Part9 of the 10 things I wish I knew before I left Africa

Hello Hello Hello,

First up, to all who have been trying to click on the navigation bar at the top of the page and wondering why it doesn’t work….that’s my bad! I have been slow getting the tech completed but by the next post it’ll be done, otherwise feel free to circumcise me for the second time.

In today’s post, a short one for me, I want to share with you my dreams and goals. I don’t do this for egotistical reasons, though those are nice, but rather for two reasons:

1) To see how many people out there think like I do and feel like I feel.

2) To spark positive thought.

The Problem: What Occupies Our Minds

As I have said in previous posts, I really believe that what we do, what we spend majority of our time thinking about and who we spend our time with is extremely important if not the most important thing in determining not only who you are now but who you’ll be in future. So let’s narrow it down. Let’s have a look at what we spend majority of our time thinking about.

Television, Movies and Music vs Education

My honest belief is that the two most important things that determine what we think about on a regular basis are the people around us and what they think about and the type of entertainment we consume. I honestly think that for all the talk about education and how important it is to the development of a society what is much more important is the heroes and role models people pick up from the tube, the radio and the cinema.

They Sell Us the Dream

This is because what entertainment media does, for the sake of simplicity I will throw personal development media in this category as well, is it sells us the dream. I will put it like this:

Who do you think about more? Taye Diggs and Nia Long from the Best Man or your high school teacher in class 8 who used to declare that he was the greatest maths teacher in the world. Who do you want to be more like? Who do you emulate in the way you walk, the you talk, the way you relate to the opposite sex?

When you go to work to ‘get that paper’ are you doing so so that you can follow in the footsteps of your favorite lecturer and study the effects of macroeconomic reforms upon the inflation rate or are you doing it so that you can afford to have a coffee with your girls and reconvene the MASC club like the girls from Sex and the City.

We need our heroes so that we have something that gets us out of bed in the morning, someone that we are working hard to be like. And I can assure you that a lot more of my heroes came from these forms of media than did from the education system, as great as my teachers were.

Where Are Our Heroes?

So quick question. I am in my early 20s: Name me one native African in my age group who is:

a) Well known

b) Worth emulating

c) We celebrate and cherish often

d) Doesn’t play a sport or sing????…………………….It’s OK I’ll wait.

I think that this fact is way more tragic than complaints about how we are portrayed in the media as people who live in jungle villages and speak in clicks. Where is our success magazine? Where is our movie of the week about the African who overcame all the odds to do something great?

We all know people who fulfill the above criteria. People like Rachel Wambugu or people who landed abroad with absolutely nothing and managed to rise on up without even understanding the English language.

The Media Exists, But……

Now I have absolutely no doubt that media such as this already exists all over the place. In fact I have seen a lot of it. There are documentaries such as Sons of Lwala, movies such as Lumumba choirs such as Watoto children’s choir and blogs and publications and groups all over the place where Africans get together to celebrate when we do good. However my problems (this post is so negative, apologies it’s all leading somewhere) with this types of media are two:

How Much of this Media is FUBU

Have you noticed how behind a lot of these great initiatives there is always European or American funding and/or marketing? I absolutely love and salute these guys who are willing to care enough for their fellow human being like that, however: That doesn’t do much for my faith in my African people. Can’t we create our own inspirational movies and documentaries and market them to ourselves? Don’t we spend time with each other and understand each other to know the types of stories we need to hear and have enough education to know how to get these movies, songs and television shows made and distributed in house.

It’s a Tough Job But Someone Has to Do It

So without anyone asking me to I have decided to take on the job. I pretty much want to help take Africa to a place where my kids- listen to me, in my early 20s talking about ‘my kids’ -will be able to turn on the television and be inspired by hearing the latest story of triumph over adversity from another region of Africa.

I am going to create an Africa where my little niece goes to the movie to marvel at the beauty and grace of some once-an-unknown-African actress and her remarkably accurate portrayal of some also-once-unknown-African grassroots activist. Meanwhile my little boy is turning on his ipod to learn the secrets to success from a black man who started out poor, ignorant and destructive and fought his demons all the way to the mountaintop.

This blog is pretty much my first step in that direction. A blog that is intended to entertain, educate and inspire. That friends is one of my missions in life. Who is with me?

As always if you feel a stirring somewhere within yourself as you read this, leave a comment below or contact me and let me know what’s happening.

Be blessed& bless others,

Mwangi

PS: This blog has a lot of simplifications and generalizations for the sake of clarity and staying on point. As we continue on with this blog we’ll slowly add more details and paradoxes and contradictions but not today, it’s the first day of the weekend and we all know they were not made for thinking……………

PS2: I post this for no other reason than the fact that Eric Wainaina is an artistic genius. Make sure you check out both his albums at Itunes. Enjoy (Lyrics taken from the Eric Wainaina website)

Eric Wainaina – Dunia Ina Mambo

Shetani akamwuliza Mtakatifu Petero
The Devil asked St. Peter
Umewahi kuangalia huko chini (aye aye)
When was the last time you looked down at earth
Mtu masikini akiiba mkate
When a poor man steals a loaf of bread
Atavalishwa pingu miaka mnne
He goes to jail for four years
Lakini tajiri anayezorotesha umasikini wa nchi nzima (mwajijua)
But a rich man who causes the poverty of a whole nation
Anachekacheka na hakimu
Laughs with the judges
Baadaye wapo wote pamoja mikahawani
Later they meet for a drink

CHORUS

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Kweli ina mambo

Truly it is crazy

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Nyuma ya kila mlango

Behind every closed door

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Shetani akamwuliza Mtakatifu Petero

The Devil asked St. Peter

Ni dini gani inayoendeleza chuki (mambo bado)

What religion spreads hatred

Kwa ajili ya bidii ya bin adam

Because of the efforts of the children of adam

Mimi sina kazi

I am without work

Warumi wachukia wakristo wengine

The Roman Catholics hate the Protestants

Wengine wachukia Waislamu (bure bilash)

The Protestants hate the Muslims

Waislamu wachukia Wayahudi

The Muslims hate the Jews

Na nguvu zangu zote singeweza hayo yote

With all my might I couldn’t have done all this

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Kweli ina mambo

Truly it is crazy

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Vituko na vichekesho

Jokes and mischief

Dunia ina mambo

The world is crazy

Shetani akamwuliza Mtakatifu Petero

The Devil asked St. Peter

Ni kulala mnalala au vipi (hallo hallo)

Are you guys asleep or what?

Mnaruhusu viongozi wa nchi tajiri

You allow wealthy nations

Kumiliki nchi masikini

To control poor nations

Kwa mfano wananchi wa nchi zilizokuwa chini ya ukoloni

For example, the citizens of former colonies

Waliporwa mali zao au siyo (au siyo)

Weren’t they robbed

Basi mbona waliyonyanyaswa wasipande ndege

Then why can’t those were oppressed jump on a plane

Na kwenda ng’ambo ili kurudisha…haki zao

Go abroad and claim what’s rightfully theirs

Part 9 of the 10 things I wish I knew before I left Africa (By now I hope you have abandoned all hope that I will do this series in order; I certainly have)

Hello hello!

First of all, to all my new readers welcome. Over the past three days my traffic has shot up, probably by about 1000% To all who helped make that happen, thanks. To all the new readers, I hope this blog is of service to you and I invite you to contact me or leave comments below and let me know what’s on your mind as you read this blog.

You are What You Eat

A while back I did a post on the negative effects of gangsta hip hop which is completely dominating the radio right now. Below is one of the songs that pretty much put to rest the idea that I could respect most of what is played on the radio today. And after knowing that music such as the track below exist, can you really go back home, switch on your radio and call most of that stuff art?

Dead Prez- Be Healthy (NB: The song and the lyrics have profanity)

Lyrics

It’s all love . . .

I don’t eat no meat, no dairy, no sweets
only ripe vegetables, fresh fruit and whole wheat
I’m from the old school, my household smell like soul food, bro
curried falafel, barbecued tofu
no fish though, no candy bars, no cigarettes
only ganja and fresh-squeezed juice from oranges
exercising daily to stay healthy
and I rarely drink water out the tap, cause it’s filthy

Lentil soup is mental fruit
and ginger root is good for the yout’
Fresh veg-e-table with the mayatl stew
sweet yam fries with the green calalloo
careful how you season and prepare your foods
cause you don’t wanna lose vitamins and miner-ules
and that’s the jewel
life brings life, it’s valuable, so I eat what comes
from the ground, it’s natural
let your food be your medicine (uh huh)
no Excederin (uh uh)
strictly herb, generate in the sun, cause I got melanin
and drink water, eight glasses a day
cause that’s what they say

They say you are what you eat, so I strive to be healthy
my goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy
cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways
we got to start taking better care of ourselves

They say you are what you eat, so I strive to be healthy
my goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy
cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways
we got to start taking better care of ourselves, be
healthy y’all . . .

Yeah, yeah, yeah, hold the fuck up, yo
we’ll take this little intermission, listen what the
fuck we gotta say, y’know?
Word is bond son, niggaz been livin fat for too long, knowamsayin?
Smokin bogeys, fuckin drinkin all types of shit
wailin out, not givin a fuck what they puttin in they
bodies, son, knowamsayin?
‘Bout time niggaz start thinkin about that shit, son, knowamsayin?
That shit is fuckin, makin us deteriorate, son
word up, we gotta care bout our little babies an shit, son
niggaz got kids to raise, straight up
ya gotta start learnin yo self, learning bout ya health, son
learnin this world we live in, kid, knowamsayin?
It’s time to start changin all that shit god, word up
so I’m gonna leave y’all niggaz on some shit like that, ya knowamean?
Word up, y’all niggaz better start usin y’all minds an
shit, kid
Peace

My Journey through Health and Nutrition

I am still very much a work in progress in this area. I am sure to polarize a few people and I gladly welcome anyone who doesn’t agree with me to do so.

So What Did I Eat When I was In Africa?

To say that I ate food in Africa would be an overstatement. My routine when I was about fifteen years old was a little something like this:

Morning: Tea with all milk and two spoons of sugar. Six slices of white bread with butter.

Morning break: Mandazi (the closest equivalent would be a doughnut for those who don’t know) and sausage; what we would do was wrap the sausage with the Mandazi.

Lunch: Chips with tomato sauce

After school nibble (yeah right) : Half a loaf of bread. Not with butter or with jam, no! My arteries need something that can really clog them up. Instead I would take white sugar and completely cover one slice of bread with it. Then I would cover this with another slice and have myself a:

sweet-sugar-filled-artery-clogging-how-i-didn’t-get-diabetes-in-my-

youth-i’ll-never-know-sandwich.

Now add to that that I was probably the only high school boy in human history who was given the sports captain/vice captain position thrice in my high school career without having any love for or skills in sports. What that means is that my way of sweating off all those calories I gained from my suicidal diet was sitting on the sidelines during sports games making fun of people.

I Was A Fat Unhealthy Slob

And so I landed in Australia with my body getting closer and closer to all sorts of diseases. The saddest bit was I didn’t even know it at the time. Other than the quick lessons about the food pyramid in Home Science, in Kenya we don’t really earn how to eat for nutrition. We learn how to cook cakes and all sorts of poisons that taste good but I never learned how to eat for optimal health.

It All Started Because I Wanted to Look Good…..For the Ladies

You know the way in movies, there is this profound, moving, life changing trigger that moves our protagonist from a place of ignorance and apathy towards a path of true enlightenment. My trigger was far from deep. I was a young adolescent male with raging hormones and an overactive sex drive and I wanted to use my body as a tool to satisfy my carnal desires.

Now, I am many things, but a moderate person is not one of them. I was determined to become the next Shemar Moore and so I began to exercise twice, thrice, up to even five times a day. I pushed weights as I watched television, I pushed weights before I slept, I biked for hours everyday. When I wasn’t busy pushing my body I was online on websites such as www.howstuffworks.com and www.bodybuilding.com trying to understand how the human body works and how I can sculpt it into the human equivalent of an open mating call.

But I Began to Learn….Really Learn about Nutrition and Health

That was 5+ years ago and I must admit that a lot of the stuff I learned is still beneficial to me now. I learned about the importance of minerals, what fat is, the different types of sugars, how muscles expand from resistance training and all sorts of great human anatomy stuff.

But in terms of results, I was a failure! To this day I still have stretch marks on both of my still-scrawny biceps from pushing myself too hard. My weight and fat levels have been yo-yo, though always leaning on the chunky side, for the last 5+ years. And until about June of last year, I was drinking like a sailor the day before alcohol is banned, lived on a daily diet of milk and $2 cookies and created such an aversion to resistance training that I exercised occasionally at best.

And Then I Met Anthony Robbins

I had always been a fan of Anthony Robbins since my days of shame and confusion. Around mid-2007, fueled by a general feeling of discontent with how slowly I was moving towards my goals in life, I became a voracious student of his work again. That’s when I discovered that the man actually had ideas on health and nutrition. My logic went a little something like this:

Tony Robbins is successful; I want to be successful; So I’ll do what Tony does.

I decided that at the very least I would try out his ideas to see if they worked for me.

And So I Began Eating a Vegan Diet

Here I have lost like 99.999999999% of Africans.

“What? No meat? But without meat you are not eating food?”

Yeah, I decided that I would go without meat and the usual animal products -milk, eggs, fish etc- and see what effects that would have on my body. I didn’t decide to do so because of concern about animal rights to be honest; after all I grew up in Kenya where as a kid me and my cousins used to chase and slaughter the chickens that we ate. After researching Tony’s work and work of other great thinkers like John Robbins and the writer of the China Study, I came to one very simple conclusion; animal products-especially the hormone injected ones of today- do way more harm to the body than good. And so I became the first native African I know who tried to do it vegan.

The Effects

You know that feeling you get when you wake up like you’re still full. You feel sluuugggiiissshhh…You feel as though your stomach is still jammed up with food that’s yet to be digested. I haven’t felt that feeling at all since I quit animal products.

As I cut out meat I began to eat more fruits and vegetables. In fact there was a time a couple of months ago that my diet was 99% fruits and vegetables. This caused a slight increase in my energy levels. After experiencing that I knew I was on the right path.

In about a month’s time (no guarantees though) I will begin a 30 day experiment where I eat and live entirely by the health principles recommended by Tony Robbins. The promise from Mr. Robbins is that my energy levels will go through the roof, and after reading and hearing various people’s experiences I am inclined to believe this. Anyway I will blog about my experiment and the lessons learned so look out for that.

A Brief Digression for Nutrition Philosophy from Priestess G

This has absolutely no logical connection to what comes before or after it but I had to include it in here because it just fascinated the heck out of me. I remember once an acquaintance of mine who happens to be a pastor, let’s call her priestess G, stopped by the house. She dropped by with this pearl of wisdom which was had been her nutritional philosophy for a long time. Follow it, at your own peril:

God made me, right? And God made everything, right? Therefore, that means that I can eat anything that God made.

Gotta love it! End of digression.

So Where Am I Headed Now?

My lifetime goals in this area is pretty simple:

1) To experiment until I have found the most nutritious diet for me; pretty much a life-long pursuit.

2) To look good (You may leave adolescence but the superficiality of adolescence never truly leaves you does it?); This is definitely going to become one of the main focuses of my life from the middle part of this year. I pretty much want to sculpt my vessel through the year of 2008 and then pretty much be on maintenance for the rest of my life.

3) The third one is so major I think it warrants a little more discussion:

To Change My Beliefs and Habits Such That I Eat for Nutrition AND NOT For Entertainment

If there is one place that I think we as humanity have really messed up is in creating cultures and supporting belief systems and practices where people put the taste of the food above its nutritional content. Instead of eating so we can have a piece of life in our body nourishing us and helping us heal and dispose of waste, we eat to fill emotional holes and change mental states.

I pretty much am working on myself so that one day my belief systems, my brain, my spirit and my body are in line with the idea: I eat for nutrition and nourishment. Taste is only a secondary concern.

Take a moment and imagine what type of world this would be if we all ate for nourishment. How many diseases would we avoid? What would the cancer rate be? How many people would be saved from heart disease? Would diabetes exist?

My Health Is far From Ideal

As I said, I am still a work in progress in this area. I still have problems with huge sugar and starch cravings and my exercise regimen is far from firing on full cylinders.

That having been said, this country has popped my eyes open to just how important nutrition is. It showed me just how interconnected our bodies, illness, happiness, energy levels and even the environment and ecology are ( If you don’t believe this, check out the documentary,Diet for a New America by John Robbins and tell me that doesn’t scare you). Soon I shall be directing huge portions of my focus to experimenting and learning in this area. Until then permit me to leave this post as incomplete as my health i……………………………..

……Even when a post is incomplete I can’t forget to ask that you please:

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Part 10 of the 10 things I wish I knew before I came to Australia

This post is about questions. Who has the answers? YOU. As you go through this post, take a moment and answer as many of these questions as you can honestly. It’s not a quiz so don’t worry about being right or wrong.Hopefully these questions will be the seed that will trigger something special in your mind. We begin with the question:

What Did You Do Today That Really Mattered?

Seriously? Look back over the last 24 hours and ask yourself: ” What did I do today that will matter ten years from now? What did I do today that will make my life and the lives of my neighbors better over the next few years or decades? If you answered, nothing, be scared but don’t be terrified.

Be scared because the last 24 hours have just passed by and they will never return and you did not do all that you could to make the last 24 hours magical. Don’t be terrified because you are not alone, hell, you’re in the majority.

Distractions: There are So Ma….Boy I’m Hungry

Recently, I watched a presentation in which I learned that in a given day the typical westerner is exposed to 3000 marketing messages A DAY. That is 3000 different messages all being sent to you with the intention of taking away your time, attention and money.

Now add to that the various methods of communication. First of all, there’s the Internet, where you can spend literally hours everyday editing your Facebook profile or sending hi5 friend requests or pimping your Myspace profile using videos from Youtube. Then there’s instant forms of communication like cell phones and instant messengers.And really how much of all the stuff that gets communicated through these means really matters?

But of course we are Africans and human beings so eventually we have to meet up and talk face to face. What do we talk about? How to make this world a better place? No, but we will spend hours complaining about what’s wrong with it. How to have better relationships? No, but we will talk about other people’s business and how messed up their relationships are. No, but of course we talk about our lovely continent of Africa and how we will use all that we have learned in the West to make Mama Africa gorgeous? Hell no, instead we spend hours feeling self-important by spouting complex ideas and theories about how the continent is messed up and how we will take advantage of that to make a quick buck.

In short, if you want to live a life where you move from distraction to distraction, it is extremely easy. You can literally live from the cell phone to the gossip session to the Internet to the television and then to bed only to wake up, rinse and repeat for the rest of your life.

You Are On Your Death Bed

But if you were on your death bed would you tell your wife to make sure your hi5 profile picture shows you in the best light. Will you ask your son to make sure he records Desperate Housewives and sends you the tapes in heaven? Will you ask your best friend for gossip about the latest person who has been deported so you can meet the Grim Reaper being up to date on community gossip?

The Pareto Principle

My belief is that in life, the number of areas that truly matter are probably 10 or less ( I have never done an official count). These few, out of the many that exist are the ones that will probably reminisce about in your death bed. I believe they are:

a) Health and taking care of your body; your temple.

b) Emotional health; Creating many barriers to being unhappy and making it as easy as possible for you and everyone you encounter to be happy and have piece of mind.

c) Relationships; You, your family, your community, your country, your continent, your world. How do you relate to it? What do you mean to them? What do they mean to you? Are you a servant to humanity or a liability to society? Are you God’s gift to women or more annoying than a yeast infection? Are you a reflection of just how beautiful one person can get or are you the drama queen whose fault it never is?

d) Having a purpose in life: Why do you get out of bed? What if you had all the money in the world? What would you do then? I heard a story about a man who was the CEO of a large firm that used to buy and sell companies for 100s of millions. Eventually it came time to retire. So he had his party, had his cake and said his goodbyes. Do you know what this man did the first day of his retirement? He went to look for a job. He had no purpose. No life! He was nothing outside of his work. This story could be a good one because he had something that he was so passionate about that he couldn’t bear to live without it or sad because he never really worked on having a life outside of work. What do you think of the story? Do you want to be like him? Don’t you?Why?

Is your work your purpose? Why? Do you have more to your life than just work? I don’t want to answer these questions for you, I put them here to get you thinking.

e) Your spirit: We all know that there is something that lies beyond our understanding and controls the universe and keeps it running like a well oiled clock. How connected do you feel to your God? To your spirit? To that part of you that isn’t your body and isn’t your mind but is always there watching?

I remember a now deceased singer once said that he will not be the next revolutionary but his music will spark the mind of the next revolutionary. My hope is that this article sparks your thinking and begins a revolution within you. Never forget, millions of Africans suffered and died so you could be able to immigrate to the West and learn like the Westerners do and experience what they experience. What will you do with this great gift? Will you use it? Will you abuse it?

As I said, this post is about questions. The answers all lay with you. Anything to add? Leave a comment below or email me at masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com. Until the next post

Be blessed + Bless others,

Mwas

Part four of the 10 things I wish I knew before I landed in Australia

From time to time I write a post that is not specific to the African community but is more general and a lot more far reaching. Consider this one of those posts.

We begin with the age old question:

Who Are You, Really?

Who are you? What is your identity? How do you define yourself? There are numerous ways that you can answer this question. Considering that you are reading this in a website known as the Displaced African, you’re first reaction may be I am an African. You would be right. If you are living in a foreign country you may say I am an African Australian or I am a Kenyan Australian and you would also be right.

If you have a 9-5 you might tell me that you are a custodial services manager. Your friends may call you a janitor, but you know what, you are right. If you are a blogger like me, you may chose to define yourself as a a blogger or Lord of the blogosphere and well, you would also be right.

The Labels are Infinite

The fact of the matter is there are infinite ways and combinations of ways that you can define yourself. You can define yourself based on:

1) Where you live

2) What you do for a living

3) What you do in your spare time

4) Your religion or faith (or lack thereof)

5) Your sex

6) Your sexual orientation

7) Your friendship circle
etc etc etc

There’s Nothing Quite as Powerful As Knowing Who You Are

Usually once you have defined clearly who you are, half of your work is complete. If you are a Christian missionary then your life’s path is chosen; you shall spend the rest of your life preaching the gospel to people and will travel to the far ends of the Earth in order to do so.

If you are a millionaire playboy, then you’re life will be about the pursuit of women and money.

If you are an African, then for every single thing you will ever do for the rest of your life, you will always think about its effects on the continent and act accordingly.

This…..is absolutely fantastic! The best selling book in history says that without a vision we will perish, and ultimately for a lot of us, our vision of the future comes from how we define ourselves. Our identity and definition of ourselves gives us our values, beliefs, codes of conduct, social circles and friends. Our identity is our life.

The Dark Side of Identity

The dark side of identity comes when we feel that any part of our identity is under threat. Case in point is the current turmoil that is gripping Kenya. Now for those who may not be aware, a vast majority of the Kenyan people who live in the diaspora grew up in cosmopolitan, inter-tribal settings. It’s very rare to find people in the diaspora who did not spend extensive periods of time interacting with people from other tribes, whether it’s as a result of living in cities like Nairobi or going to mixed tribe schools.

Then why is it, that after years of many of us growing up together not thinking much about our tribe that it all of a sudden matters. My belief is that it’s because we perceive that a certain part of our identity is under threat. Kikuyus feel threatened by other tribes and feel scared of losing their homes, their loved ones, their lives and their possesions and the same applies for the Luos, Kalenjins, Kisiis and the other 42 tribes of Kenya.

Now granted, people back home ARE attacking each other on the basis of tribe. What strikes me as odd is that majority of these tribal-hate rants that have spread through the Internet have been written by middle to upper-class Kenyans who have lived in cosmopolitan, blended societies for years if not decades. The battle that is taking place in Kenya right now is the poor killing the poor with a lot of the killing being on behalf of the ruling class.

Though things may change at any moment, the turmoil in Kenya has very little to do with the middle and the upper classes. That is why I think that the only reason that people in the middle and upper classes have taken the battle so personally is because all of a sudden a part of their identity that lay dormant for so long, their tribe, has all of a sudden been ignited by a perceived threat.

The Truth About Identity

I think the simple truth about identity is that in this day and age, the typical person, has very many roles. Take myself I can define myself as:

a) A Kenyan b) A Nairobi citizen c) An African d) An African in the diaspora e) A Kenyan in the diaspora f) An African Australian g) A Melbournian African h) A blogger i) An internet marketer j) A Christain h) A protestant i) A heterosexual j) A single heterosexual h) A man and on and on and on

The thing we must realize is that this world is so complex that there will always be a part of our identity that is under threat. My heterosexual status is under threat depending on how you look at it. My African identity is under threat depending on how you look at it.For those of you who know about Australian politics, my African Australian identity was recently under threat from the former government as are many of the other ways I chose to identify myself.

Keys to a A Strong Identity

There are a few of things that I think are important to do if we are to remain sane and maintain a balance between all of our various identities.

1) Realize that not all of the parts of our identity are important and chose the parts of your identity that are important: I think this key alone is probably as overlooked as it is important. I can define myself in so many ways that I can’t possibly give all of them the same weight and be as willing to defend all equally. If I did that, my life would be nothing but constant battles.

For example, personally, I don’t care about the whole issue of gay marriage. This isn’t out of homophobia or support for homosexual causes but it’s because it simply isn’t my issue. If you begin to talk to me about how my country is undergoing turmoil right now and solutions to that, the Kenyan in me is all years. If you want to talk to me about the World Trade Organization and the effects of subsidies upon the economies of Africa, the African in me is all years. Chose the parts of your identity that are the most important to you and focus on those and you will be happier in the long run: You will no longer have to jump from defending one part of your identity to the other all the time and you can concentrate your power around a few key areas of your identity that will bring about the greatest results and cause you the most joy and emotional richness.

And Of All The Commandments They Gave the Greatest Was Love

2) This one is for the people who chose to define themselves on the basis of their faith, religion or spirituality: Another key thing that is as overlooked as it is important. Why isn’t it that religions have ever competed with each other on the basis of who can love their neighbour more? The key principle of all religions and spiritual movements that I know is UNCONDITIONAL (i.e. it doesn’t matter if you’re black,white, Hindu, Jew, killer or a lamb) love, caring or respect for your fellow man. Why is it that when people feel their religion is under attack from people of an opposing faith they go against the very cornerstone principle that defines their faith; don’t they realize that in so doing they are spitting in the face of their beliefs? This tip is a difficult one to follow, but nothing of value is ever easy.

If you define yourself on the basis of your faith or religion and you feel it is under attack then as Martin Luther King said, “Overwhelm your enemy with your capacity for love,”

3) When your identity is under threat, be clear on who is threatening it. I won’t even bother explaining this one. I will ask one simple question: “Are all the Kenyan people who are attacking each other on the ground and throughout the web responsible for the mess that the continent is in?

To the people hurting each other: Will the displacement or the belittling of the people you attack bring about anything other than a temporary feeling of importance and significance? Be clear on who the threat is and act accordingly.

My hope is that this article has not been too abstract and that it has sparked some thinking, dialogue and debate. To all who have left comments and sent me words of support thank you. If you have something you want to add to this discussion then either leave a comment below or email me and let me know what’s on your mind. If you think that this article is worth sharing with others, then please click on the logo below labeled ‘Bookmark’. This allows you to share this article through social bookmarking sites all over the world. If you need help with that, again don’t hesitate to contact me at masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com.

As always, be blessed and be a blessing unto others,

The Displaced African

This post is a little winding, so please bear with me and I hope you get the nugget of truth that I was aiming for.

Part five of the 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Landed in Australia

Today’s story is one of transition. How is it that I went from a place of being deeply ashamed of my race to a place where it became one of the cornerstones of my identity? The story is not a linear one and a lot of the time it wasn’t very logical. As you read this I hope you see not only a glimmer of yourself in the past but also have a greater understanding of where you are now and perhaps begin to dream up who you could be in the future.

Stage One: Apathetic to Being African

Growing up in Nairobi I really didn’t think too much about the fact that I was African. This was for a couple of reasons:

EVERYONE is African

When everyone around you is African you rarely have time to stop and classify yourself as an African because there is nothing you can compare yourself against. There is no Asian against whom you can compare your protruding forehead or eye creases (If you don’t know about the Asian community’s fixation with eye creases, you must study it, it’s absolutely fascinating). Sure there was the occasional pancake-behind Caucasian, and the one Asian every 5 years and of course the Indian community, but I interacted with them on such few occasions that the times I stopped to compare races were few and far between.

The Utopia of Television

The one place where exposure to other races was frequent was on television. The message on television though was pretty clear; your race doesn’t matter. Martin Luther King fixed all that and we are now, just people: all members of one big bright human race.

So as I headed into the land down under, I was pretty clear on the fact that I was a member of the human race; then of course as with almost everything else in my life, there was a complete 180 degree shift.

Stage Two: Awareness that there are People Who are not Africans

This stage was very very short. I came here and began to see people with pink and pale skin everywhere. It was like I was Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. I wanted to look at them, they were just the most interesting looking things. Unfortunately I didn’t get much of a chance to interact with these strange creature because the first group of people I met when I landed, Kenyan. The second, Kenyan. The third, Kenyan. The fourth, Kenyan. Before I knew it I was basically part of a Kenyan community within a foreign country.

Now this didn’t make sense to me: My fantasies when I was back home was of my swooping in as the great African conqueror who would be adored by all because I had a monopoly on the African thing. I didn’t know there were thousands of us in Australia already. I didn’t know we hung out with each other so damn much. I wanted to leave. I wanted to go out and sow my wild oats in the land of Caucasia. Within a month of landing here I got my chance when I was dumped in a boarding school smack down in the middle of country Australia.

Stage three: Shame

Fast forward six months and there I sit all alone in the middle of a dark room in some boarding school around Christmas time listening to the Neville Brothers (the dude actually sounds like he drinks Helium for breakfast; great singer though). I felt like no one even wanted me. The African conqueror had turned out to be nothing but a piece of trash that nobody wanted. I was alone, lonely, scared and very, very confused.

Out of the muck of this confusion crept in an idea; being dark skinned is a curse. I don’t know exactly how I arrived at this place, but all of a sudden I was deeply ashamed of being a dark skinned African.

I wanted to get rid of the dark skin and was convinced that as soon as I became lighter, my life would be brighter and would make sense and I would all of a sudden be happy. And so I visited the dermatologist.

Stage Four: The Guardian Angel Who Doesn’t Even Know How Much He Matters

I was anxious but excited as I waited to see the dermatologist. Then the nurse called out my name and ushered me to what I knew would be the rest of my bright, beautiful, light skinned life.

I sat down next to this Indian man who shared exactly the same complexion as me. He hardly looked up at me as I anxiously explained my problem:

“I want to get rid of these dark marks on my skin.”

He hurriedly grabbed the back of my hand. Looked at it for half a second and said:

“You were born like that. It’s in your genes. There is nothing I can do.”

He threw back my hand dismissively! I paid $70 the appointment was over. Believe it or not, from that day onwards I took everything he said on board: It’s who I was meant to be. It’s part of my genes and there is nothing I can do. I was never ashamed of being dark skinned again. Go figure.

Stage Five: This African Team Is Filled With Losers

So I was now a permanent, card carrying member of the African team. I began to look around to understand and appreciate my team. After a short time observing and reflecting I came to the conclusion:

“Wow I am in a team filled with losers.”

Now my thinking has evolved a great deal since then and I see more and more beautiful things about our club everyday but back then all I had was the media and my observations.

According to those two, most members of the African team were either poor or ignorant or violent or hungry or cold-hearted and callous and the existence of any positive human characteristics was the exception rather than the rule. So what should I do?

Stage Six: I Begin to Give Birth to the Displaced African

Now I know I am not the only person who has ever come to the above conclusion while living in the Diaspora. Some people upon coming to this fork in the road make the following choice:

“You know what? I am now in the West. I am now in a land flowing with milk and honey. I no longer have to deal with the African nonsense on a day to day basis and I can now create my dream life. Forget them, I’ll do me and I’ll let Africa do Africa.”

I wasn’t wired like that. My reaction instead was:

“A man is only as strong as his weakest link. I feel pretty strong in a lot of other areas but this African part is definitely a weak link. I guess it’s on me to fix it and make it stronger.”

And so that is one of the reasons that the Displaced African came to be: It was my attempt at trying to strengthen what I felt was a weak part of my identity.

Stage Seven: Appreciation and Love of the African Team

I love it when things come in seven!! This is where I’m at now. At the moment, my eyes are ever peeled for areas where Africans have excelled and areas where Africa needs to improve and how we can improve. This drove me to begin to study the Ashanti Kingdom, Timbaktu and other former African civilizations. I began to read the works of Biko, listen to the music of the Apartheid freedom fighters and watch films about revolutionaries like Patrice Lumumba.

There is no doubt we have a long way to go before we restore the equilibrium in our African community. However, if you get nothing else out of this article, please begin to look for the good in the African community. If for no other reason so that it can help you walk with your head held high as you wander through a diaspora that at times can feel like a wasteland.

Bring it home, Displaced African

So let’s say, you are like me. You show up in a Western country and you go from seeing yourself as just a person. All of a sudden your African race and your African roots matter and affect how people treat you and how you treat others.

Or let’s say that you just simply hate being African, or being a dark skinned person or any aspect of being a descendant of Africa. My advice to you would be the epiphany I had a few years back:

“If you don’t like a particular aspect of your race or being African, then be a part of the solution, not the problem.”

Sadly, for those of you who want to escape the fact that your African, everywhere you go, your skin acts like a huge advertisement blaring, “Made in Africa.” Now don’t get me wrong, there are people who can transcend the race and no doubt there are even people who have escaped from it.

However, what I would propose to you is, the highest form of human life and human expression is service to others. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not strengthen the weak part of your identity and live the best way a human can live by being a part of making this whole being-African thing beautiful. Some ways you might be able to do that:

1) Support and solidify African forms of art and expression.

2) Create an African fashion label. Great way to support the African textile industry that is being creamed thanks to Western subsidies

3) Begin to educate yourself and others about the wonderful aspects of African history and being.

4) Create pieces of art (paintings, books, plays etc) that make little African kids feel special and unique and lucky to be a part of the African club.

5) Watch Oprah (don’t ask. It just jumped at me so I wrote it down)

etc etc etc etc. The ways to do this are endless. If you have any ideas, you are free to leave a comment below, or send the Displaced African mail at masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com. I hope to see you as a part of the solution to this someday.

Be blessed and be a blessing unto others,

Mwangi

Part three of the 10 things I wish I knew before I left Africa

You know it’s absoloutely amazing how ‘coincidences’ (is there really such a thing) occur at just the right time. As I was sitting down to right this article I noticed a great post from the Whispering Inn which ties in pefectly with what I want to talk about in this post. Please go to this page and listen to the audio of Mzee Jommo Kenyatta’s speech

I Am His African Child and I Feel Betrayed

Beyond the political implications, today I want to talk about how I feel betrayed on a cultural level.

Now I don’t know if I am alone in this but I feel absoloutely ashamed about how little I know about the history of my tribe, my country and the nation in general. It took me a few years of wandering in the Australian wilderness to get to this point but I feel so ashamed that growing up I used to sit there for literally days on end watching Disney movies, Mr. Bean and Mr. Bogus (for those who don’t know who this is, you better ask somebody, because once you’ve seen and experienced Mr. Bogus, you never forget ) when not even a moment was spent emotionally connecting to my history and reading exciting stories about the exploits of the Ashanti Kingdom or watching films about Wango wa Makeris (personally I would put Nikki in this role in really skimpy tribal attire), the Kwame Nkrumahs or the Julius Nyereres.

I feel ashamed because here I am sitting in a library in the middle of a country that is not the place of m birth and at times I have no idea what I am. Am I:

a) A Kenyan – I could probably tell you a lot more about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X than Harry Thuku or even my own Guka (my grand-uncle apparently according to my cousins) Dedan Kimathi.

b) An African – What I have just said about Kenyan history is even worse for the continent as a whole. I didn’t even know what the tribes in Nigeria were until sometime last year. Except for a few historical stories such as the Maji Maji rebellion (which will make a great movie someday, it’s a story about unconditional faith and hope I think) consider me dumber than a lactating hippo on this one.

c) A Kikuyu – You know it would be a nice label, if I even knew the language. My whole life and I never remember having a single thought in Kikuyu. The fact that I even know sheng is a fluke much more than it is a result of circumstance and choice.

Problem Defined. Bring on the Solution

I am yet to really begin acting on the solution but I think below are the steps I will take to ‘reclaim’ the identity that I never feel I had.

1) Learn African languages

Step one is I have to go and learn the languages of Africa begining with my own language of Kikuyu, followed by Kiswahili, real Kiswahili.

One of the important things being in the diaspora has taught to me is the impact that language has on the human experience.

When you learn a language, you basically learn the culture and lifestyle of a people because language always reflects what’s going on in people’s lives.

The Spam Example 

For example, do you know where the name Spam (which for those who don’t, spam is the junk emails you get trying to sell you Viagra pills, porn among other things) comes from. Some might say it was a term created by the linguists experts to describe the new phenomenon junk mail being sent via emai. You would be wrong!

The term Spam apparently came from the play Monty Python, a very popular play in the Western world. Therefore everytime you hear the word spam, it kind of acts like a ‘cultural dictionary’ telling you just how the speakers of the language live, and in this case they ways they entertain themselves.

For this reason beyond, a merely superficial understanding and speaking of the language I will go into the history of our African languages: Where the words came from? What type of world and what type of context they were created in. What I intend to do will be language learning at its absolute peak so stay tuned for that.

2) Record African History Before It is too Late

I recently watched a presentation at the TED conference and I believe it was a man by the name, Wade Davis said something to the extent of:

Everyday, in some country in the world, the last elder of a particular culture dies, and with him dies the language, history and an entire civilization.

The number of times this event happens in a day was beyond staggering. One of the things I intend on doing once this blog has achieved a certain level of success and is ‘running itself’ for the most part is to get involved in recording the wisdom of African elders throughout Africa before it’s too late.

I am yet to research deeply into this but apparently, there are a number of initiatives that are already doing this such as Sage Philosophy and my intention is to collaborate with them and send their efforts into overdrive. Can you imagine how many cures to diseases some of these sages have? How many solutions to interpersonal conflicts? How many great stories and fables that can be turned into stories and books and films that will ignite the minds of tomorrow’s African leaders?

3) Join the Dialogue to Create a Pan-African Culture

The reason I am committed to doing this can be summed in one great soundbite: As Africans and people of colour worldwide we share problems. We are looked at the same, and since the white man came and took over our land we have pretty much shared the problems, give or take a few. So let’s sit down together, as Kwame Nkrumah and other leaders proposed in the 60s, and share solutions.

I hope this post ignites people who will join me in making this happen (For those who need clarification, I am dead serious. These things are going to happen)

Be blessed,

Mwas

Part two of the 10 things I wish I knew before I landed in Australia

I know some of you are probably wondering why I released Part 7 of the series before I released Part 2.The reason is pretty simple: I couldn’t write part two. This is my fifth attempt at writing this article. For some reason, I just couldn’t seem to write this post in a way that ‘felt real’ to me and that I felt would serve at the same time.

Eventually, in the middle of the night, I had an epiphany: I have two younger sisters who have grown up in a world dominated by hip hop. Therefore, I decided I would share with you the conversation that I as a big brother would have with my little sisters.This post will basically be some quick superficial observations on the negative effects that gangsta rap/hardcore rap and it’s message have had on young African women of today.

First up a video that basically sums up a lot of my attitudes regarding hardcore rap.
(NB: A lot of profanity in this video. Please bear with it in order to hear the message. He is pretty on point in terms of getting my point across)

Gangsta Rap Disrespects Women

The MASC: The Men Aint S… Club

I couldn’t end this article without talking about the MASC. If any of you have been around long enough you know what I’m talking about. This is the club where women get together, usually single or just out of a relationship, with the intention of drinking like alcohol is being banned tomorrow.While in a drunken stupour they talk VERY LOUDLY about:

1) How men “aint worth a damn thing”

2) How men are dogs

3) What’s wrong with men? Also: Why aren’t there any good men?

The next phase of the discussion is the equally loud independent women encouragement session:

1) You look Good girl

2) You are the prize. They don’t deserve you

3) Hell yeah you look God with your hair like that. Wear that weave with pride girl

Then the evening ends with them swearing off men as children of Lucifer before walking off as strong, independent women. Until they meet a smooth-talking, gold-tooth brother down the road. Then, it’s rinse and repeat…..

Now it is quite unfortunate that majority of women that I have known in a variety of age groups have had similar discussions at some point. What sets the MASC apart is that when they are having man problems, EVERY ONE has to know.The inner drama queen has to come out and let the whole world know that for the next few weeks, men are lower than slugs swimming in bile because she just made another man find his stuff, “to the left, to the left.”

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What Does All This Have to Do With Hip Hop?

In my observation and experience, almost all women who are members of the MASC listen to two types of musical artist:

1) Hardcore hip hop artists or other artists who have pretty misogynistic messages in their music.

2) Other women who are members of the MASC and promote the messages of the MASC. A typical MASC album:
Song 1 – We met at a club
Song 2- We left the club together
Song 3 -We made love and fell in love
Song 4 – I was shouting from the rooftops that, “I am so in love.”
Song 5 – I heard that he was creeping……
Song 6- Busted! Found him cheating on me
Song 7 – Oh Lord, the world is coming to an end. He cheated on me
Song 8- To hell with him, I am going to slash his tires, insult him all over the Internet and then all will be right with the world
Song 9 – So I’m back in the club with my girls…………

How to Leave the MASC

If you are reading this and you are a member of the MASC, let me talk to you on a serious tip. Here are seven little steps you can take to get rid of your MASC membership:

First: Almost all members of the MASC pick up their ‘no good, lousy, cheating….’ brothers in clubs. Now, in case this wasn’t already clear, men do not go to the club to have deep intellectual conversations on existentialism with their soul mates. As far as most men are concerned, and most women if they are honest, clubs as butcheries and meat markets where you go searching for body parts to fulfill your carnal desires. So, if you are going to the clubs expecting to meet the next Steve Biko or find the black  Confucius; probably not the best place to look.

Second: A lot of women will go for men who are not good for them because, well, ‘bad boys’ are pretty damn exciting.My advice: find other ways to fulfill your desire for excitement WITHOUT having someone steal your pride. Below I have listed a few things you can do to bring excitement to your life:

a) Become a high school teacher b) Go skydiving c) Go work on bringing peace to the Palestine-Israel conflict d) Go to Kenya and assist those displaced from their homes e) Kayaking down rivers with rapids f) Bungee jumping g) Go to a theme park h) Go work in the ghettos throughout the world to educate the youth i) Go to the local arcade and  get in touch with your inner child by playing video games j) Go climb a mountain,(Hint:The taller the more thrilling) h) Go try to become the first woman to penetrate an area that is male dominated-my mother is a building foreman to give you a clue of the possibilities i) Become a day trader in the share market j) Join the circus and on and on and on.

Thirdly, I have been around long enough and seen enough to know, 99% of the time that a man comes to talk to you, especially in a club or party, he wants to sleep with you. Might not be politically correct to say, but I think if you adopt this belief it is much more in line with reality. So, basically ladies, you have all the power to chose from all those men who come to talk to you expecting a piece of the pie.Please chose wisely.

Fourth: Raise your standards regarding the type of people you will associate with. Then, make sure you rise up to meet those standards. If you only want a well educated man, muscled up man with an IQ above 130, you had better not be dragging around  XXXL love handles and have on your resume that the most interesting thing you can talk about is how, “Asian women wish they had this behind.”You want quality? Then step up and become quality.

Fifth: Women are 100s of times more intuitive to this stuff than men so I know there is very little I have shared that is new. I know that most of you can tell pretty early on when you have a good one and when you have a ‘low down, dirty, cheating…….’.So please go for the good ones. Don’t sell yourself short,alright?

Sixth: In my experience and studies, almost all anger in the area of relationships, even when we direct it at other people, ultimately comes down to feeling hurt. Chances are that by the time you are getting together with your girls to reform the MASC, you are feeling a lot of pain and have beaten yourself up a lot of times on the inside. So, should you basically make the wrong choice and chose someone whose no good, don’t beat yourself up for it. Learn from it. Accept it as a divine gift or lesson; your are being taught who and what to avoid in future. Acknowledge that you are hurt and take time to heal yourself. Then go out there and help heal a few other women who are also going through pain in this area. I have heard it said that any problem you are going through quickly fades when you help other people solve it.

Seven: Finally, to tie it all back in. Switch off the garbage. Stop listening to music from bitter, angry misogynistic men or heartbroken, lonely women. If you want love in your life, listen to love music (What a concept?) If you want peace, listen to the Lucianos, the India Aries, the Bob Marleys, the Kirk Franklins and the Lucky Dubes of the world who preach messages of peace and togetherness.

Four Keys to Life:Fix One 

What you put in your mind on a regular basis? Who you spend your time with? What you think about regualrly? Where you spend your time? These four things tend to be pretty good predictors of the type of life you will live. Change just one of these four, what you put into your mind on a regular basis, and you get the ball rolling and you won’t even be able to imagine where this one change can take you (more on this in later posts).

(WOW! You know I have just realized that I never have a clue what I will write until I write it.) So, that’s basically the big brother discussion I would have with my little sisters. My hope is that this article and all the other articles I write are of benefit to you. Whether or not they are contact me at masmilele@thedisplacedafrican.com and let me know what’s on your mind so future articles can be more in line with the information you need. If you want to share this article with others please click the ‘Bookmark’ symbol below to submit it to social bookmarking sites. Otherwise, you can link back to my article from your blog and write your thoughts on it. If all that is too much work just leave a comment at the end of this article and let me know how this article has affected you.

Till then be blessed and go out and be a blessing to others,

Mwas

Part seven of the 10 things I wish I knew before leaving Africa

From Wikipedia encyclopedia: Jungle fever- a slang term for interracial relations

It was my last week in Kenya and I was just about to be shipped off to Australia. There I was, casually sauntering through Carnivore trying to convince older women that I still wasn’t being breast fed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a friend of mine, drunker than a depressed brewery worker, come staggering down. He staggered directly to me, plopped his hand on my shoulder and delivered a monologue that I will probably never forger until the day I die. I paraphrase:

“You guy as you ship over, remember something….(dramatic pause) Those Western women love black d***. These chicks wait at the airport with signs just chilling for the next black dude to step off the plane..(At this point, I drifted off into fantasy land imagining the possibilities of what he had just told me)”

You can’t even imagine what that did to me. As I stepped on that Kenya Airways plane, I had a pep in my step and I wasn’t looking back. And then I arrived!!!

So What Do I Know Five Years Later?

I am glad you asked. I have been in boarding school in the country, Christian schools, public schools, different cities, different states and different Universities. I have hung out with Kenyans, Zims, Tswanas, Ugandans, Asians, Indians, Caucasians the whole shebang (btw what type of word is shebang? who came up with a word like shebang?). My observation is pretty simple. African men being mighty conquerors who head on over to Western countries and can seduce any Western woman they want because they all swoon over him: by and large that’s a myth!

There are in general five types of Western women who get jungle fever for African men:

1) Girls with low self esteem

2) Girls who are ‘kilogramically challenged’ aka a tad bit overweight

3) Girls with drug problems

4) Girls who wanna ‘be down’ (think double-entendres here)

5) Girls who watch too much interracial porn or spend way too much time in fantasy land

Low Self Esteem and Overweight

I have put these two together for one reason. Now ladies, please, correct me if I am wrong: I have noticed that as far as woman are concerned, even in this post-feminist age, majority of women still pretty much value themselves on the basis of their beauty and/or their desirability to potential suitors.

If you don’t believe me, Google ‘Weight loss’ and see how many results come up. Go to the supermarket and check how many of those magazines talk about fabulous dresses and ways to please your man. Finally, tell a girl she is stupid and unemployable and watch her reaction. Finally tell her she is ugly and no one will ever find her attractive.See which of the two derives a stronger reaction (btw please don’t actually do this experiment to see how hurt someone gets, I can tell you right now in my experience it’s the ugly comment that hurts the most)

So let’s assume you now agree with me. Now out here in the West, fat women aren’t generally considered beautiful. Therefore if women feel they are not beautiful and desirable they tend to feel pretty worthless and have self-esteem and self-confidence issues.

Cue the African Man

I won’t even bother explaining and philosophizing on it……I’ve got two stories for you:

The Story of the Fully Stocked Fridge (An African Man’s Take on Why We Sleep with Fat Western Women, again I paraphrase. Actually anytime I quote someone, assume I am paraphrasing and not giving you a verbatim quote unless I state otherwise): So you’re in the club and you know, you are not there to preach. You have three missions, chill with your boys, grab a cold one and finally maybe leave with a little something something…..

So you check in the club it’s maybe 9:30pm, sit down and start vibing with your boys. The pints start coming and a good time is being had by all. Then around midnight,you start to feel your soldier down south telling you it’s time to go hunting.

So you know, there are a few mirooz(Africans for the uninitiated) around, so you begin campaigning. You ask to the left, is nothing. You ask to the right, nyimwad (denied).

Then you notice something out of the corner of your eye but you push it aside. Around 2:30 a.m. that thing that was taking up just a corner is now taking up the ENTIRE space of both your eyes. She’s a big woman and you’re like, “There’s no way…there’s just no way.”

At 3 a.m., you rewrite your rules and draft a new constitution. And so you look around and say to yourself, “Enyewe njaa ni mbaya (the hunger is bad).”

3:15a.m., you are there with your hand outstretched, asking her if you can connect the dots. Talking is just a formality and after a quick convo, you leave together.

Now the great thing about sleeping with a big woman is come the next morning. You have finished your work. Now she’s a big woman so you’ve just put in overtime on that shift. But when you go to the fridge…..”

“….Fully loaded! If you’re a broke or a student, it’s like going to heaven. By sleeping with big mamas you save $50 in shopping every week.”
So What’s the Game Plan?

The Book Review (This is another friend of mine telling me about a book he had just recently read):

“The guy who wrote the book is a bright guy. Now anytime you look at a group of chicks, there is always either an ugly one or a fat one, sometimes they are the same person. Now other guys will be campaigning for the other chicks, but you, you’re a time saver. You compromise on quality for the evening and you slide on in to the unattractive often neglected friend. A bit of flattery, make her feel beautiful and boom, you’re in.”

Btw both stories are true, a bit exaggerated but very very true.

Has a Drug Problem and Wants to Be Down

Again these two are very much related. These women tend to be the women who are knee deep into the hip hop culture and think that African is one big country where we ALL listen to hip hop and act like 50 cent-Ask someone who’s been in the West a while and you learn this stereotype is surprisingly common.

So after listening to enough Bone Thugs n Harmony, they begin to sample marijuana, or a bit of cocaine or speed or whatever. And soon enough they become addicted. What do they do?

1) First they seek people to smoke with. (btw I kid you not, for those of you who haven’t found enough odd things on the Internet, there is actually a dating site for marijuana smokers. I guess we all need love…..)

2) And then they seek someone to sell them the drugs on a regular basis

Cue the Black Man

This spot is reserved for the African brothers who are also knee deep into hip hop. In my first couple of years here, it was quite common for people to stop me and ask me if I had any drugs or any pills. So if a white girl finds a brother and he can fulfill he narcotic cravings, it’s a match made in heaven, or grown in a coca farm in Bolivia.

A Few Problems Though

1)Some of these women tend to take this trying-to-be-African-American-thing a bit too far and even decide they will try to be drama queens like, “some of the sistaz they saw on TV.” This pretty much guarantees that a quiet night of socializing turns into a session where she huddles up with ‘her girlfriends’ to talk about, “men aint worth s……”

2) When she tires of the hip hop lifestyle or she outgrows it or the consequences come knocking, she will dump a brother and leave him cold and alone faster than you can say, “She’s my woman and she’s gonna stand by her………”

The Mandingo Fantasy

In truth, this fantasy probably plays a role in almost all cases of Jungle Fever. This fantasy basically reduces all young black men all over the world into strong ebony love-making Gods with elephant trunks swaying between their legs and the love-making skills of Don Juan in his prime. Women who strongly by into this fantasy tend to have either watched too much interracial porn or too many movies that talk about how, “brothers are packing down south.” Now I am yet to meet an African man who is willing to argue against this fantasy or attempt to disprove it in any way. I am not about to but it’s definitely something that’s there and you should know about.

However, if you wanna know what type of women regularly try to test out this fantasy to see if it matches reality, generally they have characteristics 1 through 4 in the list above.

So What’s the Point? What Should We Do?

Well this depends on what you want. What my friend promised me at Carnivore is true. If you are coming to Australia just to get laid without regard for the type of person you sleep with, you can. All you have to do is hang around the night clubs and flatter people here and there. In fact a friend of mine’s strategy consists of him going to a club sitting down, drinking and waiting for a white girl to come and flirt with him.

However, if you want good quality relationships, as is always the case, it is very difficult to find. What I would advise is you best be bringing something else to the table rather than a promise of a trunk long enough to choke a gorilla. The people who get the quality tend to be very interesting special people; They may be good looking. They may have a very endearing idiosyncrasy. They may be so smooth they can skate on sand. They may be extraordinarily gifted at business, writing (that’s me lol), sports, academia whatever. I think the solution to the quality problem is, as much of a cliche as it is:

Know what your passions are. Pursue your passion with vigour and intensity and if you grow a garden beautiful enough, people will come. In truth, from an empirical standpoint, I am not really sure what the solution is. However,I will definitely make it one of the points of this blog to answer that question. I really hope this blog has served.

Before you leave make sure you leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts. Until then, stay off the porn.

If you want more articles that talk about the African immigrant experience, make sure you subscribe to the blog for either free email updates or to receive regular RSS updates ( Click on this link to learn just what the heck RSS is )

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

For the women reading this, your situation is a lot different from this from what I have observed and studied. This will definitely be a topic of future posts. If you have any thoughts, any ideas, any thing, you think you missed, either leave a comment below or contact me and let me know.

Update: Many months later I did write the article: Jungle Fever 2: The Relationship Between White Men and African Women

Part one of the 10 things I wish I knew before I left Africa
One of my teachers once told me, “If you want to succeed, put words to things which people haven’t put words to yet. Give a name to, verbalize or talk about gnawing feelings that people have that they just can’t describe.” Ironically, I am about to do that for myself and in so doing I hope I give voice to some of the things that YOU experience.

Before I Landed in the Land Down Under

Before landing in Australia I was pretty sure I was the most charimatic thing since sliced bread took up a microphone and called itself the Backstreet Boys (don’t ask, it’s 1 in the morning, expect more metaphors like this to come). At the age of 12 years old I had gone from a social pariah who pulled my socks all the way into my hot pant shorts to the class clown who was always the life of the party. This continued all the way into high school with my having the distinct honour of being the only person who was in the bottom quadrant of the class, had the most strikes on my record for talking and cracking jokes in class and HAD NOT been suspended (profuse thanks to the management of Strathmore that are reading this.To Kenyans reading this, yes I went to Strath and no the suffix following Strath is not morons, we is smart em boys no deserve col dat us.)

This pretty much set the stage for my expectations as I flew over to Australia. I expected to land here and be the life of all parties I attended and mixed with the myth and mandingo and the girls I thought I would have it pretty good as far as girls were concerned. And so I arrived……….

It Was Like a Frog Slowly Boiling to Death

You know how when you cook a frog, you can slowly turn the heat up and the frog will never know that it’s slowly being cooked to death. That was kinda how my fall back into being a social pariah took place. The only difference between me and the frog is that I boiled much quicker.Much much quicker.

My first week here I was the coolest new accesory: Every boy was inviting me to their parties and declaring their unconditional love for me; girls swooned at my delightful foreign accent and everything was on the up and up. Three weeks later and every boy was trying to figure out how to best get rid of me, the swooning had become a ‘hope that he doesn’t try to say hi to me,” and I was hanging out with a witch.Yes, a witch. He was a full on Wicca witch, with the broom, the hat and the collection of mystic spells. Very nice guy inspite of his idiosyncracies. Needless to say it was pretty much downhill from there.

A Few Quick Observations

And so over the years as I moved from one person to another feeling rejected over and over again and comparing my experiences with those of my friends-some of whom fit right in- I began to notice a couple of things:

1) A lot of the Africans who get accepted quick are the people who are deep into the whole hip hop thing. Now I am not a gangsta rap fan. In fact in a couple of weeks I will be writing a piece on how we can free ourself of the verbal garbage spewed in gangsta rap on a continual basis. However, the kids who enter the diaspora with blunts in their mouths, their hands on their groins and chips on their shoulders tend to get accepted really well.

2) Another group that also gets accepted quickly are what I like to call the ‘cultural chameleones’. These are the people who can quickly and easily adapt their behaviour depending on who they are interacting with.These people absoloutely fascnitate me. One of them was a very close friend of mine and whenever he was talking to the Aussies he spoke entirely in their language: He cracked their jokes, played their games, watched their shows and listened to their music. When it was time for him to chill with his countrymen it was sheng 24/7 and never did I feel as though I was talking to an outsider.I was none of these things. As I lived here, my admiration of mainstream music declined rapidly. I went from a place of being deeply ashamed of my race and heritage to being absoloutely consumed by it (which is where I am at now; I must blog on this in future). In addition to that I was not willing to change because:a) I wasn’t a fan of their customs and culture; my identity was pretty well formed by the time I got here and I found it pretty difficult to relate their culture to how I’d grown up.b) I really did not want to change for the Australians because I felt that if tables were turned they probably wouldn’t reciprocate. Whereas I am not the type of guy who asks others to make sacrifices first, I will rarely make sacrifices for people I feel can never sacrifices, or changes for me.

Is This Where Tolerance Is?

Yup! To be clear by tolerance I mean: the ability to endure living with one another without being friends and without being enemies and with a basic respect for one another as members of the same human race.It was the only option I knew of if I was to accept this margninalization without having any hard feelings towards the people who I feel rejected me.

Does Tolerance Really Suck?

Yes…..and no.No, because if you look at it from a global perpective it’s absoloutely great. Here I am blessed to live in not only the most livable city on Earth, but also one of the most multicultural- it’s either second to Montreal or number one I forget. The fact that all of us can coexist without absoloutely slaughtering each other is a true testament to what human beings are capable of doing. There are definetly lessons I can take from Australia that can be translated to our multi-tribal society in Kenya.On a personal basis, there are definitely things about chosing to be a tolerant person that suck. One is the fact that everytime I enter a conversation with an Australia there is a voice in the back of my head that says pretty much the same thing every time:

“You know that this won’t last! They will get to a point where they will realize that we can’t get along and then I’ll have to watch them go through the awkard phase of trying to end the interaction.”

Five Years Later

So here I am, five years later. I must admit those first couple of years really hurt. I never felt so expendable in my life. Wanting to avoid feeling that expendable ever again has driven majority of my decisions over the last five years.

At this time I still don’t have Australian friends on speed dial. However unlike five years ago I am much wiser and much more tolerant and understanding of just how things got to be the way they are right now. In addition to that I am finally at a place where I do not blame the Aussies at all for not accepting me and definitely do not hold them responsible for the solution.

Solutions?

So after reading this, what if you say to yourself, “I don’t want to go through that.” I want to have great relationships with my brothers and sisters in other countries. I don’t want to feel lonely or isloated. How can I avoid this and have great friendships while in the diaspora? Let me share with you a couple of things that I believe, had I employed from the get go would have made my Australian social experience much smoother:

1) Why Do You Have Relationships With Other Human Beings?

By relationships I don’t just mean intimate, romantic or male-female relationships. I mean ALL relationships. Every friendship you develop. Every person you flirt with. Take some time to figure out why you do it. What does being with other people give you that you can’t get on your own? Now, I know that for a lot of you this is probably the first time you have ever stopped to think about this and so I know a few of you will probably come up with some eloquent response like, “Uuhhhh, I dunno.” That’s fine. If you did know, or if someone had been observing you all your life, why would they say you have relationships. Would they say you enter relationships:

1) To feel special/unique?

2) To feel needed?

3) To feel loved, unconditionally cared for?

4) To magnify your emotions- to make your joy more joyful by spreading it , to share your successes and make them even greater etc etc

5) To feel as though you are a part of something, a community?

6) None of the above?

7) Another reason?

Answering this one question can make a huge diffference in your life because you can now begin to consciously seek people who meet your emotional needs and this can only lead to more fulfilling relationships.

For me, personally, the reason I enter relationships is pretty much to feel needed and feel special. I have a great family and so I have always felt and loved and cared for and so from a very young age when I went out into the world it was to feel like I had a unique gift that someone was just waiting to receive. If I feel you need me, and that I am bringing something to your life that NO ONE ELSE can, then I always joke, “You could be an absoloute prick,” and I will still be your friend.

So if you stop reading here that’s cool, but take the time and figure out why you interact with other people. Don’t be like me. Don’t wait for relationships to sour before asking this crucial question?

2) Curiosity, Empathy and Appreciation

When it comes to an existence in a foreign land, curiosity just might save the cat. Rather than pre-judging the customs and cultural habits of foreigners as stupid just because they differ from ours, take time to ask, “Why do they do that? What is the pay off for them?”
Some other good questions to ask are, “What can I learn from their habits, fashion etc? What similarities do they have to me?” These questions help you discover commonalities that you share with other people. Ultimately aren’t all friendships based on having things in common, even if it is just one thing.

Empathy comes in when you are willing to take a walk in their shoes and see life through their eyes. Take a walk in Australian skinny jeans, whether or not you agree (or can fit ) with them or not. Do this WITHOUT bringing any of your prejudices along and with an intention of fully understanding why other people do what they do. This will definitely get you friends quick because correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we all just love it when someone is willing to listen, REALLY LISTEN, and see life from our point of view without judging us.

Finally, it’s appreciation. On the base level, appreciate them for just being your fellow human beings. Beyond that, if in the midst of your curious explorations you find that you have similarities to foreigners, cherish them, celebrate them, nurture, grow and appreciate them.

3) What Do You Bring (or What Could You Bring) to the Table?

This in my opinion is the most important solution of all. After discovering why you interact with other human beings in the first place, take a moment and ask yourself, “Why would anyone ever want to hang out with me?” This is especially for you high maintenance people who have a lot of standards and preconditions and requirements that people must meet to become and remain your friend. Ask yourself, “Am I really worth hanging around? Would someone of high standards want to hang out with me?” If the answer is, “Yes,”, “Why would they?”

Can you imagine how great it can be if for example you figure out that the one thing you have always brought to friendships is say, a listening ear and a shoulder that others can cry on? I can assure you that one thing that is universal and everybody goes through is problems. You could pretty much go from being the listener, confidante and counsellor at home to the listener abroad. I know quite a few people who are absoloutely adored because of having this gift.
What if you are a funny man who can crack a smile from a corpse. Then, all you have to do is watch what the funny men here do and what makes people over here laugh and you can go right back to being mister funny man.

The Angry Mentality

Something I am yet to mention is that my reaction to the marginalization is far from being the only way people react. There is however another reaction that a lot of people have to this feelings of rejection and it’s anger.

They direct their anger at the people who reject them. Some of the signs that someone might be having this reaction include:

1) Listening to 2pac’s song, “They don’t give a……about us” too many times a day.

2) Constantly having the conversation, “We are better than (insert race or nationality here) people because…….we have culture and they don’t/we are friendly and they have no community/ we are not all about money etc etc.

This reaction has a host of advantages: People who adopt the angry mentality tend to set very high standards when interacting with foreigners and don’t ,”take crap.”. In a society like this that can slowly beat one to the ground piece by piece, this mentality can also be useful to have as it keeps a fire under you butt when the society is trying to push you down. And of course, people who are angry tend to be able to do more than people who feel sad, lonely or depressed.

The disadvantage of course is that its a high stress reaction that brings stress to you, strains your existing and future relationships. For this reason and because it simply isn’t in my nature to blame others for my problems, even when it is their fault, I didn’t adopt this mentality.

Conclusion

Now I know a lot of you are saying that, “It can’t really be that simple.” You are absoloutely right , it’s not. A lot of it you have to play by the ear as you go through the challenges of every day life. If you want one simple tip that can save you a lot of hastle then it would be this.
Find people in the diaspora who live the type of life you want to live (this is not restricted to socially, it can include economically, spiritually, in their intimate relationships etc) and find out what they believe, what they think and what they do and basically do what they do-as NLP practioners would call it modelling. If you do this I see no reason that you shouldn’t have uber fulfilled while you are in the West.

I must note that in this post I have made a large number of generalizations just for the sake of clarity and to keep it short. As always, leave a comment and let me know if this post has served, anything I may have missed or any thoughts that may occur to you as you read this. Till next time………

Be blessed so you may be a blessing unto others,

Mwangi

The first post of the Displaced African blog: Yeah!

First of all I must confess the title of the series is somewhat misleading. I almost never experience the emotion of regret to be quite honest. Instead I always look at every stupid thing I do as a learning experience for the next moment. If it were written for me I would have called it Ten things I have learned during my 5 year stay in Australia. The fact is, I am not writing this for me, I am writing this as a resource for ALL OF YOU especially if you somewhere in Mama Africa about to make the long journey to a Western country. I hope this series is of service to you and feel free to contact me and let me know your thoughts, in spite of your location or ethnicity.

Picture this: It’s cold winter day in June 2002. The world cup final is playing out, Brazil vs Germany. This is the big one. The greatest world cup ever. Something even more important was happening in my life.I was arriving in Australia. I remember as I stepped out of the plane in my bermuda shorts and light cotton t-shirt thinking, “Jeeezzz now that’s cold,” before retreating into the jet and declaring that I was not getting out. But I did. Had I known these 10 things that frigid June evening, my life would have been dramatically different and stripped of the lllooooonnnggg learning curve that the past five years have been. At this point in my life I am begining to wrap my head around them and as I do I thought that as I do I would share them with you.

1) We don’t have to be friends but we damn sure have to get along

2) We went from brothers and sisters to n***az and b****es

3) Ashanti Kingdom; Isn’t that the name of a new R&B album?

4) I am an African! An East African African! An East African Christian African! An East African, Kenyan, Nairobi born and raised African! An East African, Entrepreneurial, Nairobi born………

5) There’s no way I’m putting my shady native name on my resume, it won’t look good. Black power!

6) I am what I think I am!

7) The myth of Mandingo’s girls waiting at the airport

8 ) Wow you’re successful; and you look just like me!!

9) An apple a day

10) These are the choices that never end, they will go on and on my friend, some people started choosing things not knowing what they was but they’ll continue choosing things just because these are the choices that never end they will go on and on…..

There you have it. The first ever series in the history of the Displaced African. For those who may not understand what the previous 10 points were all about, come along on the journey with me and we will unravel what they mean together.

Till then be blessed so you may be a blessing to others,

Mwas