Mzungu mannerisms akin to sorcery for villagers

It was in a white man's house when I was first asked to make tea for people. The request itself would not have been weird, were it not for the little fact that I was a first-time visitor who had only met the host a few minutes prior. We were many, I was the only black woman present, and I would hope you understand why the proverbial chip on the shoulder came alive for me; I am a black woman, used to hearing that our place is in the kitchen.

I told him I had a bad cold. I did not make the tea, and one of the white men ended up making the tea. The first clue that I had misinterpreted the whole thing was when they did not take offence over my refusal - it was shrugged off. Also, the black man, one I had met a couple of times before, was giggling and shaking his head knowingly at me. Later, he would tell me that he knew why I had refused to make the tea.

He also let me in on the weird world of white people; that making tea was not necessarily the job of a woman, or a black woman to be specific, but it was the job of the person who wanted the tea. I was off alcohol, and out of about twenty people, three of us had chosen tea over tipple. The other two had stepped out.

You cannot blame me, though. I am an African villager, born and bred in a patriarchal society. Over here, visitors can never be sent to the kitchen to prepare their own food, or fetch their own drinks. Over here, men, and especially when women are present, cannot be asked to make tea; abomination. That chip I indicated earlier - it's trauma, and it is vicious when you are just starting to understand the privileges, or thereof lack of, of the white male, white female, black/brown male, black female, in that order.

Culture shock

When black Africans and westerners are getting to know one another, it is fun and games, more often than not. It is how different from one another they are. It is like an exchange programme, where you end up feeling like you are from different universes. The first time I shared a house with a white woman, I remember how traumatised I was to learn that she washed her underwear in a cooking pot. We had been sharing a house for months, when one time I walked in on her, washing the underwear in the sink. When I asked her why she was doing that, her understanding was, I wanted to use the sink. So she transferred, as I watched her with my jaw on the floor, the underwear in a sufuria. I didn't eat in that house for a week.

Sorcery, I told her: Where I come from, the only explanation that could make sense on what she was doing, was sorcery. "But the dirt washes away, with the medically tested soap, and rinsing water," she explained, which of course, made sense, yet it did not, because I am African, and that is sorcery. Period.

When I was growing up, we had usual suspects who would turn up at home during meal times, to 'say hello'. Many African children will have a story about how they were pinched into silence by their mothers, for asking why so-and-so always turned up at meal times. This trick would be an epic fail in the west. I learned the hard way. When I turned up at somebody's house at lunchtime, it was not because I wanted food - it just happened to be lunchtime. I found them eating, and believe it or not, I was not even given a chance to say no. None of that African politeness of asking drop-ins if they would like to eat something, even when you do not want them to say yes. I waited, as I sipped on water, for them to finish eating. At first, I thought they were plain mean. I later learned it was how things are done over there.

That stuff is as shocking as living next door to someone you only identify with house number.

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