White guuurrrlll

A friend of mine recently sent me a letter, which contained, among other news and queries, this question: "so, so far, thoughts on being a white girl abroad?"

Obviously, one’s experience of being a "white girl abroad" depends a whole lot on the specific country and some on the specific white girl.

So, to answer this question in a drawn out and analytical way, this white girls'

experience living in Lesotho is, in a word, complex.

Much of my experience can be summed up by this interaction:

-Me, doing anything at all outside without a hat or an umbrella to shield myself from the suns rays (many Basotho use both at once).

-Any Masotho I come across, usually a woman: "Ausi, where is your hat?! Where is your umbrella?"

-Me, smiling: "I love the sun!"

-Masotho: "Eh! Ausi! Do you want to be black like me?!

And here’s where my answer changes depending on my mood, the day and who I’m talking to:

Sometimes I’m scientific:

"I will never look like you, just like you will never look like me. It’s impossible."

Sometimes I’m cheeky:

"Hell yeah I do!"

Sometimes I’m political:

"Black is beautiful! Don’t believe the lies you’ve been told girl."

And sometimes I just smile and keep walking.

Oftentimes, it’s really nice. I often get favored for the (much roomier) front seat of taxis and the like; things that make the going just a little bit easier. Ya know, white privilege.

 Sometimes I feel like a monkey in a circus. I was doing my weekly grocery shopping in town the other day, and I passed a group of twenty something dudes. Before I even greeted them, one guy literally said, "Speak. Talk." Like I was a machine that one only has to command to make work. Bewildered but indifferent, I just greeted him in Sesotho like normal and kept walking, hearing him talking to my back in Sesotho but not giving enough of a fuck to keep talking to him.

I was buying wine the other day, and this guy comes up to the counter where I’m standing and starts talking to me, as they do, about how he wants to marry me. What I’ve found is that sometimes I just have to be really rude because your basic social cues or even a direct "I’m not interested" that usually work fine in the U.S. often do nothing to deter the bo-ntate (men) here. So he kept talking about how in love with me he was and eventually I literally said, "ugh just go away, stop talking to me." And he ambled his drunk self over to a chair to stare at me from afar instead of from 5 inches from my face, beer soaked breath getting all up in my nostrils. I do what I gotta do.

All the attention, while somewhat different in quality depending on who it’s coming from (e.g. man, woman, or child, young or old) comes from colonialism. Although Lesotho was actually never formally colonized, white missionaries were let in in exchange for protection from the British government (who later sold them out anyway) against the Dutch. And lets not forget that Lesotho is inside South Africa, where apartheid was only abolished 21 years ago. These things seep over. These stains run deep.

So, white means speaking English and money and power. If it’s a man who’s ogling me then the post-colonial internalized racism is mixed with a large dose of patriarchy. Woman means sex and marriage, so put all of those together and most people see me as a one-way ticket out of poverty to the land of the free. So, I get it. I’m under no illusions that all the attention has anything to do with me, specifically, as an individual human being. It’s exhausting, sometimes extremely so, but like so many things here (and everywhere), I find that the best way to approach it is with a sense of humor:

"You want to marry me? Are you sure about that?"

"(laughing) You’re not in love with me! You don’t even know me."

"You want to go to America? Alright, save 20,000 Maloti and check back with me in 2 years" (walks away)

And these interactions only happen outside of my village. In St. Denis, I’m definitely white but I’m no longer special. And life goes on.

Khotso