Being White

All my life in Colombia I knew what it was like to stand out.  So I thought I was prepared for living in a township, where I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb.  But I had noooooooooo idea.  Unless I leave the township, I pretty much never see another white person.  I understand I am a strange sight around here, and people are bound to notice and react, so I try to be a good sport about saying hi to people, giving random strangers hugs (which is slightly uncomfortable, but what are you going to do when they just run up and hug you?), refusing to give out my number, and having everyone flip out when I manage to greet them in Sotho or catch the taxi on my own.  I get it, no other white people venture into the township, so people are naturally curious.

The frustrating part is that I just can’t seem to get beyond that.  I feel like I am completely defined by the color of my skin, and nothing else.  No matter how much I want to be seen as just another person in the community, who chops vegetables and washes dishes and walks on the same dusty, muddy streets I am always an anomaly. Even people I consider my friends seem to see me at best as someone they can show off to their friends (“look, I have a white friend”), and at worst someone to obtain things and favors from.  It’s hard to relate to people when they hold you a world apart.

I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, for the second time in as many weeks.  I finished it, and then immediately re-read it, partly out of boredom (things have slowed down in the after-Christmas-but-before-everyone-is-back stage), partly out of lack of other reading material, and partly out of a desire to be able to focus more on the details now that I knew the ending.  The book is told from the perspective of a woman and her four daughters who are dragged to the Congo in the 1960s by their husband and father to be missionaries in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.  I won’t go into more details, but it’s a good read, if anyone out there is looking for recommendations.  There was one quote, by one of the daughters that I could completely relate to:

“I crave to stop bearing all the wounds of this place on my own narrow body.  But I also want to be a person who stays, who goes on feeling anguish where anguish is due.  I want to belong somewhere, damn it.  To scrub the hundred years’ war off this white skin till there’s nothing left and I can walk out among my neighbors wearing raw sinew and bone, like they do.” 

This daughter struggles with the complete alienation she feels from those around her due simply to the color of her skin.  She mourns the fact that her race places her constantly on the wrong side of the struggles around her.  In the end this daughter finds that in simply living and suffering along with her neighbors, eventually time erases the whiteness.  There are steps in that direction as people get to know me and realize I can eat their food, go to their churches, and greet them in their language.  But I guess I’m waiting for that time too, when people are able to see me simply as a friend or neighbor, and not the out of place, well intentioned white girl down the street.