Afrikaburn!!!

This weekend will be spent in the Tankwa Karoo as part of a gift economy and burning man festival, we will be fighting against the Shell frackers on the side, at the inevitably indescribable Afrikaburn Festival!

http://www.afrikaburn.com

SAfm Radio!

Just a quick note to let you know I have been asked to be interviewed on a women's radio show called OTHERWISE on SAfm. On Tuesday the 12th April at somepoint during the 1-2pm (South African time) show they will interview me about my research at HPCA on gender sensitivity in palliative care. If you want to know more about my research feel free to tune in! It should also be available streamed live at: http://encryptant.antfarm.co.za/fifa/default.aspx?id=9&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 (apparently it won't work without Window's Media Player).


More about the show I'll be on:
http://www.safm.co.za/portal/site/safm/template.PAGE/menuitem.3eb6259e2ce7b63c6b0eb550a24daeb9/?javax.portlet.tpst=c7d077175852f260f0448955a24daeb9&javax.portlet.prp_c7d077175852f260f0448955a24daeb9_viewID=content&javax.portlet.prp_c7d077175852f260f0448955a24daeb9_docName=Otherwise&javax.portlet.prp_c7d077175852f260f0448955a24daeb9_folderPath=%2Fv7%2FSAFM%2FPrograms%2F&beanID=1810488935&viewID=content&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken

National Identity

There are so many things I want to share about my time in South Africa. This has been a learning experience in so many ways, beyond the palliative care immersion and the research skills I have gained.

Throughout my life I have approached the question, “Where are you from?” with caution. When you ask me this seemingly innocuous question, I will size you up, try to figure out what answer you’re looking for, whether you’re making small talk, or actually want to know my story. I am constantly re-presenting and reshaping my answer, to suit those around me and my own identity.

In the different places I have lived, I have been struck by the different reasons one is assigned a national identity. In Tanzania, I could establish my legitimacy through language. Assumed a tourist, I would feel the affirmation and recognition as a Tanzanian only when I spoke Kiswahili. In Senegal, a great deal of emphasis was placed on place of birth. When I talked about my home in Tanzania it was only when I mentioned I was born in Kenya, they would stop, step back, and say, “Toi, tu es une vraie Africaine”. You are a true African, a phrase of legitimacy and validation that was denied my friend who had spent her childhood in Uganda, but who had had the misfortune of being born outside the African continent.

 In the different countries in Africa that I have lived in, I embrace my African-ness, the aspects of my life and upbringing that make me similar to those around me. Although I constantly criticize others for the term African, lumping together a vast and diverse continent, I find myself longing for the recognition as being from these places that echo of home.

In South Africa I cannot convey myself through language fluency, and birth is not assigned the same importance as it is in Senegal. I even encountered one individual who was adamant that, “Because of your ancestors, you can never be African, if I move to Japan and my children are born there, they will not be Japanese!” I listened patiently as he denied my identity and then asked him, “My brother, if I am not from Tanzania, where am I from?” Truly I am an amalgamation of all the places I have lived, completely adopting each, but never fully of any.

In South Africa I have encountered a new definition of the term African, used to other and lump the traditional, isiXhosa, Zulu and countless other backgrounds, avoiding the term black. What is so striking to me is that this term is used only as the other: where I am trying furiously to be affirmed in my identity as an African, I hear white South Africans use the term to describe all the things they are not.

Along with embracing my African-ness I am personally embracing my US passport for the first time. Of all the places I have lived this is the first time in my life I have ever been told I have an American accent. Only occasionally, but more than anywhere else I’ve spoken. I am forced to respond to the assumption that I am from the US.

I am also assigned the task (by the Fulbright) of being an ambassador for the US, to foster and facilitate “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries”. Not because of, but in cooperation with such a task, I have not corrected people when they assume that I am from the US, for the first time in my life. Rather, I look at it as an opportunity to represent myself, yes, as an American, and to show that the experience of someone from the US can be one who has lived most of her life in Africa.

Rather than deny an American accent or American-ness in potentially awkward or US-critical situations, I claim my US identity anew and offer them a new understanding of an American that can hopefully represent myself in a positive light in mutual-understanding-establishing interactions.

I am constantly coming to terms with how to represent my identity to others, however, I am consistently confident in my personal identity: the people, places, and pasts that have made my national identity this complex combination of countries and cultures.

I try to be careful with the term American, however, it is often the term used by those here to describe people from the US, and was the term of my childhood, and that is why I have used it in these thoughts.