STRANGER...

As far as I know black people have been coming to Europe long before I even thought I would be able to travel to Switzerland; never have I considered I could be a “sight”. I am generally very sensitive to being looked at intensely unless I am performing on stage. I normally have the ability to blend in really quickly in places I travel to; perhaps it has something to do with growing up in South Africa, I consider myself street wise, I am aware of people staring, because in my experience it normally means trouble.

James Baldwin wrote an essay, “Stranger in the Village”, where he recognizes history as a nightmare during a trip to Switzerland in 1951. When I read this in 2010, I felt a certain disappointment in history and my relation to the world; as it for me illustrates that not much has changed. 

I happen to travel to the same town he wrote about and have never felt so lonely in my life.

I took it for granted that travelling to this town would be similar to anything I have experienced before. I travelled to a literature festival where my current partner had been invited as a poet and author. My first impression was that the hotel staff must have seen black people before because she asked several times if my partner and I are sharing a room and she would not pronounce my name; which is reasonable 'NT' are not the easiest letters put together with no vowel. I ignored the strange looks because I have learned that Swiss people in general stare with no shame, where as in other countries this is rude; inviting a confrontation. In my discussion with other people their conclusion is, the looking is harmless and really friendly, it is a matter of curiosity.

I spent the week in between the festival locations and my hotel room avoiding public places as much as possible. On the last day we decided to visit the famous hot springs of the region as I have never experienced anything like it before.

Firstly, the town is now a huge tourist attraction in winter, with insane decor of wooden chic. I ate dinner one night at a place that looked like the inside of a sail boat; with exaggerated table cloths, expensive food and an overwhelming smell of tacky but expensive. The Spas and the pools are also in this taste of exaggerated exuberance; but too far away from the city to know what the difference is between modern and just plain ugly. I saw a lot of this when I was growing up, when someone who lived in the rural areas wanted their own house to have a bit of feng shui.

The hot springs have been turned into a modern building with the glaring eye of the mountains over you; while you are in the pool or you looking up at the mountains straining to hear the water as it travels through the valleys to reach the pool. I am not someone who likes wearing a swimming costume without anything covering my enormous backside but that’s the rule. You come in and leave your flip flops and towel at the entrance where you shower then proceed to the pools.

I have never been looked at with such intent and even during one of my performances I think the audience tends to find other things to look at. I was the “sight” in the pool, even the children could not close their gaping mouths; a fly could have landed and made home. Their parent’s eyes bore right through me in search of my core; even I have never been able to locate it, they stared on.

 At some point I could not move an inch as my partner freely crossed the pool to try out different massage points around the pool at different temperatures. I know these people did not mean to be unkind but after an hour of swimming and changing to different pools I fell apart and sobbed like a lost child in mall.

 It was a mystery to me at the time, because no one had called me neger yet; touched my hair and skin or even tried to talk to me. Just the same, there are days when the gaze gets to me; I find myself hoping that I meet the onlookers’ standard of scrutiny. Am I a living wonder?

 In Holland where I studied towards a Master of Theater they celebrate Christmas with Swarte Piet: a black fellow who arrives together with Sinterklaas and might trick the children if they have been naughty. He has a black face, red lips and a black afro. According to myths dating to the beginning of the 19th century, Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) operated by himself or in the companionship of a devil. Having triumphed over evil, it was said that on Saint Nicholas Eve, the devil was shackled and made his slave. A devil as a helper of the Saint can also still be found in Austrian Saint Nicholas tradition in the character of Krampus. *direct quote from wikipedea*

 In December there are Zwarte Piet dolls in every store, newspaper, television adverts, cookie packets and white men and women dress up on the eve of 6 December. My first reaction was of bewilderment; I could not imagine that this is possible in a country as developed in so called “tolerance”. I got home and started researching the origin of this custom; I even asked my Dutch friends who said that this is an old tradition done for the children, friendly and harmless in its origin they all grow up with it. So why do I feel offended? I cannot pause and smile when children run away from me during this time. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them”. Am I hung up on an inferiority complex that started with my ancestors? Is it possible that I will never be free of the complexities of prejudice?

In South Africa I grew up among white people, so I try to not reserve a special place for white authority. I pretend that we are equal; as the first means I am the same as my grandmother who was domestic worker. When I started attending school with white people, my grandmother insisted I smile, keep my self clean, as the whites adhere to strict rules of cleanliness and good behavior. In her time, the white man was salvation.

 I grew up in a time that sold black men as rapists, thugs; I as an unbeliever and accomplice. Baldwin writes about white people: “ these people cannot be, from the point of view of power, strangers anywhere in the world; they have made the modern world, in effect, even if they do not know it.” I am controlled by western culture whether I like it or not. I also have unconsciously inherited a rage that he refers to of the “disesteemed”. A kind of rage that is easily discounted, too emotional and not worth arguing about. I marvel at how naive my so called white European friends can be, I sometimes think it must be their inherited right, they feel entitled. 

 I have grown to understand that some people born in privileged societies like Netherlands, Sweden or Switzerland know they are born in a better position in the world, but do not want to be hated for it. I will not free my friend from the realization/reflecting on the actions of our forefathers. As I also have conditions from my history that occasionally change the rhythm in my step. I do not blame her for the actions of those before her, yet I am living some of the consequences of our past whether I decide to ignore them or not.

I operate in a world that makes me cringe at the word Bantu; as in my education it meant something negative, backwards and something to be left behind, so I can be a better human being. So much so that I think whiteness is still a standard some of my South African brothers and sisters aspire to. I come from a history where Hendrik Verwoerd stated, that “There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.”

 I am a stranger today because my story was told a long time ago before I even set foot in this continent. When I attempt to assert myself as a human being just like my European counterparts, I appear as something really cute, with complicated hair, flat nose and such beautiful fat lips. There are others brave enough to say “Why don’t you go back to Africa”?

 I cannot blame the crazy girl in a bus in Basel who shouted “Neger” when it was time for her to get off, the woman who found me with my socked feet on the chair of the train, started shouting about “my people’s disregard for hygiene”, referring to me as “you people”, the German woman who started gesturing at the size of my lips with her hands, saying “you are beautiful”.

I am stranger today because some conversations recall the past, a spectacle where Blacks were only servants, subhuman and needed to be supervised by superior races. As a South African I find myself always challenging the gaze, judgment, struggling to maintain my current identity. “Europe’s black possessions remained and do remain in Europe’s colonies, at which remove they represented no threat whatever to European identity”. This was written in the fifties.  I am not a European possession, although influenced by their past. There are currently a lot of Africans flocking into Europe; I myself am a part of this movement. There is evidence in politics of national identities being threatened by this movement; thus forcing people to fear their unfamiliar neighbor. In Switzerland there are political parties claiming Blacks as thieves with guns, a Swiss passport tucked in their back pocket depicted in cartoon drawings. Netherlands politics dictates they close their borders as the purity of nations is threatened.

I started writing this text in the hope to deal with my own ever changing identity at the same time naming the dark spaces for what they are in my eyes. As far as I remember I have always had a notebook and pen where I could jot down the unsaid. As I have got older the story seems to get more difficult to tell, it gets a bit serious somehow. It almost feels as if I need to exorcise some demons that have lived in the memory of my body and thoughts. There is still a lot of light to be let in so through these words life goes on and night turns to day.