Out of America: Or How I Became a Marxist

Bill Quigley

11 Jul 2007

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Out
of America: Or How I Became a Marxist

by BAR contributing editor Betty Wamalwa
Muragori

This article originally appeared in Chickenbones.

I went to study in the USA in the 1980s in the time of what
was to me the inexplicable presidency of Ronald Reagan. It was an enigmatic
presidency for me for two reasons. First, at my university and amongst
the mostly left leaning circle that I was to hang out with it, I never found
anybody who had voted for him. The second reason was that for me Reagan
was clearly challenged on the intellectual front. I could not believe that a
nation with all that maedeleo or development, we in Africa so covet, would
tolerate some folksy guy who could have come from a darker and more ignorant
century.

Certainly the cool left leaning students at C University
had no time for Reagan. In my two years in the US the only person I found who
would publicly admit to voting for Reagan was a 65 year old black man, in
Albany, Georgia, the father-in-law of my cousin. Pops, as he was called
by his children, in that quintessential African American manner, would
routinely proclaim his love for President Reagan, loudly to people, in the
presence of his children. He showed me his Republican Party membership
card, much to the mortification of all his children, who murmured about how the
old man was finally going senile. When he whipped out the letter from
Reagan his children teased him saying that he only received a letter because he
was special, for being the only black Republican on the planet.

"Reagan was
clearly challenged on the intellectual front."

Pops broke two rules I had come to accept about voting
patterns in America, first that black people were not members of the Republican
Party and second that they always voted for the Democratic Party. To this
day I am still left with the question, "So how did President Ronald Reagan win
with such landslide victories twice, if only one black man in the South voted
for him?"

America's Presidents and War

Eight months into America, I had imbibed the paranoid
conspiracy theories of my Marxist circle and lost my African ease. Late
one night I turned on the television to find the President of the United States
of America, Ronald Reagan ranting and raving in the most alarming manner about
the "evil empire." He was referring to the former Soviet Union, America's
then mortal enemy country of Cold War days. And you thought "Axis of
Evil" was original? Do you see a pattern here? This is clearly the language
of America's dumb dumb presidents.

There is a moment in the deep night when reality becomes
suspended and we become susceptible to our original lurking primeval
selves. In this night moment, assorted distorted demons and night
creatures with names like Linani, banshees, ghosts, and ghouls rule as
reality twists and turns, changing shape and resonance. The howl of a dog
becomes a were-wolf. On the Kenyan coast, that night moment brings with
it all manner of djins and mermaids, prowling in their woman shape to steal the
souls of victim men. Mating cats evoke the screams of damned souls burning in a
Christian hell. It is easy to believe the bizarre. (I am setting up my
excuse for what happened next.)

"I went to
bed that night terrified, in the grip of my imaginary world war."

It was at such a moment in the night that I found
Reagan's ranting so aggressive that as I listened I became convinced that I had
only missed the first part of his speech, in which he had finally gone over the
edge and declared war on the Soviet Union. I went to bed that night
terrified, in the grip of my imaginary world war. Before I fell into
erratic sleep I obsessed about how I would not be able to get out of the US
before the actual war started and that I would die alone in a foreign
land. The next morning I was relieved and abashed to find that all was
normal and there was no sign of impending war.

Twenty years later, as I watched the elections that brought
another dumb, dumb unfathomable US president into power, George Bush Jr., I
realized that my vantage point with its emphasis on linear "development" or maedeleo
had warped my thinking. Until that instant, I had thought development
also brings highly enlightened people who would not lie about the presence of
weapons of mass destruction to bring pain and destruction to innocent women and
children many miles away in another country. For what, for oil, (I can't
believe that), to get revenge for daddy, (that's too weird) to get their way
(what way, the American way in Baghdad?) To be right about a perspective?
(Probably the only right answer outrageous as it may seem.)

For us in this part of the world, things like technological
advancement, elimination of hunger, industrial development, foreign vacations,
microwaves, one doctor per 100 people, four lane highways, per capita income of
US$ 30,000, a new car every two years, pensions, social security, (pick your
top ten) all of which come with development also lead to progress, to maendeleo.
And ultimately to enlightenment, the cherry on top of the development
cake. We think, surely in America or Europe there must be such
enlightenment that people, ordinary people everywhere must have become immune
from the dictates of the baser human urgings like fear, malice, jealousy,
racism, intolerance, corruption, violence, the need to declare war for dubious
reasons, religious fanaticism, (again pick your top ten).

"My vantage point with its emphasis on linear
‘development' or maedeleo had warped my thinking."

It is easy to believe that if we were to invent a machine
that would test our level of enlightenment we would find that those with more
development have more enlightenment. This would render them immune from
making decisions on lowly unenlightened aspects of being a human being such as
uncertainty and fear of tomorrow, fear of the other, dictates of their
religion, what the bible says, what the Koran says, what the mullahs say, what
the priest says. And finally I understand that this is not the case just
because you have more stuff doesn't mean you are more enlightened.

I now realize of course that human beings may have made huge
technological advances such that they can send men to the moon or invent the
internet and they will still rely on some form of magic, juju or alchemy
for managing their lives. The advances have not created certainty.
In fact they create even more uncertainty and the threat of a backlash which
can take people deeper into the bosom of their juju
side.

From Nairobi to America

Before I went to America I was a student of the biological
sciences at the University of Nairobi. Some one had put the University of
Nairobi on the then outskirts of town. But it had not been far enough. By
the 1970s, the outskirts were already part of the central business district and
students could make their grievances felt by literally pelting the central
business district with sticks and stones. It was a rioting student's
paradise. During my time, there were numerous riots, demonstrations and
campaigns, many with echoes of Marxism or some left leaning ideology with
slogans like "Down with the Bourgeoisie the proletariat rule!!!" shouted by
students as they battled the police in the streets.

Somehow throughout these riots I was able to remain largely
innocent of any ideological infection. Which is incredibly surprising
because we were sent home on at least four occasions over the three years for
some issue with ideological overtones. In total we spent about seven
months at home; the male students had to report to their local chief every week
but the women were not taken as a threat so we did not have to report.

"The male students had to report to their local chief
every week but the women were not taken as a threat."

The only time I was absolutely certain about what we were
striking for was the time we went on strike over food. We were all tired
of the strange cuisine. The final provocation came when even the minced
meat had weevils in it, I kid you not! For those of you who do not know what
weevils are, these creatures are a type of beetle. And for those of you
who may not know this never having been exposed to the wonderful world of
entomology here are some facts to fascinate. Beetles the family of Coleoptera
had over 300,000 species in 1980. Weevils Curculionidae had 65,000
species in the same year. I am sure many more have been discovered since
I studied entomology. The thing is they are all vegetarian, they will
infest beans, legumes, rice, maize, but none feeds on meat. So I could
never get it, how did the weevils get into the minced meat? Wry uncertain
humor, we half joked that they must have used them to season the minced
meat.

Rioting Students

It was always those unserious art students at main campus
who started the riots. We science students with our 36 hour-a-week
schedule which was not much reduced from our secondary school schedules, had no
time for such frivolous pursuits. Also we had no ideology to spur us to
action and were so out of touch with current issues that we had no idea that
our politicians were up to no good and that we should care. No science
lecturer was ever caught in the political crosshairs at least during my time.

"I didn't want to take part in the stoning of motorists."

The arts students had plenty of time with their 8-hour a
week lecture schedule which we sneered at, ideologies such as Marxism,
political issues that they cared about and lecturers with a death wish to egg
them on. So what would happen is that the arts students had to use threat and
force to get us to join their strike. When a strike started we would be
the first target and rather than face the wrath of our fellow students we
joined in. Soon we were caught up in the excitement of the moment and
forgot our original reluctance. We were to be seen wearing jeans and
sneakers, running around town being chased by police, stoning unsuspecting
motorists in an orgy of anarchy that was surprisingly heady even when the
threatened dire consequences were that we would be beaten or raped by the
police and the paramilitary, (at this time they still did not use live
ammunition) and expelled wherever you had reached in your education. Were
you in your first year or were just about to graduate? I took part in the
running around town part. I didn't want to take part in the stoning of
motorists in case one of those motorists was my mother or father or one of
their friends.

Twenty years later the reality of becoming a nameless stoned
motorist, the ones we used to talk about so casually, the one who lost her eye,
"Oh how sad", "...the one who died" ...... uncomfortable silence, the one whose car
was burnt and had her leg broken when she tried to jump over a six foot fence
hotly pursued by angry students shouting "down with the bourgeoisie, workers
unite!" ... loud laughter at the image of the heavy set woman trying to jump a
six foot fence.

That scene of long ago came to me as I faced a young man
holding a stone and about to unleash it on my windscreen. Time stood still. I
had driven into a riot of university students. Have you ever had one of
those moments of danger when your life hangs in balance under the specter of
deadly violence? I live in Africa so I have had several. For me
these moments always come with a loud metallic screeching/whistling sound.
A sound that crystallizes danger itself.

From nowhere the moment was interrupted, a student stepped
out, and stopped the young man at the last possible moment, for no reason that
I can fathom, except that it was not my day yet. "Drive away!" he shouted
urgently at me. I reversed and drove like the devil escaping my moment.
To that nameless student who saved my life and to all those nameless students
who have saved other people's lives just because, thank you from the bottom of
my heart.

Being Cold in America

I arrived in America in the dead of winter never having
experienced winter in my life. I also went to a Marxist university only
having been vaguely aware of this ideology or the concept of ideologies for
that matter, so I was green on many fronts. If my father had known and
then been able to believe that he was sending me to America to a Marxist
university would he have so happily walked me to the door of the airport with
such pride giving me one of his gems to take with me? I repeated it later
to my new boyfriend, starry eyed, in "behold the wisdom of my father, I want to
share it with you" moment, only to find that it was Confucius who originated
it? You can guess the one "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one
step". I remember laughing and not being embarrassed by the busting of my
father's "original" gem. You must understand that I had once believed
that my father could speak Russian.

It was the cold that almost got me first. It was
February, the dead of winter. The sixth day I was there, I looked out of
the window and the sun was shining off of pristine snow. I felt joyful at
the prospect of warm sunshine on my skin. I dressed and walked the one km
to the university campus. Only, my calculations did not make sense as I
got colder and colder. Sunshine did not equal warmth here. The
light coat and sweater I had worn were no defense against the bitter winter
cold. 20 minutes later I was sitting in the reception room of the
University admission block, feeling sorry for myself, trying not to cry as my
extremities defrosted painfully, my ears, toes and fingers. I could have
gone home that second if my ticket was not one way.

A Party in America

Eventually I settled in and made some friends. I was
soon invited to my first party. When you hear the word "party" it should
mean the same thing wherever you are right? For me at that time it meant
dressing up in something sexy and provocative, make-up, jewelry (I still
believe secretly that it was I who introduced the whole bling concept to the USA),
high heels and looking forward to dancing and meeting gorgeous and dateable
guys.I marvel today at how many eligible men there were to choose from back
then at any party, I was always spoilt for choice.)

So of course I arrive at the party Kenyan style, dressed to
the nines and fashionably late, to make my entrance and to envelope myself with
the "whose that girl" factor. The cache in being remembered translated
directly into attentions of at least three of the hottest guys at the
party. And then the routine. Open the door of the crowded room,
stop, framed by the door, hold pose as if looking for someone. But what
you were actually doing is allowing them to look at you, and then step into the
room sure of the impression you had created.

"The others were dressed in old jeans, t-shirts, sweats
and ill fitting sweaters."

I went into routine mode and nearly gagged as I realized
just what an overdressed spectacle I was. One woman was still in the
droopy old t-shirt that she had used when we jogged that morning. The
only difference now was that the widening sweat marks under her armpits were
not because of the jogging but because of the heat in the room. I
couldn't believe it! The other students were similarly dressed in old jeans,
t-shirts, sweats and ill fitting sweaters. I was now embarrassed as all
eyes turned to me just as I had intended. By now retreat would only have
made me more conspicuous and for longer. Days rather than hours. I held
my head up and deciding to brazen it, walked into the room. This was only
the beginning of my introduction to party etiquette in America.

Did I mention that I was a geek from University of
Nairobi? I soon learned a new definition of geek because a Nairobi
University geek took time out to party and one of our rules was that you never
talked about anything remotely related to the courses we were taking during
party time. The two were exclusive. I don't remember what we talked
about, but what we did at parties was dance like mad, and tune and be tuned.
And here in the university in the US life was one continuous seminar without
end.

I joined a group of friends and my face lit up in a smile
anticipating delicious banter with that cute guy I had the hots for. At
last the party was the perfect place to advance my intentions with him.
As I stood there awhile I realized that I needed to quickly disappear the
smile, it was clearly inappropriate during a discussion about historical
materialism, Hegel, Marx, Gramscii. After 15 minutes looking for an opportunity
to make my impression I gave up. I knew the language. English. But
if you held a gun to my head and asked "Tell me what they are talking about or
I shoot" I would have had to let you shoot my brains out. I had no
idea. I moved to another group of my friends and found them similarly
engaged in what can only be referred to as deep intellectual discourse and
again I could not understand them.

"The party was the perfect place to advance my
intentions."

My frustration was growing, you must understand what this
was like for a loud and voluble person. This is my only point in
mitigation for what happened next. The third group at last held some
promise. There was a word I found familiar, and as I write what I said,
not only do my toes still curl up in embarrassment, twenty years on, but those
of my husband as well. The word was "reactionary". I had to seize
the moment and make my intellectual mark. "Oh," I said President Moi is a
reactionary, he always reacts to everything." I looked around at the upturned
faces with pride at this insight.

And then I launched into a story about President Moi and his
reactions, by way of illustration you understand. "One time when we were
at the university President Moi had gone to India on a State Visit. By
the time he returned it was a week before JM (Jomo Kenyatta) day which
is the day a populist member of parliament called J.M. Karuiki had been
assassinated 10 years before.

The students always marked this day by demonstrating which
would soon deteriorate into riots and running battles with the police.
The university was always closed after the fracas. This year though we
students had gone against the grain and decided that we would mark the day by
doing good in the community. We had decided to establish a J.M. Karuiki
Foundation and to clean up slum areas and donate to poor people. So when we
heard the president's declaration even before he set his feet on Kenyan soil
that the whole current three years of university would be expelled and "the
nation would feel nothing", "if we dared riot on this years' JM Karuiki
Day", we were so outraged that we were simply provoked into action. We rioted.
And funnily enough for the first time he did not react for the first
week. We then decided that we would riot until he sent us all home.
So we did.

Many years down the road I am still grateful that they did
not burst out laughing. Instead someone politely said one word "yes,
that's an interesting perspective to the word reactionary, you are quite right
President Moi is a reactionary" and the conversation continued seamlessly
undisturbed.

Going Home a Feminist

I soon got used to this version of a party American style so
much that when I came back home I had a hard time adjusting to the Kenyan
approach. More so because I had come back with a head full of ideologies that
did not mix well with the ogle fest that are Kenyan parties. This time I
took years to get back on track spending time at parties skulking in corners
with the one or two other like-minded people and with a drink in one had and a
cigarette in the other, both habits picked up in America and now used to
camouflage my despair at the lack of opportunity for rigorous intellectual
discourse at these Kenyan affairs.

Of all the ideologies I picked up the most incompatible with
my country was my hard core feminism. It was not just any ordinary
feminism, but one that looked for converts with the fanaticism of a born again
Christian from the American Bible-belt out to capture souls in Africa.
And I never missed a chance to advance my mission. I was a one-woman
missionary determined to be martyred at the altar of feminism.

"I was a one-woman missionary."

Red bull statements that would spur me into action were
endless. "Oh you know women are like that" or "Oh you know women are
their own worst enemy". My country back then was still so innocent that
it did not know that it should hide its chauvinism from view, at least in
public. There were many sexist and misogynist statements said in my
hearing by men and women on a daily basis.

Just so that there would be no room for speculation, I would
declare my feminism openly on introduction. It wasn't quite, "Hi my name
is Sitawa and I am a rabid feminist who is vigilant and looking for
opportunities to spring into action in defense of women everywhere by lecturing
you into submission for any anti-woman statement that I may detect". But
it might as well have been. How I actually introduced myself was "Hello
my name is Sitawa and I am a feminis,t" I said, looking them straight in the
eye, daring them to make a joke of my declaration.

Just in case you might be misled into thinking that there was
any irony here and maybe laugh out loud because you found the introduction
funny, the clothing and demeanor completed the picture. I wore a
uniform of black jeans, shapeless t-shirts and sneakers, in the drab universal
uniform of feminists at least in the US. "Appreciate my mind not my
behind" is what I meant to say with my whole presentation to protect myself
from another little habit I had picked up from the US, an aversion for
unsolicited male attention.

"I wore
a uniform of black jeans, shapeless t-shirts and sneakers, in the drab
universal uniform of feminists at least in the US'"

All my friends were innocent. After I had lectured
three or four of them for half an hour each on separate occasions I soon found
myself alone. I wore my aloneness like a badge of honor, seeing it as the
inevitable the price paid by any champion of a cause who sticks their neck
out. Nelson Mandela who was still in on Robben Island, Ghandi.
Thank goodness I had seen the film The
Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner. I could use the image
conjured by the title to console myself when I felt like giving up.

In an act of rebellion against my society, I smoked openly
even in front of my father. This particular statement was especially
effective in establishing my rebel credentials to no one in particular.
When my friends gasped and questioned this particular act as going too far, I
had another lecture prepared for them. "My aunts," I would say from my
imaginary soap box, "Up country, in the rural areas smoke and drink so why
shouldn't I?" Some of my aunts do. In the western part of Kenya women can
smoke cigarettes. Some of my aunts smoke cigarettes but with the
fire in their mouths. I have never seen a man smoke like this and I don't
know why. I have one particular aunt who is hard smoking and hard
drinking, who has always gone drinking with her husband so I just don't
understand the sanctions levied against the so-called modern African woman,
"read" a woman in the city.

Ok, so I concede that now that my aunt is eighty she can't
sleep because my father says she sees long lines of women carrying baskets on
their heads marching all the time before her eyes day and night. If it's
not long lines of women then it is long lines of insects.

I have long since quit all those habits I picked up from
America. I gave up picking on every body around me because I realized
that I had mistaken being constantly angry and fighting with people who did not
agree with my opinion with championing a cause. Besides it was
alienating and exhausting and no one wanted to hang out with me because I was
so intense and boring. When my friends could talk to me again they told
me that they had run away from me because I was just plain boring.

The American South

I went to visit my cousin's in-laws in the American South in
Albany, Georgia for a week and discovered I could not hear so I took to endless
grinning and nodding my head. I left those people thinking I was simple
in the head. But I couldn't understand them and I soon got tired of
asking them to repeat themselves so I withdrew into an African grin of
protection and lost my reputation in the process. They speak English in
the South so it wasn't the language and there was still a language
barrier. The long dragged words that go on seemingly forever lost my
short attention span. I found that my mind had wondered before the end so I
never heard the finish. "Caaaahhhn aaaaah speeeek to Eyyyyd Coooook" is
what I thought I overheard a woman in a bank asking. It was shocking to
hear, like somebody caricaturing an American. I tried not to laugh and
asked my cousin-in-law what the woman was saying. And she translated, "Can
I speak to Ed Cook?"

"During my two-week Southern sojourn I soon grew
accustomed to hearing guileless declarations about some African stereotype that
I didn't fit."

I visited my first flea market on the same visit in the
South. A large Africa-like market selling what we call mitumba in
Kenya, in all forms, old clothes and shoes, kitchenware, furniture, as well as
more specialized things like vintage clothing (read very old mitumba,)
and stuff that was ordinary people's artistic expression of themselves.
My cousin-in-law introduced me to a little old black woman at a stall selling
miscellaneous mitumba as her cousin from Africa.

"What!" proclaimed the little old black woman, "But
you real pretty, I thought Africans were dark black with kinky hair and big fat
noses and mouths but you real fine." She declared in amazement.

I was equally astonished at her casual black-on-black racist
stereotype that she spewed, blithely unaware that she should hide it or at
least not say it straight to my face. But she was simply the first to air such
views. During my two-week Southern sojourn I soon grew accustomed to
hearing similar guileless declarations about some African stereotype that I
didn't fit, from black people. From questions about where I learnt to dance
like that, (I can dance!) to where I had learnt to speak so proper, to my dress
sense, on and on.

Virtual Segregation in the American South

The other big thing that I experienced for the first time in
the US was hard wired virtual segregation. There were no signs
designating white and black zones anywhere in Albany, Georgia that I saw.
Indeed, on the surface all seemed well in race terms. But even my
Republican cousin's father-in-law made sure he hid his de-segregated business
to keep up appearances. He was in business with a white person because it
was a good business cover that allowed him to get white business. The
trick was he had to keep his partnership hidden so that he could get and keep
that lucrative white business. He passed himself off as a worker in the
business. I know the logic is challenging.

The two groups occupied the same physical spaces, they
ate at the same restaurants, entered all buildings and transport from the same
entrance, sat anywhere on buses. And yet my stranger's eyes quickly saw
through this façade and identified the fault lines of virtual
segregation. The new apartheid still did not allow the twain to commune
freely even as they congregated. As soon as I stepped into those spaces I could
feel the barriers. There was a sense of forced togetherness. If the
gap between the two races could speak it would say, "OK we have to share this
same physical space but we are not giving up our right to be separate. They can
take away our right to segregation but they can't take segregation out of our
hearts." It was in what was missing in the interaction between black and
white. There was no ease, peacefulness, insignificance, silence, freedom,
love.

"There was a sense of forced togetherness."

What existed in that gap was tension, a hateful
watchfulness and worst of all an embryonic violence that was always ready to
grow into fully-fledged adulthood. You could feel it. This violence ebbed
and flowed and hung around like a dark threat. When I was amongst black people
everyone was relaxed, very laid back as a people, but in the presence of a
group of white people in the segregated spaces there was an all round tensing,
a watchfulness, an expectation of something unpleasant.

Black and white people occupied those common public spaces
differently, too. White people seemed to strut and begrudge black people's
presence. It was white people who still seemed to be the bona-fide owners
of the space. Black people were the interlopers, but they had no choice,
they had to occupy the spaces, otherwise they risked recreating segregation by
their absence. But the sense of threat in those spaces implied that Black
people occupied those spaces under peril. Desegregation had been about
pulling down the limits placed on the existence of black people. It was not
white people who were fighting to sit in the seats reserved for black people on
buses or to use the back only entrances. Desegregation demands that white
people cede space and privileges that define their place in society.

Race in the North

My experience of race in the American North was not one of
absence rather the North was racially clandestine, a state I much
preferred. It gave me freedom to spend many more hours in a day being
just another human being. The color of my skin was not a constant
conscious presence foisted on me by open racial hostility. Thank you but
I am not black, I really am just a person. I am an African living in
Africa so although I have many identities being black is not my premier identity.
That is the advantage of growing up black in Africa.

When I brought this to the attention of my Southern black
relatives-in-law they made that claim that always bemuses me. "I like the
South they said, the boundaries are clear; people here are not hypocrites like
in the North. I know where I stand here with them."

"You can dream so much and no more. These are the limits on your
movement"

"I know where I stand?" What the hell is that? What I
understand from that telling statement is an admission on the part of black
people that it's OK for there to be limits on a black person's existence.
I never heard a white person say things like that, only black people. For
a person simply because of the hue of their skin to know where he or she could
go and what he or she could expect from their world? In other words there
was a limit of possibility which means that there was no possibility at
all. And it was fine for white people to have veto powers over the
dreams, scope of existence of black people. You can dream so much and no
more. You can aspire so far and no further, these are the limits on your
movement. And black people accepted this proscribed world and were happy
that they knew their place There was a sense of forced togetherness in this
controlled world. That world was a banned dream which they passed onto
their children and this was done with the active connivance of black
people. To know my place?

I understand how dangerous the world in which black people
live in the South. I imbibed a small part of that fear many thousands of
miles away from movies and media reports of the Ku Klux Klan. So much so
that I arrived in America terrified. For four days I refused to leave my
sister's apartment because I was sure the Ku Klux Klan were going to gun me down.
Living with that dreadful history can skew any one and the wonder is that black
people have lived to step out of the shadow of such terrors and
nightmares. The journey has had its negative impact that sometimes their
ability to see beyond the boundaries of their terror has been
compromised. This is where Africans can lend their sight when the dreams
have been extinguished. We have the same racial reality because our
existence in the world gives us the same reference points. Yet we live in
our own homes largely amongst our own people. We are not vested in only a
racial reality. Our human reality predominates. We can fly above
"black person negatives" and separate fact from damaging fiction. A
person exposed to these negatives on a daily basis for most of their lives will
lose their perspective. Such an environment can beat down the most-thick
skinned, sanguine, optimist man and woman and create an oversensitive
"defensive human" who can no longer see the forest for the trees and perceives racism
under every bush. Such an environment can leave people severely embattled
and debilitated. Centuries of actual and virtual lynching that black
people are subjected to in the USA will do that.

Psychologically, I am rather sensitive. I found the race
issue to be intrusive enough in the North where it was not so in your
face. It had me an impact on me. I found myself engaged from time
to time in what manifested as flash-back-filled fits of mother-less-child
weeping sessions. The kind of crying that was inconsolable, with heaving
and copious tears. The kind that is only done in hiding. The first
time it happened I did not understand what was going on. From nowhere
floods of tears came. At first they were quite frequent - every three
months or so. Soon the stretches between one bout and another grew in
months and at the end they stopped. I had stopped expecting more out of
this country.

What were they? They were silent tears of rage and despair
at the seemingly unseen-with-the-naked-eye accumulation of incidences of racism
that encountered me on a daily basis. My mother has always told me that I
am too thin-skinned, I let things get too easily under my skin. And it's
true. I just let the incidences seep into my subconscious. I never
could speak out at them. I had no skills to deal with them in the
moment. The moment of action would be long past before I recognized what
had just happened. And some were subtle, only discernable in the pattern
my subconscious registered as I remained occupied in the hunt for that cut
price designer shoe that I desired and could afford on my student
stipend. It wasn't until it had long happened again and again from store
to store in a single day that I recognized what was happening. The only
black person in the group of friends being singled out for kindly help again
and again.

Ms. Maragori can be reached
at bettymuragori@yahoo.com,
in Kenya.

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