakumatt Junction at an ice-cream shop where there is now stairs to the food court. I was trying to decide what scoop to buy and asked to taste one, because the person next to me was sampling flavours as well. The attendant revealed to me that sampling flavours was not allowed, either I buy a scoop or I leave. I turned to the guy next to me tasting the ice-cream leisurely with a little shot cup and spoon, realising that he was white, then to the black female ice-cream shop attendant who was actually serving him another flavour sampling now; some things you don’t forget, until then I had only tasted subversive racism and from people who were not the same colour as I was. I suppose black people come along, taste the ice-cream and don’t feel obliged to buy it if they don’t like it, and I was black so…

“Black will make you”

“Black…”

“……..or black will un-make you.”

“Ain’t it the truth, Lawd!”

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

What comes to mind when you hear of a black person? For me black people were African Americans…and these were further squeezed into the Beyonces and Keisha Coles of the time. When given the opportunity to meet a real black person (an African American) I wondered…Were they jive talking Halle Berry/Vivica Fox types who threatened to pull my hair if I said something out of line? Did they ever reach the age of 21 (alive for men or without baby daddies for women)? Or go to college? Or have weaves (that weren’t the colours of peacock feathers puked on by babies who ate neon coloured crayons) haphazardly placed on their heads? Could they construct proper English sentences or carry out a conversation without being rude and abrasive? I am not a black person, no, I am African>East African>Nilotic… I am not ‘one of them’you can imagine my shock when I discovered I’m black.

It is funny how in the same way when told someone is Nigerian, there is a certain je sais completement (the newly invented opposite of the je ne sais quoi) as if nothing more needs to be said or done by said Nigerian, you already know who they are just by the place they are from; what kind of blackness they have. Of course it didn’t help that one of the encounters with an African American person I remember is that in which he accused me of having sold his grandfather’s father into slavery; I was quick to blame the West Africans and the trans-Atlantic trade, quick to forget the East African slave trade where mostly women were sold to North Africa, the middle and the Far east and eventually Europe, it was convenient for me to forget, a sin of omission.

I now contend that there are different forms of blackness, sweeping under the rug that some blacknesses are louder or get more airplay than others, all of these blacknesses however are mostly linked to geographical settings. Dr. Mahmoud Mamdani (Uganda) was one of the Tom Mboya airliftees sent to America in the highly strung civil rights movement 60s of racist America (is there any other kind of America?). He noted at that time that “(racial) discrimination was less about colour and more about slavery and subordination” because the Africans who went there were treated better than the Afrimericans who were already there even though they were phenotypically blacker. If the racial discrimination was phenotypic then the East Africans should have been getting lynched and attacked; they were blacker than the American Negro. The problem with blackness being a social construct erroneously purported to be pegged on skin colour is that when you travel out of your social context (and you do not need a plane to do so) then you are immediately misjudged for your blackness.

The biggest battle royale that ever happened in African art was the use of the term ‘African’ appended to the word art because some felt it carried with it an expectation of primitivism, lack of “skill” and a kind of subordination to western art which limited them (Iba N’diaye, Ben Enwonwu etc) whereas others felt it was more authentic to the continent and freed it from the rigid rules of European art which in turn freed their minds for exploration (Senghor’s Ecole du Dakar for example). Expressions of blackness can be so localized or individualized, Marcus Garvey and WEB Dubois did all but actually beat each other because of how different their ideas of blackness were, with the former accusing the later of not being black enough and the later accusing the former of being too black. Dubois is famously on record for writing that Garvey was a “little fat black man, ugly but with intelligent eyes and a big head” (Du Bois, 1923 Century article “Back to Africa,”) and Garvey replying that Du Bois was “a little Dutch, a little French, and a dozen other things. Why, in fact, the man is a monstrosity”. Garvey goes on to ask “Now what does DuBois mean by ugly?”

I recently had to read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for the book club. I had never read a book by her before, despite the fact that my sister had two of her books and told me they were good. I always have to be seduced in some way by the books I read and Adichie seemed too soft for me, almost apologetic for her truth. When I didn’t like Americanah, my sister desperately offered Chimamanda’s other books; maybe Americanah isn’t her best book, read Half Of A Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus is quite good, she’s supposed to be Chinua’s heir, you LOVE Chinua! (you can’t afford to not like her writing). I had previously watched an interview in which Chimamanda stated that Americanah was a love story and instead I found that Americanah was actually a book about race sandwiched in a rather inconsequential love story. I passed Cherrypie a copy of Adichie’s Americanah and demanded his comment after he finished it. We both didn’t like the book, but felt the need to argue over why we didn’t like it over a stroll through Maasai Market and a two hour matatu ride. He didn’t like the romance; I felt that Africa needs love stories. He didn’t think the relationship would last, I didn’t care if it did, aegyptian cities didn’t last why should romances? He thought the fictional men were weak, I thought they weren’t assholes and that was some kind of victory for men. He liked the white guy, I liked the Afrimerican intellectual who organized a protest to the benefit of a security guy who was racially discriminated against, so none of us liked the guy she ended up with but that wasn’t enough.

Americanah’s most interesting bits is of course the blog that is on the Non-American Black, which is the most disappointing bit of the book for me next to Ifemelu’s treatment of Blaine and her behaviour at the Salon. Ifemelu is actually quite unlikeable, which is some rule of writing broken here because your main character can be a murderer as long as there is something that makes the reader vouch for them, and Adichie tries to pull you along with the romance but by the Blaine protest chapter I had lost all interest in Ifemelu and finished the book because it would otherwise be rude not to. What I dislike most about the book is that (I am told) I expected too much.

My friends in the book club loved the cataloguing of the nuances between the racial minorities in racist America; I didn’t read anything I didn’t know or couldn’t relate to from some personal experience or another living where I live and having gone to the schools I went to (and hearing whispers that someone didn’t get some position because well there was an Indian vying for the same position so…) I know first hand about being part of the race everyone counts it a blessing to not be ( I expect that everyone does). I was once told by a (Indian) friend that they used to put chilli in their food when they saw Africans coming because then the Africans wouldn’t beg for some of the food (he found it hilarious). I’ve gone through the ‘Is that your hair?’ conversation when I used to have an afro (shocked faces from my African friends and awe from the others). I am now immune to people looking for dreadlock micro-extensions on my scalp because my hair is too thick for reality, my favourite hair memory is that of being asked by a (white) British friend of mine “What are those spaghetti things on your hair?”. I have been told my opinion on Mugabe is wrong by two (white male) British classmates who have never read or heard anything about Zimbabwe outside of SkyNews “She’s joking! Surely you’re joking! Tell him you’re joking!” one said to me because the other was so upset that he was rethinking being my friend as I had said Samora Machel had reclaimed farms from white settlers as well when it was more fashionable, right before independence and that if Mugabe was a monster then someone must have created him. I walked away, hating the British way of asking questions you didn’t actually want answers to, before I realized it wasn’t only the Brits who did this.

I have a dear friend of mine that I secretly call the racism police, she always knows where it’s safe for me to go and where it isn’t. No to Russia, they will throw bananas at you there (A Russian friend had invited me)…and no to Dorset, Brixton is fine, Bristol is great, Ethiopia is problematic for unaccompanied women (I wanted to go to Lalibela) etc. I was once in London, going for a contemporary dance event with the wife, we had been walking about for a while (GPSes lie) so I decided to ask the police (two white males) while the wife hanged back in fear. When I came back with the directions he looked me in the face and said “Woman! Do you know you’re black? You don’t just approach the police fwaaa like that” (This was in 2012 when black people were 30 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than whites and other non-whites because section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994).

For all the Task Forces on Racial Equality in Britain and their accusation against Black and Arab societies (get this, for being racist because you have to be Black or Arab to join them) you only get a nation in which racism cannot be spoken of at all. Racial profiling is often given other languages, economic profiling, work place discrimination, some other thing in the periphery that doesn’t actually state the race of the people involved. They would rather say a bunch of KFC lovers were involved in a riot than actually mention that these people were of the same race or which race it was. There’s a lot of room for non-violent subversive institutionalised racism there. Once in a club with the wife we were asked the ‘where are you from?’ question, the white man was so relieved when we said Kenya and was drunk enough to admit that he was hoping we wouldn’t say North London (Totenham, North London is where the British Riots started this time and a number of times in history; guess which race highly populates this area)… you are told to smile at these things because if you think someone would say something like that to you because they are white then YOU are racist! So you internalize the “I am slightly better off than the Black Brit” and take it as a compliment to you rather than an insult you just slightly evaded, one that will hit someone else just like you, except they have to live with it everyday.

I would love to say these were things that happen when you get on a plane but let’s face it there’s barely a bad thing painted on the mzungu as much as we love to hate them, that’s why they can confidently saunter into the country and marry a young questionably ‘Maasai’ Moran half their age and that’s ok but when Wambui Otieno marries a younger man high schools close, or that little two letter word we think of when we see a young stick like beweaved ‘babe’ with her old white husband…why don’t we have a word for him? What if Tom Chomondley was Tom Egambi?

The wife asked me to write about race because the longer he stays in London the less black he feels, this is because black persons are actually in a race Olympics (as Adichie put it) of their own. There is a clash of narratives of blackness, a hierarchy that shouldn’t exist, a fight between which blackness is the most black and which is only just blackish. It’s actually quite intriguing that we should resort to imperialist methodology this way, that a Kenyan can say to himself ‘well at least I’m not a Ugandan’ and a Mauritanian ‘well at least I’m not Nigerian’ and the African American ‘well at least I’m not African’ and the Black European ‘At least I am not Afro-Caribbean’ and the Afro-Caribbean ‘well at least I am not a Negrito’. This is what I found Americanah to say, it was this unlikeable Ifemelu sitting in a hair salon with a bunch of Francophone West Africans, busy having such a different blackness from theirs (at least I am not from Mali), and having such a different blackness from the African Americans (refer to the Blaine Protest: full disclosure I was there for Blaine! Intellectuals who actually bother to do more than theorize deserve the best) and then going home and finding that she had such a different blackness from theAmericanahs of Lagos; I just wanted to giver her a special snowflake cookie and send her on her way (You are the most specialest snowflake in the entire world with no concern for anybody and their happiness apart from yourself. Congrats).

I expected too much because throughout the cataloguing of the subversive and active racisms of America, I was waiting for Adichie to fly above the same old narrative of ‘my blackness is different from yours therefore my problems are more important than yours’ in which Ifemelu settled comfortably, in which Soyinka sunk into in his arguments against Negritude, in which I fell back on when defending my ancestors’ involvement in Slave Trade. Everyone else seemed satisfied and even pleasantly shocked that she had catalogued these nuances. Words were flying around; phrases like ‘the first African writer to do so’ were thrown into cocktail mixers so as to inebriate, other phrases to be adorned on the book were ‘I have never seen it (racism) so clearly articulated’. I spent days after reading the book wondering if she had forgotten a chapter like Binyavanga, or if this was the kind of book that pushes people to have the rest of the conversation. If it was a kind of conversation starter as opposed to a complete work in itself. Was she saying ‘these are the issues, talk about them’? Or was she just reinforcing the almost systematic othering of black people BY black people courtesy of the morsels of dignity we are accorded by non-blacks?

The other day when perusing a book about Tom Mboya I read that Kwame Nkrumah was telling people that Mboya was trying to pry the presidency from Kenyatta (who naturally started making Mboya’s life hard); I found this hard to understand because Nkrumah had installed Mboya as secretary of a Pan-African Conference in 1958 and invited him to Ghana’s independence. Jaramogi then explained that white propaganda was used severely to divide and conquer African leaderships especially through such unfounded rumours (he himself often found out that he had allegedly said something against Mboya, Kenyatta, Moi etc). I began to wonder who exactly had told me to expect jive talking from African Americans, or them to expect shaggy hair and grass skirts from Africans or coconut bras from Afro-Caribbeans. A Nigerian friend had been told that Kenyans have to fetch water from the top of a mountain and run down the mountain with the buckets of water, which is why we won marathons.

“Read it,” My grandfather said.

“Out loud!”

“To Whom It May Concern,” I intoned. “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

If I am allowed to use the queer community as an example, you will find that a bisexual person might fall in love with and marry a person of the opposite sex therefore appearing to be heterosexual and avoiding a world of discriminations, or an asexual person might become a nun or what have you, or a panromantic female might fall in love with a transgender man and lesbianism is often fetishized and less demonic to raunchy men. The community isn’t completely free of arguments of ‘whose suffering is worse?’ but regardless it bands together to fight against everyone’s suffering. So where the African is treated better and given better opportunities abroad as far as education goes (while being expected to internalize institutionalized forms of racism and go back home), and the African American is held in high esteem where entertainment is concerned (as long as they perform a 21st century minstrel show for all to see) and the Caribbean also has their piece of dignity to swallow among the heaps of insults, then what need has the African for the Carribean’s shocking poverty and or gangs and or politics or those of the African American’s or Afro-European? Why would we band together when we are so busy fighting over the most black blackness? What is Pan-Africanism or Negritude or a united black consciousness when we cannot agree that black is as diverse as it is unifying?

We risk remaining little pockets of blackness here and there shouting out ‘well I’m different!’ never wondering what made us this way in the first place. Why is it important whose struggle is the most sincere when in all sincerity it’s all the same struggle? You might say it’s different in Kenya that a black driver is more likely to be stopped by the police because we’re the majority so that’s different from London but the truth is we’re also the least likely to be “someone important” or their kin. Impunity is racial as much as it is economic and we are more racist than we think we are. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Nairobi’s neighbourhoods were founded on racial segregation and continue to be, there is no denying that black Westlands is apartment blocks built on the carcass of city council housing plans, the leafy suburbs dotted with non-blacks and embassies would otherwise not be so close to the black shanty towns for labour supply (Kawangware and Lavington, Westlands/Kangemi etc), the Indian strongholds of Parklands/Ngara the messy black estates of Eastlands. We remain in and reinforce the colonial racial segregations in our ‘redefined’ urbanities and we’re not the only city to do so.

“Our struggle is not an isolated struggle…We are not sitting here detached, as I said, but we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

(Dr) Martin Luther King Jr Speech at Africa Freedom Dinner, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Post Scriptum

I don’t take things for granted mainly because I live in worlds, seemingly impossible, wonderful post-future, post-race, post-gender worlds that only afro-surrealists can occupy in the now and afro-futurists conjure up in futures. I find that I often have to explain that by affixing the prefix post to words like race and gender, I do not mean to negate these words i.e say that I live in a world where these things are irrelevant or unimportant (because they are clearly important to me) but in stead one in which they are not limiting or constraining, a world in which I am in active defiance of the shackles of race and gender.  As for futures, I have never been in a future of any kind nor have I seen one, therefore I live in a world where futures don’t exist, linear time projections are also archaic.

      ‘It’s already after the end of the world, don’t you know that yet?’

He’s Eighty Seven. Eighty-seven and look at all he’s accumulated in eight-seven years, strewn in the snow like chicken guts, and we’re law-abiding, slow-to-anger bunch of folks turning the other cheek every day in the week. What are we going to do? What would you do, what would I, what would he have done? What is to be done?

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Drink up guys. There will be no Kenya on Tuesday!”

I’m at happy hour with a bunch of friends. We’re the group of queers, or artsy people to the severely untrained eye, loudly arguing about feminism, racism, politicians and existential crises while also talking about someone’s mean under bite. I am often asked if I am on drugs, ‘She doesn’t need drugs’ a friend will often say ‘I am drugs’ I will add with a wide smile. This is my cult. ‘So are you worried about Monday?’ someone asks me. ‘Please don’t feed her; this is what she’ll blog about on Tuesday’ Bubble butt predicts. Congratulations Bubble Butt. You’re right! I have to interrupt my scheduled session on Myths of Black Beauty, and my Tom Mboya tribute (he was murdered on the 5th of July, Kenyans did a pilgrimage to his house on the 7th) to talk about middle class privilege, something not a lot of middle class Kenyans seem to know of or maybe just simply ignore.

Middle class privilege is consenting to silence oppressed people who are over 80% of your country’s population because well…they might burn your precious shit while expressing their oppression.

Middle class privilege is the fact that these invisible 80 actually feel that the only way they can get the message across is via burning your precious properties.

Middle class privilege is giving an actual price to other people’s freedoms by saying ‘You who wants to talk to them will be liable for all the monetary harm they cause’ and actually feeling nothing about the government’s statement of ‘Control your fucking animals’ or rather agreeing to it.

Middle class privilege is not bothering to understand why someone is pushing for national dialogue, or there was curfew in Wajir or that terrorist attacks are now being targeted at the invisible 80 who don’t really have government protection, and that this is a recipe for a civil war waiting to happen.

Middle class privilege is basically living in George Orwell’s animal farm and being content with being more equal than these animals that need to be controlled so they don’t harm our precious monies

Middle class privilege is demonizing the one person who tries to tell them ‘Maybe we should talk about it first’ and saying ‘Oh well there’s constitutional channels if you want to address these issues’ when you know clearly they don’t know much about this constitution apart from what your leaders (you) told them, that you yourself have flipped through the constitution maybe once at most and aren’t too sure what it says until it’s made relevant to you. That once the hoopla about the ‘best constitution in Africa and the world’ died down no one bothered to translate the legalese into contemporary forms understandable by the cows of Turbi. And that a new constitution does not hide past scars. An abusive partner’s promise to ‘never do it again’ is always tentative, so I wonder sometimes why we suddenly expect that people will be running to courts they have lost billions and years to because of corruption, or police they have been formerly harassed by, or institutions that have failed them time and again.

Many presidents, especially third world presidents, do not live in their country. One of the penalites of exalted power is loneliness. Harnessed to the trappings of protocol and blockaded by a buffer of grinning courtiers and sycophants, even a good and intelligent leader will gradually begin to forget what the real world looks like.

When a president of Nigeria sets out to see things for himself what does he actually see? Highways temporarily cleared of lunatic drivers by even more lunatic presidential escorts; hitherto impassable tracks freshly graded and even watered to keep down the dust; buildings dripping fresh paint; well-fed obsequious welcoming parties; garlands of colourful toilet paper hung round the neck by women leaders; troupes of “cultural dancers” in the sun, and many other scenes of contented citizenry.

Chinua Achebe, The Trouble With Nigeria

As a visual artist who comes from where I come from, there was a bit of turbulence at the beginning of my art ventures, meeting other artists from different socio-economic classes, I was often asked what my pain was. Why would someone who had what I had have pain? What did I have to say to the world? Art, like writing, is political whether you like it or not, and most times Art is about struggle. So what was a middle-class privileged girl struggling with in a country whose governments catered solely to the middle-class, and not just the middle-class but a particular middle-class.

“How is Kenya?” you will be asked in certain parts of the country. I am yet to see if devolution has brought Kenya to these places. Places the media visits only when they are on fire, not when matches are being readied. Who knew where Mpeketoni was, or even cared about what was happening there before, as Parselelo Kantai aptly put it, ‘Westgate went country’. I would love to know how many people actually believe in Nation State Kenya. Really believe in it, now that Moi is no longer shoving Uzalendo songs down our throats and we can step back and think about it. What is Kenya? Is it the amalgam of privileges you receive by virtue of living in government hubs and making a certain amount of money that you can pay for your freedoms with? Is that why you are scared for your money? Because without it you have no freedom?

‘Dispossessed,’ eighty-seven years and dispossessed of what? They ain’t got nothing, they caint getnothing, they never had nothing. So who’s being dispossessed? Can it be us? The old ones are out in the snow, but we’re here with them. Look at their stuff, not a pit to hiss in, not a window to shout the news or an alley to sing the blues! They’re facing a gun and we’re facing it with them. They don’t want the world, but only Jesus. They only want Jesus, just fifteen minutes of Jesus on the rug-bare floor…How about it Mr. Law? Do we get our fifteen minutes worth of Jesus? You got the world, can we have our Jesus?

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

A revolution is coming.

A friend once drunkenly declared with the kind of heaviness you don’t take for granted. I wasn’t shocked to hear it, not even scared. I felt like a ruthless dictator watching the crowds break through his palace doors to take his head. You saw it coming, you are sort of proud that your people are finally done drowning in the shit you deal them and you are somehow ready to offer your head. It’s been a good run; you didn’t think you could keep it up forever anyway. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t scared for SabaSaba either. Some people say that we are now in 2014, but is time really linear when there’s no difference between your house-help leaving her children upcountry with her sister so that she can work for you and the same thing that used to happen during colonial times? Is it different because you’re not a settler?  Do you treat her better? Do you fuss when she has a dead relative? Do you even care about her life past what’s for dinner and what needs washing? Are you trying to help her further her education or do you think that’s disadvantageous to you because then you’ll be out of a house-help? And how is that different from the settlers pushing for Natives to be educated enough to work for them efficiently but not so much as to work for themselves?

Middle class privilege is wielding economic inequalities as guns to muzzle and perpetuate the constant suffering of others around us and then holding a national prayer day about it when they start to complain about their suffering

It is unfair to ask me to subsist on mission school sermons about Christian conduct and passive resistance in circumstances where it is considered a crime to be decent; where a policeman can run me out of my house at the point of a sten gun when I try withhold my labour. For years I have been told by white and Black preachers to love my neighbour; love him when there’s a bunch of whites who reckon they are Israelites come out of Egypt in obedience to God’s orders to come and civilize heathens; a bunch of whites who feed on the symbolism of God’s race venturing into the dessert among the ungodly. For years now I have been thinking it was alright for me to feel spiritually strong after church service. And now I find it is not the kind of strength that answers the demands of suffering humanity around me. It doesn’t even seem to answer the longings of my own heart