When I first emigrated to Canada some 25 years ago I became familiar with this term that applied to me as a visible minority. It kinda caught me by surprise to be labelled but then I realised we all get labelled one way or another regardless of who or where we are. Then I realised, Ive always been a visible minority and just never realised that not only was I one, I also had all the attitude that came with the few that had the privilege to have grown up in Kenya and the really fantastic life we enjoyed there. So anyway..., it took years for the attitude to correct. Some say it still hasnt at all but part of it came back to bite me just recently... :-) Amongst the many, many questions I used to get asked about being African in Canada the easiest one was to explain that I learnt to speak English on the plane by audio book, but sometime shortly after that I was asked how I got that nasty triple (vaccination) scar on my right arm? I pointed to the nasty scar on my knee but the old hunting tigers (yes in Africa) was well used so I told the story the way it really happened. I fell from a steep cliff onto a rock (9yrs old horsing around with friends on 2nd floor veranda, unfinished construction across the street, fell off edge to the ground onto rock and rebar) and had to be taken to the village doctor, blood everywhere and in really bad pain. To alleviate the pain, the mganga reached into his kikapu and brought out a cobra which he used to administer a herbal morphine type pain-killer by having the cobra bite me but it was an old cobra that only had one tooth (just like the mganga) and he had to apply the injection three times to get the full dose through the one tooth/fang. Hence three grouped scars. Anyway, I started laughing so I figured they all knew I was joking. I just found out that they werent entirely sure about that for several years! Some of them have been seeing posts from KFR on my page and have come to realise that Africa and Africans arent all one colour. Hehe Awesome KFR!! Damn, they used to think I was royalty and now my story of fighting my way to private school through thick jungle and attending French class in a different mud rondavel hut from my Trig class is going to require more clarification LOL. (btw this IS the condensed version!)
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 18:38:38 +0000
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