mzungus money and power (or lack thereof...)

After church last Sunday, we came back to my host family’s house for the usual (Meru) Sunday dinner: sukumawiki, moshimo (mashed food), chapati, ugali, etc. I was having a conversation in the living room with my friend Yvonne and Kandi when two young men came to the house, and one, Jayd, immediately started talking to me: Do you like Lady Gaga? Have you heard of so-in-so? What’s it like in the States?

It was nice small talk until he got giggly as a schoolgirl and whispered to me, “Okay. I have this crazy dream. I’ve always dreamed of moving to America and marrying a mzungu.”

::facepalm::

For those of you unaware (or holding out on googling it in anticipation of me explaining), mzungu is the KiSwahili word used to refer to foreigners, specifically Americans and Europeans, usually White people, but also Americans and Europeans who can’t pass for African. Since my neighborhood was more like a small town, everyone knew everyone and everyone knew everyone’s business. Thus, everyone knew I was a visitor from America. Thus, I couldn’t pass. Thus, Jayd’s comment. Sigh.

Anyway. I wasn’t particularly offended. Eight-ish years since the start of puberty, two of them having been spent in Saint Louis, I’ve been on the receiving end of enough inappropriate passes to not bat an eye. What has me writing about Jayd’s comment, then, is what it says about the perspective of young people, particularly young men, living in rural Kenya.

Before Jayd began telling me his “crazy dream,” his tone was conversational: He didn’t talk too fast or too slow; he looked me in the eye; he never hesitated or stuttered. I took the giggling and whispering that cloaked Jayd’s comment, then, as an indication of bashfulness, as a sign that he thought his “dream” ludicrous. When you say something like that, I sincerely hope that you don’t take yourself seriously, so there’s nothing particularly remarkable about that observation. However, when I asked him what mzungu meant, his explanation shined a light on his perception of self:

He told me a mzungu was someone of high class, someone who doesn’t bring people down; that an African can never be a mzungu because Africans are always trying to stop their brothers and sisters from coming up.

Ouch. Self-hatred much?

A quick analysis of Jayd’s definition, the formal definition ala wikipedia, and my experiences with the word suggests that mzungu is a slur that simultaneously conflates American and European national identity with each respective nation’s power; gives users a pseudo-power over the targets of their slur; and denies the power of African peoples in general.

Though Jayd was joking, his marriage proposal is a tacit way of saying, “Take me to America with you. Make possible the opportunity I can’t have in Africa.” The assumption/implication of “I want to marry a mzungu” is that I have the power (read: money) to sponsor his long-term stay in the States. Such an assumption comes from a conflation of America the nation and American nationality.

How come some Africans (and probably people of many other “underdeveloped” nations) make this conflation? A quick look at TV gives us the answer. While in Meru I spent some time channel surfing. Top item on the news: U.S. pulling out funding for Kenya’s education system. The only thing covered more was Kenya’s constitution and the riot story. The fact that U.S.’s doings in Kenya ranked so highly in Kenyan news coverage suggests that the Kenyan gov’t, and by proxy, the Kenyan people, see America as influential and important. Though the Kenyan gov’t also said that they could do without the funds of powerful nations, it still used the U.S.’s decision to stir up controversy – again, an indication that Kenya views America as powerful.

To counterbalance the ostensible power of Americans (and others from wealthy nations), Kenyans call us muzungu. The first time I felt the sting of “muzungu” was when Jayd went to greet people at my host family’s door and said, “[Something in KiSwahili] mzungu. [More in KiSwahili] mzungu!”

I told him the term annoyed me, and he stopped calling me mzungu when I couldn’t understand what else he was saying. In this way, he abandoned the pseudo-power he could have had over me. When he was calling me mzungu though, he was reducing my identity to my (supposed) money. If I’m money, then I’m just a greenish/pinkish piece of paper to be spent and recycled for another’s use. But, of course, I am not my (supposed) money. Hence, pseudo-power.

Closely related to the pseudo-power of muzungu is the fact that it robs its users of their own power. As defined earlier, mzungu is someone who is American/European and has money. To call me mzungu is also to say, “I am not mzungu.” Tacitly, this says, “I am not American. I do not have power.” The user of mzungu can refute this implication with his or her actions. I have no idea what Jayd did (or does) on his spare time so I can’t say to what extent he felt he had power in the world. However, a conversation a few days after the “crazy dream” conversation gave me a glimpse into his sense of power.

We were sitting on a porch and he again asked me to marry him. I told him no, and he said, “Okay, okay. …Can I be your African nigga?”

Real talk, I died laughing when he said it. Talk about culture shock. I guess Audrey’s right, “That’s globalization for ya!” Anyway. I asked him what nigga meant to him. His response: Someone who’s useless and can be used anyway you want.

Damn. Though I debated with him for a little while, I couldn’t (and wouldn’t’ve) refuted the man. His definition captured the implications of what it means to be a nigga: By definition, a nigga is someone who is ignorant, and therefore, easily manipulated. For Jayd to see himself as a nigga is for him to proverbially shoot himself in the foot before the race (to America, or success in general) begins. So much for self-empowerment.

Sigh.

Though Jayd was the only young person I had an in-depth conversation with about mzungu, many young men I met expressed the negative self-perception and/or a desire to not be African (whatever that means). Young women, however, seemed to not see a conflict between life in Meru (and/or Africa) and a successful life/healthy self-perception. Even still, young women would ask me to take their children to America… It seems, then, to be either an identity crisis amongst young Kenyan men, a silence amongst young Kenyan women about their real goals, or both.