Hey guys,

This podcast was recorded a long time ago, when I got on the phone with guest columnist and African Bulletin writer, Carol.

I initially wanted it to be a series about how undocumented immigrants had survived in various parts of the world but unfortunately getting the other interviews proved impossible.

So now we have the great pleasure of having one interview that we can sink into and truly appreciate.

Hope you learn a little something.

The Podcast

Hey folks,

First of all welcome to all the new readers. I have been tickled pink by the fact that even though my writing frequency has reduced a little bit, the blog’s readership and subscribers have kept on increasing and so thanks to all of you and welcome to the new readers.

Following on from my last post about confusion and my podcast with Julia Sanna where I tried to put an african immigrant relationship manifesto together, today I thought I would go one step further and, with your help, try to carve out an African Immigrant Manifesto.

“Why What Is That My Good Man?” I hear you say

In a nutshell, its the answer to the question,

What are the characteristics of an ideal African immigrant?

After all, a man who aims for nothing is sure to get there. So what should we be aiming for? What should the end result be when you take all that Africa has created and leave it in the middle of the concrete jungles of the West?

And below I’ll list 9 characteristics (with a bonus) that I personally think are quintessential:

They Are……..

1) Goes beyond the limitations of his African community.

2) Expands the borders (whether psychologically, socially, financially etc etc) of that very same African community.

3) Takes advantage of the vast knowledge this land has to offer.

4) Materially secure and/or abundant (this one doesn’t tend to be too big of a problem for us)

5) Hard working (this one either)

6) Punctual when it counts (this one we do have a problem with)

7) Responsible parents (bringing children into secure, safe environments where they can grow up)
Able to adapt

9) Takes care of the body regardless of the plethora of temptation to do otherwise out here in the West.

What Should I Add to the List?

I have gone beyond my site and gone on the forum site, Mashada and asked the same question and you can find that thread here:

http://www.mashada.com/forums/opinions-advice/91763-what-would-perfect-african-immigrant-look-like.html

So either head on over to Mashada or leave a comment below, it can even be a one word response, and let me know (leave your first comment, you know you want to) what should an ideal African immigrant look like:

PS: As soon as I read the headline, I got a feeling that some of you want to leave the answer, “Obama”. I guess that’s alright, but if you do, state why………

If there are two topics the Internet, including the African immigrant web, are obsessed with its relationships and sex. HUGE proportions of this blog’s traffic, controversy, friends and enemies come from relationship and sex-related articles.

With that in mind, I thought I would do the most responsible thing I could. Get someone who is an expert on relationships, especially as pertains to African immigrants and find out what she knows, what her research has uncovered and what practical tips we can take away that we can apply to make our intimate relationships magical.

The  picture is gorgeous aint it

And so I called upon the years of expertise built by one Julia Sanna

This Interview Is Long, So…….

Me and Julia spoke for an hour and thirty minutes and so I have divided this interview into three parts that will come out over the next fortnight.

I hope this interview will contribute towards the end of our creating, and I quote, an African Immigrant Relationship Manifesto where we basically look at all the unique aspects of our identity and leverage them to make our relationships absolutely outstanding.

Enjoy!

One Last Thing

To receive the latest podcasts, and all the previous podcasts, for free direct to your computer and mp3 player subscribe to the Displaced African podcast. Instructions on how to do this are in the short video below:

The Podcast

Issues Discussed

1) Who, Julia Sanna is and why you should pay attention?

2) How has immigrant life changed in the US over the 14 years she’s been abroad?

3) Why is her focus on counseling couples in their early years of marriage?

4) The absolute importance of the decisions that people make in those early years of marriage

5) What defines a successful relationship?

6) Importance of negotiables vs non-negotiables

7) Commonalities, shared values and their role in relationships
We go in depth into negotiables vs non-negotiables

9) The importance of the man’s earning power to women

10) The definition of love

11) How the feeling of love and the choice to love intermingle

12) What men want vs what women want

13) The search for one’s parents in their partners??!!

14)

Websites Mentioned

1) Sigmund Freud’s ideas

2) Julia’s website

3) Julia’s blog

Hello people,

My name is Caroline Achieng Otieno, and I am a guest blogger at the Displaced African, and a regular contributor to The African Bulletin – www.mediablackberry.com. Having lived in the Netherlands for the past seven years, and experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly, I must say that I have observed a lot going on in Europe. I feel sad for the many Africans, who escape war and other tragic situations, come into Europe through very difficult means (some even trekking the desert through Northern Africa) and when they get here, they face other hurdles in trying to build an existence for themselves and their families back home. What hurts the most is that the system set in place makes our African sisters do things they would not ordinarily do, just because of their legal status or the lack of it thereof. The following article is another version of the article I wrote for African Bulletin in the April issue, feedback is welcome…

Supposing you were in Russia, it’s war-time, early 20^th century. You are an aristocrat soldier and you are with your soldier friends. Feeling the loss of your status, money, family and country; you play a lethal game, perhaps to display bravado, perhaps you want to commit suicide. You spin the cylinder of a revolver so that the location of the cartridge is not known. You point the revolver to your head and pull the trigger. Bang! Well, probably you live, and unharmed and admired you walk away, or you die, and that’s the end, it’s final.

While many Africans living in Europe would not dare play the game of Russian roulette, no matter how much money they were offered, many are caught up in a riskier form of a similar game. There are few chances here; it is a ‘no-win’ situation. Young undocumented Africans, eking out a living in the big cities of Europe, find themselves alone in a foreign land. Many gamble with high risk sex, playing a game of ‘Russian roulette’ as it were. For the young African woman especially, illegality is a challenge. She is placed in a very vulnerable position. She may view being undocumented as having ‘no rights, no shelter, no access to medical care, no money, no food, no peace.’ If she is not well informed or protected, she falls into the trap of selling her body. In the big European cities, female migrants are caught up in a fast growing endemic of promiscuity, for no other reason than being illegal. On one hand, these may be women who are fleeing dangerous situations in their countries, where men have raped women as a weapon of war. Others have undergone traumatic and often brutal genital mutilations. Yet when these same women arrive in Europe, only to find their applications to stay in the country rejected, and out on the streets, the harsh reality begins to set in and sex becomes a strategy for survival.

Research done by SOA-Aids Netherlands in October 2006 among the heterosexual Black community, established that sex was used as a ‘salient exchange commodity’ by women. Men gave them money, and women in return took care of all their needs. When money begins to flow and the women are past survival, they find themselves at a point of no return and trapped in a life on the fast lane. Free-lance writer Zack Bigalke from Portland, Oregon writes, “Women, smarter than ever, have learned that their bodies are money-generating machines which can easily draw much larger pay-checks than most other jobs.” And that is the main problem, sex does sell, and many African migrant women get addicted to the business of having myriads of sexual partners.

There’s a mysterious pull to hang in there.

Probably it’s the bad company, or the lack of social skills, or the low-level of education coupled with the rush to make big bucks quick. Friends encourage some to join them, stating the fact that money comes easy in the business. Ultimately, there’s the attraction of the ‘invincible’ Euro, the demands of relatives back home, and the desire to mirror the lifestyles, the dress and the mannerisms of the of the characters played out by the beautiful West African actresses of Nollywood; keeping up with the latest designer fashions, smelling like a queen, and owning the latest gizmos at the drop of a hat.

There are risks involved, the risk of pregnancy and the greatest risk of all, that of catching a Sexually Transmitted Infection (S.T.I).

Let’s admit it, most men initiate and control sex, paying for it with their greater wealth.

However many women bear the burden of the consequences of sex. Due to the fact that a woman’s body is well structured to receive, a woman is eight times more likely to become infected from a single sexual act with an infected man than a man is likely to become infected from a single sexual act with an infected woman.

Not only is the likelihood for infection for women greater, but also infection can be present in and spread by them when they do not have any symptoms of the disease. The disease becomes a silent killer.

A breakdown of the most common S.T.I’s follows:

Gonorrhoea is one of the oldest known S.T.I’s. However, like the condition Chlamydia, most women who are infected by the disease frequently have no symptoms of it, especially in the early stages. Both of these diseases, left untreated destroy the Fallopian tubes and cause Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (P.I.D). This can lead to ectopic pregnancies or infertility. Another well-known S.T.I is Syphilis. It operates in stages, which can be in gaps over a period of many years. The last stage of Syphilis is most fatal. It can cause problems throughout the human body such as heart abnormalities; brain malfunctions leading to stroke, meningitis, deafness or blindness. The Human Papillomavirus (HPV), another S.T.I has long been known to be a cause of cervical cancer. Infection with the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) weakens the body’s immune system and increases vulnerability to many different infections. HIV at its’ final stage is referred to as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS, when full-blown, many infections overwhelm the body and this results to death. Treatment options exist for HIV-infected people that reduce the multiplication of the virus in their bodies thus delaying the progress of the disease to the final stage, which causes death.

Solutions are quickly needed.

Condoms may be useful in decreasing the spread of infections such as Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea, but should be noted that they do not fully protect against infections such as genital herpes, HPV, syphilis and AIDS. Public awareness and education about STI’s and methods of preventing them is imperative.

African migrant women should be empowered and educated about their sexual health and reproductive rights. There is the need to practise good social skills that include the ability to negotiate safe sex, a better understanding on the working of their bodies and the risks of a promiscuous lifestyle.

Global agencies, international policy makers, African leaders and civil societies should push to make education for the Girl-Child in Africa free at all levels; such an action would encourage society in Africa to send their female children to school. Migrant churches and faith-based organizations in Europe need to address sexuality and behaviour change among both men and women.

It is my prayer that the article has helped someone in some way or another,

Blessings,

Carol.

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

Let me apologize for constantly interjecting with”Yup!”, “Yes!” and “Mh mh” all the time. The mindset I went into this audio with was that it was a discussion as opposed to an interview and so that’s why I kept making those interjections.

That aside, I think this interview is extremely valuable.

Repetition of Truth

It is amazing how whenever one pauses to ask questions like:

What holds people back abroad?

You get the same answers again and again and again and again. One of them is:

When people immigrate abroad, they forget that they are not just competing with their peers or learning from their countrymen but competing and learning from people from all over the world.

So listen to this audio and you may pick up something new, but at the very least, you get reminded of the fundamentals.

Some Other Quick Things

This audio is long but I will release it and leave a gap between this and the next post, so listen to the first part today then pick up where you left of tomorrow or when you can.

PS: I am aware of the problem some folks have listening to these audio, and videos, in places where high speed Internet is as real as a Unicorn/Centaur Tupperware party.

I am fully aware of that and am working on it: A solution shall be found.

Audio File

Things Discussed

1) Brief introduction of Coach Caroline

2) We break down the 4 stages of culture shock

3) We discuss our own personal experiences with culture shock (she went straight to the “shock”)

4) Coach Caroline discusses her initial peer group

5) She also tells her story as an immigrant

6) Patterns she has noticed in behavior of Africans in the States

7) “The herd mentality”

8 ) Transitioning and learning when immigrating

9) Losing your identity abroad and the blessing therein.

10) Racism in the United States

11) Cultural differences

12) The importance of having a vision and the challenges of having a vision as an immigrant

13) The power of the Internet and telecommunication

14) Getting caught up in fancy titles and ideas instead of falling in love with the process and goals.

15) Stories on taking action

16) Ideas for getting out of inertia. Echoes the same ideas I got from Kirk Nugent and for more ideas on how to put this into action check out this article from Steve Pavlina.

17) Caroline’s most important piece of advice for people who are just about to leave home and immigrate abroad.

17) Dreaming big

18) What you can tolerate you won’t change

19) Much much more…………….

I am back with the final edition on the series. First of all, a quick refresher on what we have discussed so far:

1) One Thing We MUST Begin Doing NOW As African Immigrants

2) What Every African Immigrant Ought to Know About Recording and Sharing Success

3) In What Areas Do We as African Immigrants Need to Record and Share Our Successes

To be honest I am quite surprised I have this much to say on this topic, but I think if we honestly embrace these ideas and implement them we can have GINORMOUS impact on the African immigrant community.

Today I will give two very quick ideas on how we can distribute this information in the best way.

What I Recommend as the Format of Delivery?

Stories

We go into trances when we hear great stories. Using stories, especially personal stories is a great way to transmit messages, morals and tips that can be used to uplift someone.

So if you have a story of overcoming triumpth, put people into a trance with it and share with them your principles of success. Here think autobiographies and those newspaper profiles on great men.

Can your imagination craft a magnificent tale? Link it to some principle or positive idea and use the story as a metaphor for what people could do ala Who ate my Cheese and the parables by the carpenter from Nazareth.

How Tos

I think everyone is pretty clear on what a how to is (if not, please leave a comment below and we can discuss it) and so I will give some quick ideas on how to craft a great how to.

Some Quick Ideas

Here many will disagree with me (and I really don’t do this enough), but I think whenever we are crafting our communications with people, a lot of the time we should exist under the assumption that we are crafting a message for arrogant, spoiled idiots who don’t like us and won’t want to hear what we have to say.

The reason we would do that is so that we are forced to overcompensate by:

1) Making messages attractive: Looking at the process of getting your message across more like an exercise in marketing as opposed to thinking that people should listen to the idea because, “it’s the right thing to do.”

They won’t, get over that and work within that reality. People will listen to the idea that is most in their interests, especially in the short term and that which is crafted in the most seductive manner. Leave your moral indignation at the door……

2) Simplifying our ideas: More than just satirical, I really meant it when I said African people LOOOOVE big words. We love being esoteric and sounding intelligent, myself included. If we use the assumption above, then we are forced to simplift things so they are universally understandable, acceptable and most importantly, applicable.

3) Step by step by step: People don’t like to be overloaded by information that is thrown at them out of context. We tend to freeze over or glaze over or just straight up ignore it.

Instead, put the information into a simple, attractive form where people are guided along and told what to do step by step by step, one step at a time.

Do this and you have the perfect: how to. Examples would be:

a) How to get a job when you are a new arrival in a country.

b) How to renew your visa.

c) How to choose great, loyal, trustworthy friends.

d) How to set up a computer and how to use a computer.

To Finish Off, Do Me a Favour……..

As soon as you finish reading this series please do the following:

1) Sit down if you haven’t already

2) Write down all the little successes you have had along the way – getting a job, getting good friends, getting accommodation,  learning how to feel comfortable around foreigners.

3) Choose a topic area that you enjoy talking about and will be valuable to other Africans.

4) Choose a method to distribute the information.

5) Think about how to simplify the message and make it attractive and compelling.

6) Share it with other African immigrants who may not be ‘up to your level’ and help bring them up.

If enough of us do just those six things, the African race will look very very very different come New Years 2009. Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts, ideas or questions about this topic.

Godspeed,

Mwangi

Today let’s talk about a little something that we all see or do when we go abroad.

The Change of Accent

This “art form” goes by many different names:

a) Wenging or wanging

b) Butchering/murdering the English language

c) Pretending/ Being fake

d) Becoming “bougei like that”

But why does is it that the way in which we pronounce words all of a sudden changes when we move to a foreign nation?

Mwangi’s Theory

The reasons I think it happens, which have probably been discussed heavily in private conversation, are:

1) Marketing

2) Inferiority complex.

Inferiority Complex

Very few Africans are in doubt that many of us do have inferiority complexes when it comes to white people and Westerners.

Sure, it varies in degree, character and expression but a lot of us kinda know that its there.

However, there are those of us who still vehemently hold on to the belief that Africans do not think of themselves in any way shape or form as inferior to our Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Western and other cousins in this human race.

To prove my point, journey with me as I go through a mental exercise. Let’s call it, “Why doesn’t……”

Why Doesn’t……

Our accent change when we go to:

1) Other African countries

2) Meet with people from other tribes in Africa

Seriously, some of us can spend our time around other African people from other countries all our lives and our accent will never change.

By Comparison

I actually have a friend who the moment they landed here, immediately abandoned Kiswahili (why do people call it Swahili, it’s Kiswahili, folks, Ki-swahili) and her native tongue and until this day spends most of her time butchering the English language, check out the silly audio below for an imitation of “her linguistic skills”.

On the other side, people close to me have considered taking lessons with an expert on how to adapt their accent to the what I lovingly call, the Down Under Drawl.

I will move into the second point, marketing, by continuing with the game of

Why Doesn’t, Part two

Why doesn’t our accent change when we go to:

1) India

2) Oriental Asia

I have met quite a few people who went to study in India and none of their accents changed a lick. I have met other folks who have studied in Malaysia, and nothing.

Give me 6 years here and all of a sudden I sound like a hybrid between Patrice Lumuba, Emily from friends, Kofi Kingston, the All blacks, Steve Irwin, Mtukudzi and Wainaina.

The Marketing Stereotypes

It’s all because other groups have been marketed as cool (Acolyte, I am aware these are stereotypes, but note how these stereotypes are indeed used to push products and TV shows out there):

1) Americans market themselves as the loveable, uber-committed, individualistic cowboys and rogues

2) The Brits are posh

3) The Aussies are laid back and charming

4) The French are romantic

5) The Spanish are lovers

As to the Indian accent, I’ll let Russell Peters talk about that one (NB: There is some swearing in this video clip) :

And so on and so on and so on. Combine that with the Western entitlement syndrome, which even we buy into and it results in us believing that Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians are the superior human product that we should model in order to become better people.

My Take On It

And with that, you have my take on why our accents switch gears when we land overseas.
To hear more insights on this immigrant life, make sure you sign up to receive free regular updates via either email or RSS.

Finally: A Silly Spot of Fun

If you are not a fan of silliness as I am, skip this and leave a comment below. As I was writing the article, I got the idea to record this. Lovers of folly enjoy (Keep the volume on a mid setting because the volume fluctuates)

Question:Why do YOU think our accent changes?

Mwangi

As a lot of you know, I was born and raised in Kenya. I have been to South Africa and all over Kenya. I have hung out with Zims, Tswanas, Ghanians, Naijas, Tanzanians, African Americans and other children of the soil from all over the place. What have I learned from all of this?

1) Keeping It Real:

By keeping it real, I don’t neccesarily mean honesty, because any African will tell you that Africa has it’s fair share of liars. Instead, I am talking about wearing your heart on your sleeve.

Yesterday I was in a social gathering here in Oz (Australia for the uninitiated): When I got home, I realized how subtle our interactions were. Sure on the surface level, it may have seemed quite simple and easy, but there was so much sub-text: when to talk, who to talk to, when to move on, when you lost someone in the conversation, when you gained someone else, who had the power, who didn’t, who is attracted to you, who did you just turn off and so on and so forth.

And none of this was really ever discussed in the open or brought to the surface and its something that a lot of folks can really miss unless they have interacted with people from Oz for a while.

I cannot tell you how much grief I have seen because of completely misunderstanding the sub-text or underlying rules of an interaction or not setting the rules early on.

Sure in Africa there is still sub-text but people are much more open about how they feel and much more expressive in the way they speak. Most of all they speak sub-text that I understand. Considering I learned a lesson something as important as this in the school of hard knocks and not in a classroom you quickly realize:

2) Education Isn’t What it Promised to Be:

There are many articles out there that constantly remind members of the African diaspora that we are some of the best educated folks around.

As far as I am concerned, the fact that you have a degree means diddly squat. Don’t get me wrong, I bow to your intellect for being intelligent and hard working enough to go through more than a decade of school and end up in an outstanding course in an outstanding University. I salute and have a deep respect for you after enduring the rigours of the unstructured University life and coming out strong, Lord knows I dropped off on the side. BUT all this love and respect, is aimed AT YOU, not your degrees.

Anyone who was around Kenyans around the post-election violence of last year quickly realized that a University degree (and even chronological age) isn’t a guarantee of maturity, or wisdom, or restraint, or love, or compassion or even intelligence really. So all this stuff we were sold as kids that education is the be all and end all to making us well rounded people of substance: Not so! And by the way the same thing applies for:

3) Hard Work:

Africans are hands down some of the hardest working people around. I come from a family where one half of the two person team that made me was the best woman in the country when her high school results came out. I have watched both my folks slug it out for 8+ hour days 6 days a week, starting business after business after business. And here’s the thing: that work ethic is pretty much standard procedure in Africa.

I was genuinely shocked when I arrived in Oz and realized there were things like minimum wage and maximum daily working hours.

When most folks here complain about being worked to the ground from 8 hours of work, 5 days a week, I can’t help but think: isn’t the idea of stress relative?

The Australian workload would be kinda like a vacation for a standard African worker. That’s part of the reason that I don’t write much about the need for hard work: a lot of Africans intrinsically know this and live it. Sadly that’s partly because:

4) Africans are Unashamedly Materialistic:

A lot of people in the West are materialistic. A lot of Jones out here want the fancy house, big car, a lot of money, pretty girls/boys etc etc. However many people out West are taught, and even believe that,

“Money isn’t everything. There are things more important than money.”

Not the African. Many Africans would sell their soul at discount prices to get money. There is nothing more important than money to a lot of Africans and material possesions not only define you, they are the cornerstone of who you are. One of the reasons I created the Stuff African people like series was to poke fun at a seriously high level of materialism that we as African folks have at the expense of other things.

Don’t believe we are materialistic: pay a visit to the homes of African politicians and welathy businessmen and tell me they don’t easily trump 90% of homes in Europe: I mean I was certainly disappointed by the houses here when I first showed up. It’s pretty interesting though how there is so much similarity right now between the homes of Melbourne and where I grew up in Nairobi. In truth:

5) Westernization is Powerful:

If anyone ever wants to start a think tank that talks about the power of Westernization and how to keep that sucker on a leesh and under control, I am behind them 100%.

We are on the road to being one huge homogenous global society, controlled from Washington, speaking English and liking and doing the same things from Auckland to California.

For me to say that I never spoke anything other than English regularly before I came to Australia is a travesty when one considers that just over 40 years ago I would be living an entirely different life with an entirely different set of beliefs and values.

We are not in control of Westernization and it is hitting Africa like a tidal wave, the good sides (human rights, respect for women and people from other cultures, shared commonalities with people from all over the world) and bad ( relationships breakdown, drug habits, lethal eating habits, confusion and lack of purpose, manufacturing of a majority of humanity living in poverty, linear models of insatiable consumption etc etc etc).

I am not saying that Westernization is good or bad, I am a result of it. I am saying, we need to control it and not be a slave to it. As Westernized as we Africans arel, I was quite surprised to discover that most Africans are:

6) Africans are Socially Conservative:

It’s been said many times and it will be said many times in future: white people are crazy. I love it! A lot of white people are unashamedly out there and willing to try out things that would make the average African absolutely squirm.

Whether its experimenting with things like religion or relationships or business or even endangering their lives in pursuit of something that to many looks like a pipe dream fantasy that will never come true, people from the West do it.

Africans tread with care and wait for a path to be beaten before jumping into it. We hold on to whatever societal rules have been passed down to us and are rarely willing to question for fear of failure and alienation.

White people go beat the path naked with a carrot in one hand and an idea in the other.

But I Digress

Just as a side note, don’t you find it interesting that out of the whole African blogosphere, there are only like maybe 10 or less of us who actually use our real names and/or have pictures AND almost all of us who do aren’t in Africa. I know there is a point to be made there somewhere, I just don’t know what it is.

7) Some People are Just Mean:

The old adage that good will always prevail over evil is a lie. Many brutal, callous people have existed and gone about their narcissistic work all life long going from success to success. Just look at African dictators. Some of these fellows will do evil all life long and will die not having experienced any more stress than the normal man who does good. Good doesn’t always prevail over evil. It only prevails when people who believe in it fight for it day after day after day.

So there, off the top of my head are 7 things that growing up in Nairobi and being around a lot of Africans from all over the world has taught me in my life.

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Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi

Many Africans loves discussing all the way they are being victimized by the world. Whether it’s expressing suspicions that they didn’t get that job, “because they are black,” or “lamenting at how ignorant Westerners are for not knowing the location of their constituency,”, this is one of the all-time-favorite African pastimes, almost up there with church crusades, money chasing and sleeping.

Don’t be surprised if when sitting with a group of Africans you hear about all the neccesary “points-of-correction” for other races. Among them:

a) Asian people discriminating Africans in barely audible English.

b) Indian people calling Africans monkey though they are as dark as we are and have much more hair.

c) Every Western race wanting to have our skin – tanning-and our hair-dreadlocks, corn rows- and our curvaceousness but making us feel ugly for being who we are.

d) EVERYONE not knowing the constituency from which they came even though it’s such a famous African constituency that even the Pope should know it.

The key here is to stay out of these group discussions and shake your head in empathy, sympathy and with absolute disgust (at the foreigners) at all the appropriate times.

Don’t worry, when the African gets round to complaining about their fellow Africans (another all-time favourite pastime) they will mention you as an example of what African people should be like.

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