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

Discussion

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

We Have a Very Strange Identity

Our identities are odd because:

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

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

2) We Think and Act VERY Differently From Native Kenyans

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

In Africa that = An idiot

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

That’s absolute stupidity

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

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

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

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

A Few of My Favorite Things

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

I love the personal development movement.

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

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

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

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

There Is No Sub-Culture For People Like Me

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

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

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

Not That I Am Complaining

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

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

Working through the confusion,

Mwangi

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…………….

What is the Western Entitlement Syndrome?

If this article is a little to abstract or ambiguous, ask questions in the comments thread and I will gladly make sure you get what I’m trying to say.

In the interests of ensuring that everyone understands everyone as much as possible, I will write about something today that I have chosen to label:

The Western Entitlement Syndrome

But Mwangi What is the Western Entitlement Syndrome?

I am so glad you asked. It should be noted that this syndrome is most visible in either people who are from the West AND (this is important) people who are Westernized, i.e. anyone from a city is at risk of getting this disease. The Western entitlement syndrome is a rather complex thing that has a few parts:

It is the genuine heart felt belief that goodness and blessings are a birthright for the simple fact that I was born. This is coupled with a belief that God, the world and everything in it is on one’s side and anything that isn’t one one’s side and/or takes away from the goodness is either an obstacle that must be eliminated or a weird, creepy thing that must be ignored.

As I said, it is a complex thing (and I was too lazy to split it up into parts and explain each different part) and so to illustrate just what this syndrome looks like I will tell you a couple of stories:

The Young Men Who Thought they Were Supermen

I remember back when I was still in high school I went to this house party. It was in a small secluded home at the very top of a dark, well forested mountain. I showed up in there with three of my “brothers from the motherland” determined to make cross-cultural exchange a double entedre.

I was the loudest, most obnoxious fellow in the room. And after singing, hugging, grabbing, joking, huffing and puffing, I packed my bags because I was going home alone. As we were packing up to leave a panic hit the party.

Are those Boys Mad?

It turns out that the girl hosting the party had had a spat with three vveerrrryyyyy drunk boys who had attended the party and somehow the boys decided that the way they would get vengeance would be by trying to take the 5-10 kilometer extremely-convoluted-and-pitch-black hike down the mountain on their own. Well, their technique looked like it worked because this girl was horror stricken.

The Search Begins

We packed my friends saloon car with 5 males and 2 girls and off we went in search of these three young men, as the rain came pouring heavily down. We screamed their names and drove around for close to an hour and a half before we found the first boy. Soon after we found the second.

The Third is Always the Special One Isn’t He?

I will never forget the way we found the third one. I want you to imagine the Blair Witch Project or the Exorcist. The world around us was in a blanket of darkness but for the meagre lights of my buddy’s Nissan Silvia. As we descended down a hill, at the very bottom of it, the spotlight rest on a what-the-heck-is-that-doing-in-the-middle-of-nowhere street post that had two signs, one pointing to the left and one to the right. Leaning against that pole, completely drenched and looking like he was among the walking dead was the third boy.

Success

I don’t even know if he was fully conscious as we brought him back to the car and put him in the backseat. Feeling very much like self-sacrificing heroes, me and my buddy got in the trunk of the car so that these boys could have room in the back seat.

What I have never forgotten about that day, aside from the hyperbolic drama, was the last thing the third boy said to me just as we were dropping him home:

Thank you. I didn’t know what I was thinking. You know we thought we were superman. We thought we were invincible.

Hmmmm

I wrote this piece a while back and submitted it to one of the big blogs in the African blogosphere in the hopes of being published as a guest author. But alas, I felt the sting of rejection On the bright side, this piece gets published anyway ….and since there are a whole bunch of you new readers, I would like to welcome you with a tale of one of my experiences from my early days of Australian life. If you enjoy the peace, make sure you leave a comment with a little anecdote of your own.

Five weary travellers rested their behinds on the isn’t-this-a-four-star-restaurant-why-are-they-giving-us-two-star seats. It had been a tiring, but exciting day. The travellers hailed from the land known as Africa (Cradle of civilization since the dawn of time, thank you very much). They had thoroughly enjoyed their day spent walking around, gawking and poking at these weird human beings known as Australians.

Weird creatures they were. Instead of speaking with their mouth like normal people, their words seemed to come from the end of the throat. They claimed to speak the language made famous by the Queen, but for some weird reason everything that came out of their mouth sounded like

“Robo, Yobo, Yeeennooouuuu mate!”

“Mate!”

That was the only word they had heard all day and they liked it:

“Mate!”

So as their backsides rested upon the varnished wood seats and they stared in bewilderment at the excess of spoons on the table (aren’t soup and food are eaten with the same spoon?..you must transfer flavour man) a “mate” of theirs came.

“Hello mate!” They all crooned like an out of tune choir

“Hello!” chirped a bright eyed, black haired girl. She looked like an Amber, so let’s call her, “like so totally Amber, Oh my God!”

Hmmm, the Africans knew they needed time to balance out their need to eat with their need to save as much money as possible. So they decided in the interim that image really was nothing and thirst was everything.

The matriarch of the group, confident as an MP declaring on national television that he will beat up his colleague, stepped up to be the first to speak to future cheerleader, Amber.

“I would like some juice!”

Amber stopped stunned! I would say she looked like a deer in the headlights but in truth she looked like the deer after being hit by a car as it flew through the air wondering what just happened.

“What?”

“Oh sorry, I want some juice!”

Amber’s eyes rolled into the back of her head looking for some form of truth in the woman’s words but came up short. Amber decided it was time to try and speak to this weird African woman:

“Did you say you want grease?”

“Juice!”

“Feet?”

“Juice!”

“Jebeet!”

“Dear Lord!” Exclaimed the woman and in her native tongue tried to calm her family, “Don’t worry, this woman is a retard. We need to speak to her in sign language.”

And so in that moment, the family engaged in their first ever miming group performance: They lifted their hands to their mouths. End of act 1. They opened their mouths. End of Act 2 With the smoothness of an impotent Marlboro man, they concluded the act by motioning for drinks to enter their mouths.

“Juice! Juice! Juice! Ya kukunywa! Ya kunyua!Drinking! Sippy! Sippy!” They all said in an effort to get a message through to the mentally challenged girl.

Finally, success. Her eyes glowed with the magnificence of an ember of fire that was just about to die but had just sparked back to life in its final moments.

“OOOOOOOOhhhhh”

“Oooooohhhhh,” the family said, thinking it was a round song.

“You want Juuuuuusssss!”

Everyone in the family restrained their urge to speak. They saw just what the matriach was talking about: poor girl, I wonder how they allow her to work with such a debilitating condition. She couldn’t even pronounce basic words.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” They all nodded in Unison.

And five minutes later, the lady brought some Juuuuuusss.

And with that ended the drama that was their fast day in this fresh new land. That episode quickly and easily made way for the drama that was still to come. Good times!

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Introduction

1) Martin Luther King’s Dream Had One Little Hitch: Tolerance Isn’t All That It’s Cracked Up to Be (This post is quite long so get yourself something to drink before you read it)

Take It Away Gal

Mwangi put me on the spot  and asked me to do a guest post about being an incarnate immigrant Kenyan. Being quite the emotional gal (there goes all the male readers lol), I’ve chosen to write a little about the emotional stuff, because I believe that knowing of the possibility of experiencing these emotions, saves one a lot of energy…

The way I see it, when one expects to experience something, one doesn’t usually expend energy fighting the experience…but deals with the situation coming from a place of apparent preparedness…because one expected it. Makes for smoother sailing, me thinks 

I know I didn’t expect to experience the loneliness.

Nothing/ Nobody had prepared me for being in a new place with no friends. NOTHING! And that’s just the easy part. The kind of loneliness I experienced in my first few years abroad was unnerving, terrifying, tiring.

I was not at all prepared for moving away from people who’ve known me since I was in nappies. People who I’d gone to kindergarten with and friends I’d met on the first day of primary school and then was learning how to be a teenage adult with. People I had a “secret” language and personal history with. People I could tell funny stories about, even though everyone’s heard them a trillion times, and they could and would do the same with me. All this vanished with one “little” plane ride that I didn’t even notice, because I slept all the way to Heathrow. Vupti! And it was gone! Just like that. And I had no idea.

I remember the first time I met a long time friend and she laughingly said “OMG gal, that is So you”, to something inane I had done, I almost fell to knees crying, thinking “Oh my God, IT IS ME!, and she should know, she’s known me since I was 6!” Moving to the UK/DK (United Kingdom and Denmark) meant that I was surrounded by lots of lovely friendly people who knew naught/zero/zilch about me, and that somehow made/makes for loneliness.

I never underestimate the power of shared history anymore

We recognize and celebrate ourselves in it…its part of what shapes who we are…and one of the easiest ways to make friends…i.e. creating a shared history.

The move from the comfort of a Kenya whose systems; political, cultural and social, I knew and were a natural part of me, knocked me off my saddle sideways and left me reeling. The funniest part about it, is that I expected to fit right in pronto, first in the UK (not too bad but still) and then quite erroneously, in Denmark. I now know that, that little expectation can make a move to a new place a very horrendous one.

I now know to expect to NOT fit in, in a way that’s different from experiencing new things in Kenya, I expect to work at fitting in, I expect to stick out like a sore thumb and feel like one, if only for a while, but sometimes always, and many years down the road, I have accepted this as part of my life as an immigrant. I know to expect to feel the loneliness, in one form or another.It’s ok, it doesn’t bite…that much 

Gal Africana,

from a search for sanity

If you would like more information on what to look out for whenever you immigrate to a foreign nation make sure you stay subscribed to this site so you can receive new tips and usefulinformation daily.

The following is based on a true story

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

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

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

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

888 – Nunawading

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

888! 888! 888!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Excuse me sir, what are you doing?”

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

“But sir, you enter through the front.”

“Then why do you have two doors?”

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

“Isn’t that what a conductor is for?”

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

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

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

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

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

“They are cuing for other buses!”

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

“Yes!”

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

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

“Today grasshopper, we outwitted you!”

If he could speak he would ask,

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

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

Have a blessed Sunday and a great week
Mwangi

I recently read about the heart breaking, raw reaction that Kelly had to having to leave Kenya. That mixed in with some discussions I had with some friends got me thinking about what it was like when I had to say goodbye to Africa.

Do You Know What My Reaction Was?

Nothing! This post will be short because I felt nothing about leaving home. I wouldn’t miss anyone or anything.The only thing I felt was excited because I was going to a new place that was supposedly better than where I was coming from. I was also feeling pretty good because Australia also promised this wanna-be Mandingo his girls.

Ironically…..

My apathy eventually bit me in the butt and within six months I was missing all my family and friends. I was writing them all emotional deep letters expressing how much I loved and missed them. I was on the phone with my cousin so much the authorities must have thought we were plotting a jewel heist.

I wrote this post because I am curious. What was it like for you, when you had to say goodbye? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Before I leave though……

If Denzel Got Rejected What Hope Is There?

I have just watched an interview with Denzel Washington where he said that when he first proposed to his wife over the phone…..she said NO! If Mr. Mo’ Better got rejected, that evokes two feelings in me:

a) For real, no a lot of the time is just, not yet.

b) If John Q couldn’t seal the deal with his first proposal, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Rewind Selector

Until then, please enjoy Malaika one more time.

Why? Because they are that good!

Be blessed and bless others,

Mwangi