Mzungu! Mzungu!

I have now gotten used to being the different one here, but it seems like the Tanzanians haven't gotten used to white people being here. Anywhere I go people are yelling "Mzungu! Mzungu!" after me, which means "a white person". It is disturbing, but you just have to get used to it.

Try to imagine this: you are walking on a very narrow and muddy road between mud hut kinds of little houses. There are a lot of children peaking at you behind corners, fences, bushes, adult's backs etc. All the time you here those children yelling (happily) "Mzungu! Mzungu!" as you walk on. They are like small alarm clocks telling the whole village that "here is a Mzungu"! Just as often as the children yell "Mzungu!", they yell "Teacher, teacher!" or "Good morning!" - even if it is 5 pm - and run after you just to be able to hold your hand and walk with you for a while. Sometimes you have a child hanging from your both hands and a third one is holding on your thumb. Just sometimes a child can ask for money, candy or presents, which is not nice, but I guess it is us mzungus who have thaught it to the kids in Tanzania, that they can get (undeserved) presents from us.

When you pass a group of adults standing on the street, you will hear them having a loud conversation including the word "mzungu". Sometimes it has a negative tone, but usually not. It happens meny times a day that people ask you (in Swahili) what's up, and they will be very happy if yu are able to answer them in Swahili and even have a short conversation in their language. I find these encounters pleasant and rewarding, because it is only then that I actually feel as if I was "any Tanzanian" - which I of course am not - and I feel that I am accepted here without further expectations.

The most annoying thing is that when you are in town and you are walking to where ever you are walking, Tanzanian men can actually run after you yelling "Mzungu!" and when they get to you, they empty their back bags from all the jewellery they have and try to sell it to you. This happens quite often, even when you are queuing to get money out from the wall. Why do they do that? Because they associate white women with (easy) money. Some of the volunteers here have been teaching English to masai men, who are on advanced level are even able to debate. They once had a debate about the subject "is it right to associate white women with money?" In their opinion it is of course right, because we must be rich if we have money to come here, and because we are rich, we should by products from all the Tanzanian men in order to support them. I understand, that compared to their standard, we are rich. But they don't understand that the world where we come from is totally different from theirs, and in that world being able to buy a flight ticket doesn't make a person rich.

Being called mzungu where ever I go, has made me think "why is it ok to yell "mzungu" after a white person here, but it not ok to yell "a black person" after a black person in Europe"? Is it just because of the cultural differences and different ideas of correct behaviour? Or is there something more? Do Tanzanian people feel that they have a right to treat us like showpieces to stare at and create and create a lot of hassle around, because we are on their land? Is there some historican psychology behind that I am not aware of? Or is it just me who is being too quick to take offence because of my conception about good manners? Whenever I tried to ask about it with a Tanzanian, they always said: "it doesn't mean anything bad!".

Before I even had a chance to have deeper chat about the topic with a Tanzanian person, I started to think myself, that instead of questioning their habit, shouldn't I question ours? Everubody knows why it is not ok to call people by their skin colour in western countries. But why is it still like that? Who is quilty for that? I am tempted to ask "is it the black people or is it us white people"?

In the first place it was of course us white people who treated black peoplebadly based on their race, which - naturally - led to a situation where black people don't want to be judged based on their skin colour.

How long is a historical memory? Are behaving as we behave because of the history? Or have we already forgotten the reason for our behaviour? Do we behave as we behave because it has become a cultural habit that no one pays attention to? Do we even notice that our behaviour has changed from one end to the other? Do we want to live in a world, where dissimilarity is flourishing, but we are taught to be blind in front of it? It is pretty stupid, that we for example can people's different hair colour, but not skin colour, isn't it? Noticing people's skin colour doesn't need to mean anything more that just saying aloud what we see with our eyes, does it? Who are we pleasing with our exaggerated politeness? Are we pleasing black people who got touchy about white people noticing they are black in the first place, or are we pleasing ourselves; it makes us whities really civilized well brought up people as we deny ourselves from seeing what anybody can see. Or does it just make our lives plain and fake?

I have now asked many questions to which I don't have answers. Do you?