Muzungu Paradox

I am sitting at a nicer tourist hotel about a half hour from my site, because it is my day off and I am using the internet and pretending I am not, in fact, in Rwanda. A car just pulled up and a white man got out, because I no longer have any social skills I just stared at him. He’s not attractive hes probably around 50 and has a beer belly, but I just stared. I suddenly had the urge to ask him about his feelings on the recent superbowl. Just when I was about to address him – based solely on the fact that we are both white and in Africa – he got a phonecall. And my heart sank as he answered it in German. German. The man spoke some English because obviously it is the language he works in, in this country, but he was not my countryman. And honestly, I’m embarrassed to admit, I was shocked to hear anything other than English come out of his mouth. Like in my increasingly socially challenged state I have forgotten that white people can be non-americans. Don’t laugh its true. I honestly assume they are all American. I am becoming just as bad as the locals, lumping us all in together. C’est la vie.

I have this reaction every time I see another white person though. In a grocery story in Butare last weekend I gave a complete stranger the biggest smile in the world because he was white. I almost hugged him. I think its because we, as PCVs, live away from other white people and because we are such a large organization of all ages it is highly possible that I would run into a colleague that I didn’t know was a colleague. Other PCVs have told me they have the same awkward impulse to address strangers based solely on their shared whiteness. Usually these other muzungus are tourists or other aid workers who are less excited to see us. Tourists are generally here with other people or are backpacking alone and thus planned to be alone, they are not looking for fellow westerners. Aid workers who do not work for Peace Corps usually see each other a lot more, if they do not actually live with one another.

I talked to a volunteer who had just returned from America recently and was grilling them on how overwhelming it must have been to go into a CVS or a grocery store and be bombarded with choices. Instead,they replied, that the most overwhelming thing had been all the white people. Walking into every place and seeing swarms of white people and knowing that you don’t know them. I  hadn’t even thought of that but now I laugh knowing exactly how that would feel. In Kigali I expect so I react exactly as you should to a stranger – meaning I don’t react. And when attending a Peace Corps function I know these people so I can also respond appropriately. But I think that maybe its part of the job that I will never get used to running into White people who I do not know when I’m not expecting it. I’m starting to have a little more sympathy for the children who cry out “muzungu” in surprise when they see me. Sometimes I am tempted to do the same.