Help - I am white

By Tine Gjerloev

Anton was 3 years old when he had a huge fight with his somewhat older friends outside our house in Kisumu.

"Mzungu, mzungu!!!," They yelled, white teeth laughing in dark Black faces.

Anton’s face turned red with anger when he furiously screamed back:

"I am not a mzungu!" And went to compare colour of the skin with Muhunja from Kakamega:

"See," he said: "I am NOT a mzungu! I am Anton and you are Muhunja. What’s the difference?"

I, however, became a Mzungu on the 27^th of July 2000 at 10.39.

And not only a Mzungu, but also a Dane and a Westerner.

It happened when I landed in East Africa.

Before I have been used to being weighed and judged by the way I act, what I say and even sometimes by what I do not say or do not do.

Now most of these measures ceased to exist and new and unspoken rules took over.

Let me generalize.

All of a sudden I was regarded as an enormously rich person. In contrast, my fellow Blacks were per definition poor or at least always looking out for something little – a little something, I supposedly possessed. I was up there, expected to have access and answers to solutions to various large-scale problems.

Objections to these assumptions don’t help. Your perspective simply doesn’t make sense. Because you must be rich and you must be able to help. After all you are White! You are another kind of species.

And ups – here are the first obstacles on the slippery road called partnership and development worker.

One of the first days at work I was met with the phrase: When you are in Rome do as the Romans!

By all means, I thought naïvely. I did strongly believe that I had gone out of my way to follow the dress code and that I approached people respectfully. Hmmm. The advice must have been in regard to other issues. "This could be about culture", I thought.

All of a sudden it was not necessarily what I said that mattered but more the way I said it. Poor English, bad grammar. And definitely the way I acted was a thorn in many people’s eyes.

My reluctance to partake in harambees (small time fundraisings ed.) created turmoil. How could I refuse being who I am (read White and therefore rich), when everyone else was contributing? Sure, but it is a firm principle for me not to remove responsibility from the state that ask peoples for taxes in order to provide exactly these services to its citizens. It is a task for society, not an individual one, I thought, where obviously my Black colleagues saw it as a group task. Good discussion though!

But basically the conflicts were deeper rooted, because what can be discussed can also be solved.

It’s the unsaid that is the true threat to success.

Where I privately was blessed with numerous good friends, both Black and Brown I still lacked a breakthrough professionally. In meetings, decisions, agendas, work plans, intentions were good and expectations high. But mistrust seemed to rule. The spirit was as if failure always lured around the next corner - like a curse on a culture that does not dare to believe in true success after years of oppression followed by huge national disappointments.

To my mind success is possible as long as the right idea is there. A good and loyal team to back it up and there you go. Think higher, bigger, better. Unfortunately mistrust and disbelief is bound to reflect on the outcome.

Sharing information in a group is another challenge. And if you happen to be a White person, "Sorry bwana," it easily becomes a question of chasing information from what looks like a closed clan of (Black) people. Probably the White person is unable to decode the signals from the group that may also not consider the White person a member of the fraternity. After all (s)he does not have a clue about who and what you are. Maybe that is the truth. After all I arrive with my car, my house, my insurance and my ability to travel wherever I want to. I am not part of a group who must struggle on a daily basis for a decent life.

The problem is that this issue is not open for discussion. It is a non-issue, taboo kabisa, and a "family affair" with damaging implications for any progress.

At times, my cultural "burden" brings me to ask myself: "Who am I?" My Black fellowmen instead seem to ask: "Who am I within my group?" With those cultural differences in mind, I guess, it easily ends up being Me versus Them.

Now we are back in Denmark and no one calls Anton, Mzungu.

Nowadays he is called: The White African – something he never achieved during his years in Kenya.