Africa is Hell

Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right.  I remember the first time I recognized class:  I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school.  Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements.  I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment.  I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe.  I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house.  When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed.  I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.

Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town.  I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby.  Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare.  I didn’t understand how lucky I was.  As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.

When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself.  I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well.  I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged.  I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.

And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana.  That first trip rocked my world.  I experienced these things every day, all day for a month.  I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority.  I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?

On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us?  His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him.  Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me.  I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery.  He walks away with a smirk on his face.  He had won.

I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question.  I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself.  I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity.  I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision.  I felt almost pious about these acts.  As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person.  In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time.  After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place.  It just seemed like the simplest place to start.  The least messy place to begin.  If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.

But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years.  Don’t I feel like I need to do something?  Is there something I can do to help?  To make amends?  To change things?

On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand.  Grown men and women beg for money.  Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage.  Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America.  Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.

And each time I struggle with myself.  How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little?  And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about?  How do I cope with who I am?  How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa?  And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer.  Why do you like it there so much?  Why doesn't it scare you?  Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.

My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America.  And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin.  I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity.  I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things.  I’ve felt it.  It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.

So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip.  How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status.  I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”.  I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud.  It wasn't doing me any good.

I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away.  I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space.  I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race.  I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel.  I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.

I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities.  I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege.  I am American.  I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out.  Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation.   Where I wasn’t the white girl.  It was another first encounter with other.  I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having.  I couldn’t find words to explain myself.  I didn’t know how to get over myself.

When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this.  Where I wanted to be liked.  Where I wanted to blend in.  To not be the white lady.  To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here.  And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue.  The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman.  It was me who recognized myself as a white woman.  As a contrast.  And I had to sit on it.  I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months.  And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed.  Not the situation.

And the kids helped me cope with myself.  One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria.  For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.

She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?

“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.

Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"

Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"

She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.” 

Breakthrough.  Not white, light-skinned.  All about perspective.

And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean.  And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty.  I crave to understand.  Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).

And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am.  I must start from this point.  I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from.  We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?

I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself.  I've learned too much.  I've had to get over myself.  These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me.  I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom.  But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.

I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit.  Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”.  At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke.  There wasn’t one.  The author was being genuine.  He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa.  He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message.  As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that.  I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print.  Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this. 

I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter.  And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means.  I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter.  I've seen the hellish parts.  I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake.  The place has changed me.  The Africa is Hell message ringing true.  And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy.  Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions.  Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people.  Don't go.  Don't ruin it.  Don't exploit it.

I can't ignore the facts.  No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like.  Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes.  But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation.  If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed?  Different?

And I struggle with myself.  Am I one of those Americans?  I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American?  I feel like I've got an exemption pass.  That I've earned my place here.  I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt.  I feel like I've had breakthrough.  Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned.  Because I've also seen the opposite.

Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities.  Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances.  Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares.  Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba.  This couldn't possibly be Hell.   

And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing.  To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.

As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive.  I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home.  I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family.  The children I've watched grow-up.  The women I've become sisters with.  But the guilt never subsides for long.  It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers.  Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.