I exist in an extremely odd shade of gray. This post will be as the title suggests, a confused convoluted conversation about confusion. Uncensored and unedited, straight from my brain to your eyes.

Discussion

I was talking to a friend of mine today. This guy is one of the first people I ever met when I came to this country and we both came when we were in high school and have pretty much entered adulthood in this country.

We Have a Very Strange Identity

Our identities are odd because:

1) We identify with Kenyan culture much more than we do the host culture: Here it’s a 50/50 split. Some people come in their teens and completely soak up this culture, the language, the fashion and make their friends and their lives here.

Then there are people like us who come here either 3/4 formed or fully formed (I of course speak of psychology, body, hormones etc etc very different story) who have been so shaped by the culture of where we came from and/or may have been rejected by the people here so we find it weird to change.

2) We Think and Act VERY Differently From Native Kenyans

Want clear proof of that? Look at this blog. I have 227 articles that I spent 9 months putting together simply because it was what I felt would be the most meaningful thing to do.

In Africa that = An idiot

Sure from time to time, some of us should get together and talk about what we should do and maybe even engage in projects part time. But engaging in a blog FULL TIME for 9 months where you pour everything into it and put the message and the purpose ahead of the money.

That’s absolute stupidity

The other differences are quite subtle but they are definitely there. What it boils down to though is:

I love where I am from and identify with it at the core of my being.

There are MANY things I dislike about my culture at the core.

There are MANY things I like about the Australian culture at my core.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I like the fact that people here, not always but enough that it counts, don’t wait for people to solve their problems but take it upon themselves to do so, starting new industries and social movements in the process.

I love the personal development movement.

I love the fact that people here are willing to put themselves on the line for an idea and won’t just sit on the sidelines criticizing.

I love the fact that people here actually think about their health AND take action in the way they eat and live to take care of their bodies.

I love the fact that people here are always testing out their boundaries in real life instead of in the abstract.

As I said, this meandering post will probably resonate with some of you who are just plain confused and feel like a tiny minority in a large Western country.

There Is No Sub-Culture For People Like Me

I am not saying this because of arrogance but its true. I know no one like me. I know no one who has feet in both puddles like I do. There are no songs sung about people like me, no movies made, no poets, no discussion groups, no forums.

I just have to spend my time immersed with African culture one day and put it to the side while I engage in Western affairs another day.

I have to speak with a certain slang one day and change it up the next.

Not That I Am Complaining

I think I have been too blessed in my life to just be outright angry about something that is ultimately not a bad quality problem to have.

This situation doesn’t really anger me. It just saddens me from time to time, because I am yet to resolve it. If this resonated with you, leave a comment below or email me and let me know what your situation is.

Working through the confusion,

Mwangi

I get the strange feeling I have written this article before: if I have, apologies but recent discussions I have had have added some greater depth to this topic area.

Growing up I have always had this sense that I was pretty alright. Even in my lowest emotional points, my self-esteem and honest belief that I had the potential to get out of it and surpass it has always been in tact.

This combined with my rather idiosyncratic personality and interests has resulted in many of my peers and superiors classifying me as shall we say, arrogant.

Now There are 3 Potential Reasons People Might Say That

1) Because people think I really shouldn’t be that confident about things so different from what they are confident about (after all, humility is not exactly a mark of the African personality so it can’t be a pure aversion to over-confidence)

2) I might actually be a little too confident and up my own posterior.

3) Reasons that I don’t know or understand

This is the story of how I realized that my self-confidence doesn’t really mean squat. Just because I think I’m worth something doesn’t mean other people are obligated to do so.

This is also the story of how this may happen to you when you immigrate overseas. Or if you are already here in the diaspora, this might be a story you have already experienced or heard about.

From Hero to Zero to Hero to Zero

I have told the story of how I came to Australia with a head big enough to fit its own Milky Way and how I went from the coolest new accessory in the country to about as desirable as a rash in the middle of the night.

But Here’s the Thing

As I was talking to people over the course of this week I realized: it has happened to other people too. Now give me a “Hell yeah!” if this has ever happened to you.

The Story

1) You arrive in a new country

2) You enter a new school, new place of worship, new sports group or any new social group within your host country.

3) That first week/month you make a bunch of new friends and you make great connections. You may even get telephone numbers and begin making plans for the future.

4) You are happy that you are in a new country and you are thankful that folks are so friendly.

When the Doody Hits the Fan

5) Might be your second week/month, third week/month or much later but it begins when you are passing one of your new friends in the hall.

You say, “Hi”

They say……………….NOTHING! They just pass you in the hall as though they never met you.

6) At this point you may get a little confused. This doesn’t happen to you. Where you’re from, when people were acquantances or friends, they at the very least acknowledge each other.

Rinse and Repeat

7) And then you get ignored again and again and again.
Before you realize it, you have lost most if not all of the new friends you made.

9) No one ever wrote the manual on how to handle the situation like this and so as much as you might try to feel otherwise you feel one, or a combination of the feelings below:

a) Worthless and not special at all.

b) Confused

c) Angry and spiteful at the people who have rejected you

d) Very very very alone.

If You Have Ever Gone Through This

Or know someone who has, feel free to leave a comment below and tell me all about it and tell me how you got over it.

If You are About to Immigrate Overseas

Especially Australia, be aware that this might happen to you. It doesn’t always happen, but from time to time this does happen. It has happened to me and this week, I met two other people who it has happened to.

So don’t be shocked, don’t be scared, don’t be confused, you are not alone, there are other folks who have gone through it two.

Immigrant Survivor Guide Newsletter

I have some tips for handling that situation in my free email newsletter: the Immigrant Survivor Guide Newsletter which you can sign up for by putting your first name and email address into the boxes below.

I Hate Spam, So I Won’t Share Your Email With Anyone.

Hope I have helped articulate some things that some of y’all have felt for a long time but have never had articulated.

For Some Added Depth

Check out the guest post that gal africana did where she added some flavour to this topic.

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Hello hello hello. Today I thought I would share with you an article that I wrote a while back with the intention of getting myself featured on an African immigrant newsletter. The editor’s of the newsletter were way too slow in contacting me and I thought that this article has some insights that should be shared anyway. I know not many of you are in the situation described below (i.e. parents of immigrant kids or people here with family) BUT hopefuly you can still pick up a little something, something from it. B blesd, Mwangi

I am truly blessed to be here with my nuclear family. I look around at a lot of my peers who didn’t have the privilege of coming with their families and am truly thankful. However, as with everything in life, my being here with my parents presents it’s own unique challenges.

Fortunately for you, the conflict that is currently taking place in my household is a great tool of education and insight into not only the differences in how the older and younger immigrants think, but also possible solutions as we move forward as a community.

So Here Goes and Notice How You React Depending on Your Age……

I am a college dropout!

I went to college twice. I first went to acquire a Bachelor of Business at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. I share my life story on my blog so I won’t go into too much depth, but needless to say I dropped out.

I dropped out because the course I had always wanted to get into since high school, Bachelor of Film and Television, finally accepted me.

I was cruising along the course and honestly enjoying it – we watch and make films all day, what’s not to love.

But I came to a point where I became very discontent and got an itch that kept urging me to stop the learning by instruction and start learning by living life, real life. And so I left.

The Universal Parental Reaction from Lagos to Nairobi

It really doesn’t matter which country they come from. If I am talking to an African immigrant mother, I have the same discussion over and over and over and over again:

“Go back to school”

“But I am leaving to start up my own Internet business!”

“That’s well and good. You can do it part time, but just go to school, get your papers and then you can do what you want.”

“But I know what I want to do with my life and the way to do it. I just want to get on with it, without wasting precious time preparing at school.”

“But what will you have to fall back on if this Internet thing doesn’t work?”

And with that question we get to one of the areas where generations of immigrants don’t see eye to eye

Young Guard vs Old Guard

You see, I see opportunity everywhere. I have come from a place where even with my endless optimism, I must admit that the opportunities are very limited. Landing in Australia, it becomes very clear to a bright-eyed fellow such as myself that this land is clearly flowing with milk and honey if you can serenade the cows or attract the bees.

So, What if the Internet Thing Doesn’t Work Out?

Then, in no apparent order I can fall back on:

“My resourcefulness, my wits, my cunning, the Dole, Centrelink, my seven years of HECS funding, my friends, my family, free education via public libraries, free Internet access, free funding for small businesses if I have a good plan, homeless shelters, the Salvation army, various Australian charities and so on and so on and so on………”

Never Forget Why You Brought Us Here

You should never forget why you brought us here. You brought us here because you wanted to leave a place where the possibilities were limited and bring us to a place where we could do, be and have so much more.

So please, allow us to do that. Don’t let your Africa-specific fears dictate the way you guide and mentor me as I navigate this broad, vast land that is Australia. Allow me to go off the beaten path, knowing that there is a chance that I may fail. However, should I succeed, I just may create a brand new path that millions of African children will one way dance through.

And So We Come Back Full Circle

I am still a college dropout. Every single day my mother still tries to implore me to go back to college and “get real papers so I can get a real job.” But, remember if I had heeded her advice, I wouldn’t have written this article where I implore you to please support your children as they experiment with paths you are too scared to venture.

Since the folks at AfricanOz (the newsletter that I still hope will publish this article) have been gracious enough to give me this platform to share with you, I feel discontent simply leaving you with an ambiguous story that has numerous interpretations. So below I share 4 concrete tips for parenting an immigrant child from someone who is currently being parented

4 Tips on Parenting….from a Child of a Parent

1. Be Aware of Your Surroundings: I think this is quite possibly the most important tip I will share. The way Western societies work, immigrant families usually spend very little time in a given day, together. During these gaps from each other, we as young, fresh minds are bombarded by the most sophisticated marketing and propaganda campaigns in human history. As a result, whatever message they chose to impart in us, by default, is much more powerful than any words of advice you may want to share with us. If they tell us that we will gain worth in society by listening and heeding the words of hardcore gangsta rap artists, then we are more likely to listen to the marketing team at Interscope records than we are to the gentle (sometimes harsh) pleas of a caring parent who we only see two hours a day. For that reason, be extremely aware of what your child allows into his mind through the media, Internet and his peer groups. Which leads me to tip number two:

2. Peer Groups: Observe your child’s peer group and you can tell what he does with majority of his time and probably what he will do in future. Do you like where his peer group is going? If not, you’d best find a way to get him into a better peer group.

3. Be Aware of the Culture of the Land: As a result of the huge propaganda campaign a lot of Western cultural norms are now ours. Gone are a lot of our traditional beliefs in favour of what a lot of us (not myself) consider to be the “more modern” Western alternatives. So that means that a lot of us have very different standards when it comes to sexuality, the relationship between adults and children, our place in society, God and pretty much everything you can think of. If you find yourself continually butting heads with your child, look across the hedge and look at how the Australian child relates to their parents, therein may be the answer.

4. We Are Young and Opportunities are Everywhere: These two are very separate points worthy of their own discussion but I will bunch them together because in my mind’s eye they’re as connected as the Siamese. The reason I did not bat an eyelash when I left school and am extremely confident in pursuing my fortune sharing knowledge on the world wide web is because in my heart of hearts I know two things.
One, I am young, full of energy and as a result of growing up in two cultures, very resourceful.
Two, even if all my ventures fail miserably, I live in a welfare society that has safety nets galore. I can simply live of the dole while I write my second business plan which I will submit to the government bureaucracies that fund and support small business and who knows maybe I might make my fortune on the second or third or fourth time that I commit to a project I am passionate about. Bottom line:failure doesn’t mean I will starve. So relax, we are here. Push comes to shove, I’ll be fine.

btw: How awesome is this picture? One of the coolest pics I’ve found in a while….

And with that, allow me to sign off. Before I do, let me thank all the parents for bringing us here. But we are here now, please, allow us to do the rest.

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Having been an Afropolitan in Australia for close to 6 years, 6 year anniversary on 31st June, I have had the privilege of experiencing two nations with two very different cultures up close and personal. Today I thought I would talk about 7 unique things I’ve picked up, observed and learned from the natives-well-not-really-but-rather-the-majority-population of this land called Australia.

1) Courtesy

Before I showed up “please” and “thank you” were myths from medieval times. You only held the door when someone had boxes of your stuff and giving people room to pass on the road was for suckers who didn’t want to get to work on time.

Australians, by default, are the most polite people I have ever met in my life. Now, I have basis for comparison: I have been to every continent except South America. So I can tell you, folks get way ruder than people from Australia.

Here folks are taught from very early how to say please and thank you. It’s not uncommon for them stop what they’re doing and help folks with directions or guidance. On many occasions, we have actually had people who were passing us on foot or by car, stop, double back and come help us because we looked so lost. I mean even the criminals and alleged “riff raff” of society are pretty courteous. In short, when I say Aussies are nice people, it’s not hyperbole or optimism, it’s my experience.

2) Hardcore binge drinking

Whoever says Africans are the heaviest drinkers is clearly drunk on something else. You see, when Africans drink, a lot of the time it’s to relieve stress or as part of something social ( I wrote an article on this one a while back if you are interested). But no no no no, a lot of Australians drink for entirely different reason.s

A huge chunk of Australians drink with two simple goals: get hammered and pass out.

Now, the fact that passing out could actually be a goal behind drinking was a shocker to me when I first learned about it. And to be clear, Australia is not a particularly church going nation (93% of folks are not regular) and so binge drinking is part of the culture from the ages of 10 – 100, from the “goody two shoes” all the way to “the bad boys”. These folks showed me that Africans are really very conservative in a lot of ways, including drinking.

3) Nerds and Jocks Stereotypes are Way Off

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Skip this section if you have outgrown caring about high school politics (Do we ever really do this?)

As a result of being about as popular as SNM at a church bakesale (if this reference passes over your head, don’t worry, I was in some zone when I wrote it) a lot of my high school career, together with moments of extreme popularity, I had the good pleasure of spending time with that the TV shows would call “the loveable nerds” as well as “the big dumb jocks”.

Let me tell you now ladies and gentlemen, if you see a jock on one side and a nerd on the other…..RUN to the jock, hug him and never let go.

But Why?

But why, Mwangi, you might ask, would I ever want to abandon the nice, loveable nerd in favour of the big dumb brutish jock. First of all, I was in school with a lot of footy players and one of them even ended up on the national league and they are truly good people. Laid back, very open and welcoming. Sure they like being naked with each other waaaayyyy too much and a lot of their pranks and humour is weird, but they showed me love for the most part so I must reciprocate.

Understanding the Nerd

Now nerds are an entirely different kettle of fish. Now I want you to get a clear picture of a nerd in a Western country. This place is on information overload 24/7. Everyday through the Internet you have access to all sorts of quirky facts, figures, videos, beliefs and so on and so forth. Now take someone, completely isolate them from people and make them feel lousy and inadequate mix them up with this random information that bombards them 24/7 and you end up with a group of people with very weird beliefs and practices.

Now I know, y’all have heard of 2 girls and a cup. That’s a typical nerd’s dream. They love to watch things like Bum Fights, perform witchcraft, watch and obsess over movies that can give one an imagined sense of power such as Fight Club. In short, dudes are very scary. These folks need a hug. I now understand why stuff like Columbine happens……trust me, those were nerds. Anyway I don’t want to go on about this one for too long because it’s not that important really. Definitely came as a surprise though

4) Races I never knew existed

This place is MULTICULTURAL. I have hung out with Arabs, Indians fresh off the boat, Indians who grew up here (more on Indians later), Asians from all over the continent, Africans from Zimbabwe, Botswana (Lord women from Southern Africa are gorgeous, now I understand…now I understand). We have a plethora of mulatto and half black/half Asian kids. African Americans, Greeks and the list just goes on and on.

It’s opened my eyes man. It makes you realize, first of all that you are this thing called “an African” who is a seperate race with our own seperate struggle and shared culture ( yes, we have a shared culture, like it or not). It also makes you realize how similar we are as people in spite of racial differences.

I always found it easy to relate to minorities here and people from darker ethnic groups such Aboriginals, Maoris, Indians and well, Asians because we felt we had a lot in common being marginalized minorities and all.

Plus, the diversity of beautiful food, women, tastes, music, sights and sounds just makes me happy to be alive sometimes.

5) Blue collar wealth?

Now in Africa, this is an oxymoron. The more “industrial age” the job the worse of the job security, prestige and the pay. The more “knowledge economy” the better the pay,the job security and with each extra dollar you get to buy off a bit more of people’s respect.

One of the first things that amazes every African whenever they land here is the fact that a plumber can earn the same as a lawyer. That tends to send us laughing for hours and hours as we talk about how a man whose most famous for showing us a crack-that-certainly-isn’t-of-dawn earns the same as someone who sweats vocabulary in libraries for years to become a lawyer.

If someone here tells me they want to be a hair stylist, carpenter or electrician, I salute them. As long as you make sure you’re money is working for you via investments, it’s as secure as the job market gets: God speed!

6) Racism is a fluid concept

I wrote an article on this one a while back.

By and large, I don’t believe that Anglo-Saxons innately fear and hate African people. Now a lot of you won’t agree with that, but I base this opinion on two things:

i) My experience of only one or two racial slurs and remarks being thrown at me a year. I can’t even think of one incident that has taken place over the last 12 months that’s been motivated by racial hatred – then again I live in a suburb that looks like it’s part of Asia and don’t get out much, but even from my time in Sydney, can’t think of anything.

ii) If a 78 year old man is pooping into a nappy, has lost all forms of inhibition and some brain cells, and still treats me with love, then there was never any hate to begin with. I worked as an aged care nurse for 2 years and I have spoken with folks who’ve been doing it much longer, racism isn’t something that comes up very often. Scatological humour on the other hand……….

Now, Australians do seem to HATE the people they stole this land from: the Aboriginals. This pretty much came to my attention in my years of high school . On two occasions folks went on a roll spiting out joke after joke to insult the Aboriginal people and by and large people laughed at and enjoyed that. How deep this racism is? What its all about? I’m unclear on. But there’s definitely something there.

Native Australians are also pretty open and HATE anyone who refuses to learn English. You want to drive Australian people mad, walk around like you don’t know a word of English. Wait for the sneers to come.

7) Indians are everywhere

Indians are kinda like those “extra channels” you get when you sign up for Pay TV. You don’t really think about them or know they are there until you stop and think. That’s when you realize, Indians have always been a fixture in my life.

In Kenya, they were part of the ruling class and I lived close to one and a lot of the shops I used to go to were Indian run. Come to the land down under and they are still all over the place. My suburb literally looks like the Asian sub-continent.

For those of you who may not have heard my baby sisters’ opinions on Melbourne, most of the people they either know or hang around are Indian people. If you are Indian and you are reading this:

If you’re plan is global domination, good job! Y’all have positioned yourself well.

And by the way, Sri Lankan women…..mmm…mmmm…..mmmm

To hear more from me as I make my journey through life as an African immigrant, make sure you subscribe to the blog for free via email or RSS.

The following is based on a true story

Judging by his tense posture and the way he paced up and down that bus depot, you would think he was waiting for a fight he had trained for all his life. In a sense he had. He had fought off many large-but-not-really-obese women for a place on the cues of bus stations all over East Africa. He had endured the threats of being smeared with feces if he did not produce the five dollars necessary for protection from the street boy mafia that worked bus stops throughout East Africa. And now, 1000s of miles away, he was ready.

The bus depot struck him as rather odd. Unlike the bus depot he was used to that had only three bus stops, this one had close to a dozen bus stops within it, each with their own benches. That didn’t strike him as too odd. This bus depot also had things like timetables in every bus stop and had things like sign boards that declared bus arrival times. The contrast between this and “the African time” he was used to shook him a little bit. What run the risk of almost terrifying him was how calm all the vanilla-complexion fellows were around him. So far they had been nothing but lovely to him, but this he did not understand.

Did they not know the battle they were about to enter into?
Didn’t they know he had been training all his life?
Didn’t they know, that he was going to win?

And so he paced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, demarcating his route close to perfection like a pendulum waiting for the crack of midnight. Every so often in the middle of his repetitive charge he would peer at a piece of paper written:

888 – Nunawading

That was the bus that would get him one step closer to his destiny. No one was standing in his……

888! 888! 888!

Though the bus chugged along at the pace of a tortoise at the Biggest Loser competition, his mind raced faster than a teenager’s libido. His posture changed, his psychology changed, HE changed into……attack mode! He began by adjusting himself to the rhythm of the bus. It’s slow pace irritated him as he was used to the breakneck speed of never-serviced-how-on-Earth-can-they-still-roll buses that roamed the towns of Kenya. But that was OK, the lion merely had to adjust to his prey.

And yet the white people were not moving, what on Earth is…..The bus zipped (well, trotted really but the mind flies when in fight or flight mode) past him and he took off after it. His locomotion only ceased when the bus entered into what his good friend and soon to be professor, Bonniface Mutua Omondi (he was from two tribes and he wanted to be associated with the spirit of grandiloquent intelligence of the lakeside, yawa!) calls ,

“An absolute Kelvin of a stopper” (what temperature had to do with motion, only Newton knows really….)

Now at this juncture you must understand how the weird fellows who lived in the land down under designed their buses. There were two doors, yes, a front door and a back door. But for some weird reason everyone who was meant to leave was leaving through the back door and a couple of people were cuing at the front door (”with more to come,” he thought hurriedly). They were actually cuing as though the front door was the only way to enter the bus.

“Fools!”, he thought as he began to make his way up the steps of the back door. Whenever he encountered an obstacle, or as evolutionary biologists call them, people, he quickly shoulder checked them out of the way in a manner that would make African women blush with pride. He ploughed through the crowd, through obstacle after obstacle until he was eventually nestled firmly in the embrace of 888! 888! 888!Nunawading. The obstacles…eh, people, many of them with internal bleeding at this point, backed away defeated.

Lo and behold, he had been taught well. He was the first passenger in the bus. He turned to face his pale faced accomplices who had brought him to the bus stop. Their jaws were in danger of burrowing through the ground and all the blood had escaped their face and chased their jaw. Obviously they had not seen battle like he had.

“I have much to teach them,” he mused smugly.

“Nimebook viti!”, he declared to them before he realized that they didn’t know Kiswahili from French.

“I have booked your seats!” He quickly translated, shaking his head at how on point he was today.

He sprawled himself across a chair that could accommodate two and stretched his leg out across the aisle to rest it on the third seat. Kwa kweli alikuwa amebook (For real! The seats were booked!)

The bus driver slowly made his way towards him. He could smell the driver’s anxiety. I guess he hadn’t seen battle either…..

“That’s odd!” He thought, for someone whose life work was driving these rolling war zones.

“Excuse me sir, what are you doing?”

“I am resting and waiting for my friends to come in.”

“But sir, you enter through the front.”

“Then why do you have two doors?”

“The back seat is for exiting only. The front seat is where you enter and pay for your ticket. Do you have a tic…..”

“Isn’t that what a conductor is for?”

“Buses in this country don’t have conductors. Which country are you….”

“Doesn’t matter! I have booked my seats and none of those people will steal them,” he leered as he stretched his finger across all the little bus stops until he had marked the whole bus depot with his finger.

It was then that our protagonist began to experience an out of body experience. OK, that’s not accurate. It was then that our protagonist wished that he could have leased out his body for the next hour or two and had an out of body experience. For you see, only four other people entered that bus that day. The two “idiots” who had bothered to cue and the fellows from the land of Caucasia who-formerly-called-themselves-his-friends-but-now-had-never-heard-of-him.

The bus driver didn’t know what a straight face was as he explained to him how people enter through the front and pay while the people who want to leave stream out through the back (and yes, some through the front) without any battle taking place between the two.

“What about them?” he mapped out the whole bus depot again.

“They are cuing for other buses!”

“So this bus will just go when it’s close to empty” (his foot was so deep in his mouth, it had come back to be re-chewed as cud)

“Yes!”

“Oh…he he….yaani…oohhh…ok…he he he”….blush..blush…sheepish grin…sheepish grin…bahh bahhhh….hmmm….asalala!

If the walls of the bus could talk they would say,

“Today grasshopper, we outwitted you!”

If he could speak he would ask,

“Je huu ni ungwana” (Is this really civilized?”)

If you enjoyed this little tale and want more invitations to the narratives of my mind, subscribe to the blog via RSS or email to get the latest tidbits and anecdotes first.

Have a blessed Sunday and a great week
Mwangi