Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I am a Cushite

A few weeks ago, we had a Kenyan hip hop artist come to Limkokwing.

I had planned to go home right away that day because I brought my laptop to school and it’s about 10.5 kilos so it’s not fun moving around with it but, since I was three news articles short, I decided to hang around and see if I could get a story.

One girl came up to me and asked- where are you from?
I said Kenya, and she said, oh, really?
I managed to get a few shorts and the tour guide said- group photo everyone. I got a spot right behind the superstar.
The following day I was with my friends and opened the site to proudly show them the picture since they didn’t attend the big event, and they are in film class so they prefer make believe, and I don’t think the artist gets air play in their country.
The group picture was there alright, but I wasn’t.

Haiya, They photoshoped me out .
I wonder why? One of them said
Maybe they didn’t like your two finger peace sign. Hahaha.
That’s what you get for telling people you’re from Frances Town.

So that was it. The news was-Kenyan fans welcome artist-
I always have to answer questions like these.

Where are you from.

Kenya .
Really?
Yes.
What tribe?
That’s when I say, no actually I’m from Northern Sudan.
Which is true anyway, that’s what they told me I History class,something like that.

Other times I have people speaking to me in Setswana and pidgin English.


In Kenya, people called me-shumari-(somali).
One time, in Mitero primary school, there was a new teacher and he was gonna beat me for-putting chemical in my hair-.


It’s all cool. I don’t mind for being mistaken as a Fulani from Nigeria, or a Kalanga from Botswana.

The other day someone told me hey , how come you’re growing so thin? And I happily replied, no I haven’t changed, you’ve just grown fat. I have to say I felt all good inside because finally, I’m no longer offended when someone comments on how thin I am.

3 comments:

  1. Ha ha ha! Interesting article! You must tell people that you inherited your hair from your ancestors, some of them first generation and others many generations past!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Whispers of a kind. Can you believe they cut me out of the pic :)
    Last week one guy said you're from Sudan right? I said, yeah, my ancestors were.

    ReplyDelete

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