In Kenya if you are a white person you cannot escape the word Mzungo following you around wherever you go. Commonly thought to mean ‘white person’ a quick internet search states that there are many different interpretations of this Swahili-based word, from ‘stranger’ or ‘person of foreign decent’ to the more interesting ‘one who wanders aimlessly’ or ‘ one who runs around in circles’, describing the way Africans saw early European traders and missionaries. The word, or a derivative of it, is used in most Bantu languages of East, Central and Southern Africa.
But ever since we arrived in Kenya and could be forgiven for thinking that this word was pinned on our backs and people thought it was our name I have been trying to grapple with the question, is it racist?
Fresh from a recent visit home where we savoured the anonymity of UK life I came straight back to shouts of ‘Mzungo how are you’ (the regular favourite). The first and second person to ask this on my 10 minute stroll out at lunchtimes will usually receive a short ‘very well thanks’ from me, the third or fourth a polite smile but no answer but by the fifth and sixth person it is down to completely ignoring them or a not very polite reply. Some people who say this act like they just can’t suppress it and the excitement of seeing you makes them blurt out the term despite themselves, others you sense deliver the word with much more ill feeling. VSO training asks you to think about what it will be like to live as a minority and if you are prepared for that, I thought on the whole I was but I didn’t expect that on a daily basis people would feel the need to remind me that I am different to them.
Obviously this minor inconvenience in my daily routine does not compare with the discrimination that thousands of people across the world have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of their race and I am well aware that we are not stopped from doing anything, prohibited from certain places or abused in any way. We are however treated differently as a result of our skin colour, mostly based on the assumption that we have lots of money, or according to children in Mombasa, lots of sweets that we will happily give out. But it is the notion of pointing out someone’s difference that makes me uncomfortable, and surely in some way that is discrimination?
Here in East Africa it is clearly a culturally acceptable term and one that colleagues tell me is not meant as an insult, more stating a fact. With our basic Kiswahili you can hear children on buses being taught by their parents to call you the word, they can be very surprised if you respond in their language to tell them that is not your name! I have even heard reports that the growing number of Chinese people in this part of the world are also being called Mzungo by people who must take it to mean foreigner, or as a friend tells us, someone with money. But in the end to my British sensibilities the concept of shouting a word that denotes the colour of your skin at a total stranger in the street just seems rude and, well, wrong. And what erks me more is when people who know me say it to my face. The security guard at work recently stopped me to ask ‘where are you going for lunch Mzungo?’ when I asked him why he called me that he replied ‘because you are one’. Hmmm.
So while I don’t think I have yet resolved to decide whether it is racist or not one thing I do know is that it is bloody annoying and I will not miss it!
