While we’re on this vain here’s a bit of a peak into what its like to be an Asian American volunteer. Rwandans are obsessed with kung-fu and I found out recently that there is a whole channel on Rwandan TV that plays exclusively Chinese Kung-fu movies. Even in my remote village the boys at my school have started a very intense martial arts club and when I gave a writing assignment, “Pretend you are going on a trip. Tell me where you will go and what you will do.” One of the most popular answer was, “I will go to China/Japan to become grandmaster/learn kung-fu etc…” Thus many Asian American volunteers face the problem of children walking up to them and play fighting Karate, kicking and punching at the air usually while making strange baby like noises that they pretend is Chinese. I’ve seen it in person and honestly it makes you wish you were a karate expert who could kick back. Additionally, they make no distinction between any kind of Asian, they are all Chinese. Rwandans also tend to be a bit racist, and my host mother for example would always impersonate Asians by pulling back her eyes in a way that became politically incorrect in America quite a while ago. An Asian American volunteer friend of my has joked that she should just round house kick someone one time, make the stereotype true, and then they’ll leave her alone. But of course she would lose her job for that, so instead she takes the more PC method of trying to explain why this is wrong and offensive.
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