trying to understand

I get upset sometimes by the way we're treated as "mzungus". Sometimes I think, "we would never do that or treat someone like that at home." Like when you're the laughing stock on the bus because someone made a joke about you, or when kids and adults alike constantly yell after you, and your friends blatantly ask you for money, or when people just stare relentlessly...

But the thing is, we can't compare what happens here to home. They are two completely different worlds. We don't know what it's like to live in a predominantly single-race country, where white skin most often does mean tourists with money to burn, or post-colonialist types coming in and trying to change things -- to westernize and globalize and import foreign ideas and systems that clash with African tradition and ways of life. We don't understand what it's like to be so desperate that white skin signifies a chance -- for education, for escape, for a meal. We are walking opportunities, because we come from a world where these things are commonplace, a privilege taken for granted. And they can't help but try to take advantage of it.

That's why they welcome us, chase after us, befriend us, and beg from us...even sometimes rob us or harm us. There's been a long history of violence and exploitation between us. "We" used them, took from them, ruined them. And now, we are their livelihood. It doesn't make it right, but of course we're treated like this. It's a mixture of fear, resentment, respect, envy or admiration, and pure desperation.

It bothers me to be accosted and harrassed, and it infuriated me recently to have someone follow me and steal my cell phone from my backpack. And because of this, sometimes I am cold toward people and overly suspicious. But most people are just trying to survive, and as angry as it makes me sometimes, this is something I have to keep in mind. Because I have never wanted for anything in my life -- a fact that I often take for granted, but for which I am extremely thankful -- and I don't know what that feels like.

We need to see things as they see them in order to understand why things are how they are here, why people do what they do. See things with their eyes more often. Because we can't compare our worlds, we can't measure them against one another. It's just too different. And if we continue to just look at things through the lens we're used to, we will never understand.