 |
So when Aunt called late one night to
tell me that Yozefu was no more, I was quite devastated. I knew that I was
going to miss the man sorely, his booming laughter and his endless jokes.
At 2pm the next day, we bade farewell to
my old friend Yozefu. None of us was sure about where he came from but that was
not important. He had lived with us so long that he became family and his
ancestry never mattered to us. His funeral was a modest one devoid of any
ostentation and was led by the parish catechist. We spared no expense to give
him a decent send-off. As we huddled together at the graveside, the tears
flowed freely. But I was gratified that we had laid him to rest with dignity at
our ancestral burial grounds, just like one of us.
When we returned home, Aunt wept
inconsolably. I knew it was not just the pain of losing a family member but
also because she knew she was going to be by herself in the big house. She
would have no one to talk to or laugh with, and no one to absorb the blows of
her legendary temper. I comforted her as best as I could to no avail. We served
the mourners a meal and by sunset, most people had returned home save for a few
close family friends.
Thus the life of an unassuming man came
to a simple end. Together with the people of the community, we mourned Yozefu and
bade him farewell, and everyone went about their ordinary lives the next day.
 |
| Aunt Elizabeth (RIP) |
About a month later I received another
call from my Aunt. She sounded quite agitated and I soon found out why. One of
our close neighbors had lost his elder brother who was living, as she put it, “in
outside countries”. Aunt was fast becoming the bearer of bad news. I vaguely
remembered the deceased. He had a complicated name that gave us trouble
pronouncing so we simply called him Mr. K. I also recalled that we always referred
to him as “the one who lives in outside countries”.
For the uninitiated, death in my culture
is a very big deal. If the time devoted to funerals and burials is not
seriously checked, it can eat up a significant portion of one’s calendar. When
people die, it is almost a given that they will be buried at their ancestral
homes. The majority of these are usually located hundreds of kilometers from
the capital city. Burying someone in a public cemetery is an insult to the dead
person and an abomination to the surviving relatives. Cemeteries are usually
reserved for the unlucky few who have nowhere to be buried and the unfortunate
aliens whose remains cannot be flown back home.
When the news went out that Mr. K had
passed on, shock and sadness engulfed the entire community in equal measure. He
had been a good man and generous to a fault. Whenever he flew into the country,
the village folk would flock to his home to receive all manner of provisions.
No one ever left empty handed. Strangely, a good deal of them often whispered
behind his back that he was a tad too arrogant but his large heart always won
the day.
In the course of the next few days, Aunt
kept me abreast of developments regarding Mr. K’s funeral arrangements. From
our daily conversations, I pieced together a picture of what was happening in
the home of the deceased.
Aunt told me how her fellow village folk
made such a fuss over the fact that Mr. K had died from “outside countries” or the
land of the “bazungu”. (“Bazungu” is plural for “muzungu”, a generic term for Caucasians
or whites)”. What amused me to no end was the obvious tone of disdain in her
voice at her friends’ “maalo” (something akin to lack of exposure, but not
nearly). I figured that in their view, it was a badge of honor on Mr. K’s part
to have breathed his last “from outside”.
Because of this simple fact, Mr. K’s
death bore great significance in the eyes of the village folk. The biggest news
was that his body was going to be returned home on a plane. This too caused
quite a buzz. The closest most of these poor folks ever get to a plane is when
the big bird occasionally flies overhead en route to some exotic “muzungu” lands.
Mr. K’s body was eventually flown back home
after two weeks. People gathered in large numbers to pay their last respects
and several white tents were erected in the spacious compound to accommodate
them. Ancient hymns and solemn funeral tunes blared from a large public address
system, ostensibly to encourage the living and soothe their frayed nerves.
Death does that to people, you know. Food and drinks were constantly available
and the whole ceremony took on a festive tone. This went on for three
consecutive days.
On the day of the burial, every
available space in the compound was taken up by mourners from near and far.
Together with an impressive ensemble of priests, the bishop of the diocese led
the mass and the deceased was well eulogized. I noted that most of the speeches
pointed out how Mr. K had died from “outside countries”.
 |
| The mourners |
I spoke to my aunt at intervals during
the funeral and she kept marveling at the expensive coffin in which the
deceased lay, all disdain gone from her voice. She said that everything was
done the “kizungu” way, loosely, “like the whites”. Everyone who mentioned
anything to do with a white skin on this day seemed to say it with a sense of
admiration. Or was I “hearing” phantoms?
On my way back home from the funeral my
mind pondered the events of the previous three weeks since Mr. K’s passing. I could
not help drawing parallels between Yozefu’s simple burial ceremony and Mr. K’s
lavish one, and how everyone made much fuss of the latter having lived in and
died from “outside countries”.
Is it possible that black Africans and
non-whites in general have an innate obsession with everything Caucasian? We
adore as superior virtually everything about them, from the color of their skin
to their technology, their clothes to their hair. We imitate their manner of
speech and acquire affected versions of their accents whenever we travel to their
lands, even if for a fleeting period of time.
The only plausible explanation I could
come up with for this Caucasian obsession was that the colonial mentality was
alive and well with us. It exists not just among those simple village folk awed
by a death abroad but even among the “elite” and well-educated in the big
cities and towns in my country.
According to Wikipedia, a Colonial
mentality is a conceptual theory (that points to) feelings of inferiority
within some societies post-European colonialism, relative to the values of the
foreign powers which they became aware of through the contact period of
colonization. The concept essentially refers to the acceptance, by the
colonized, of the culture or doctrines of the colonizer as intrinsically more
worthy or superior. The subject matter is quite controversial and widely debated.[1]
Look at some of the experiences I have had in my
country Uganda.
- When I go shopping in Kampala’s malls with my muzungu friends, it is not unusual for the till attendants’ demeanor to change dramatically when the muzungu’s turn at the till arrives. In an instant, their English accents often morph miraculously to try and match that of the muzungu.
- When I dine out with said muzungu friends, the bill is invariably presented to them even if it is me picking the tab. Ironically, when someone eats at exotic diners, people will say that he or she eats in the manner of a muzungu (alya nga muzungu).
- Most people who live and work in the West are usually described in glowing terms as “ba muva bulaaya” or those who hail from the white man’s land. Several statements which have the word muzungu in them often connote bigger, better, and more luxurious than local equivalents. They speak of that which is to be desired, to be aspired to.
- When someone accumulates a lot of wealth or power here, it is said of them in a local dialect, Luganda, that “afuuse muzungu” or “azunguwadde”, literally, one who has transformed into a Caucasian or muzungu.
- There are many things/situations that people consider to be superior in make/appearance and which they cannot easily relate with or describe adequately. They will usually refer to these with a sense of awe as “ebintu by’abazungu” or the things of whites.
- Most imported technology is often called “ekyuma ky’omuzungu” or the white man’s machine.
I could go on and on. I used to find all
this behavior from my fellow Ugandans quite frivolous and annoying but I have
since learned to let it pass. These days I just smile at the endless episodes
in comedy that it presents me with.
Make no mistake, the colonial mentality
is not unique to Uganda or even Africa. It spans continents and civilizations
and is to be found in different shades wherever an indigenous people were
colonized at some point in their lives.
On the Indian sub-continent for example,
Thomas Macaulay, the 19th century British historian and colonial administrator
regarded British culture as inherently superior to the Indian one. He played a
pivotal role in replacing Indian languages with English as the medium of
instruction. This process is often referred to as “Macaulayism”. Subsequently,
the term “Macaulay's Children” is used to refer to people born of Indian
ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle. Needless to say, it is often
used in a derogatory fashion, and the connotation is one of disloyalty to one's
country and heritage.
Further east, the United States serves as
a prime example of the colonial mentality with both its “One Drop” rule and the
"Paper Bag Test". The One Drop rule is a historically prominent
sociological/legal principle of racial classification which proposed that any
person with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African origin ("one
drop" of Negro blood) was considered to be black.
 |
| A controversial portion of a speech purportedly made by Lord Macaulay in the British Parliament |
On the other hand, African Americans
were allowed or denied entry in Black-only social institutions using the Paper
Bag Test. People at many churches, fraternities and nightclubs would take a
brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter or
the same color as the bag, he or she was admitted. People whose skin was not
lighter than a brown paper bag were denied entry.
 |
| Would you pass the test? |
These and similar stories abound in
former colonies like Canada, Quebec, The Philippines, Latin America and many
others. In most of these places, discrimination based on skin color (or color-ism),
is not uncommon. White skin is considered ideal and the lighter one’s skin tone,
the higher their chances at succeeding in life.
I find black skin breathtakingly
beautiful. But colonial mentality suggests that black is not to be desired, that
Euro-centric physical features, not black, are aspirational. In search of ideal
white beauty, many women have contributed to the multi-billion dollar skin
bleaching industry. Colonial mentality blinds them to the fact that these skin
bleaching products usually contain the harmful ingredients mercury,
hydroquinone, and/or corticosteroids. These chemicals can be extremely
dangerous and fatal.
No social community can exist in a
vacuum. Every race, ethnicity and nationality has lots of positives that others
can borrow from and assimilate. Without doubt, some races have achieved better
than others in the fields of mathematics, engineering, sports, the arts, etc.
But this by no means makes them superior to their less endowed counterparts. To
classify any race as less than the next one, either by insinuation or mass
propaganda, is to exert undue pressure on them to aspire to myopic ideals.
If a colonial mentality spurs people on
to higher achievement in the arts, education or technology, then that is by all
means desirable. But I feel that there is nothing of significance to be gained
from lightening one’s skin tone or from the thinking that a shade lighter is a
shade superior. And yet deep inside me I am not unaware that the color of
colonial mentality is many shades lighter than my African ebony skin.
 |
| The Ebony Shades continuum |
I slowly disengaged from the world of race
and color and returned to my present reality, passing by Yozefu’s grave to pay
my respects. I plucked a flower from a nearby bush and as I laid it on my
friend’s simple grave, it dawned on me that in life as in death, the colonial
mentality holds sway. Deaths that are in any way linked to the white man have
clout. They are weightier and far more “valuable” than those which occur a
myriad of times every day among the ordinary Ebony folks of this wretched earth.
What a way to die!
Suggested further reading on the subject:
http://www.theinclusionsolution.me/the-impact-of-colorism/
Suggested further reading on the subject:
http://www.theinclusionsolution.me/the-impact-of-colorism/
