Reflective Conversation...

You know those minty, chilly, refreshingly-crispy mornings. It’s one of those, as I head to the refectory for breakfast, reflecting conversations from the day before as I walk. I love how most of the doors around here are automatic, I just walk through!

While in the UK to present at conference in Leeds, I learnt more in conversations I had over cups of wine, beer and dinner than in spaces that were set out for conversations. I think that’s where the real conversations are heard sometimes.

It was reiterated again how Whiteness is globally mythologized. For years elite Jewish girls have been hating their caricature noses and championing nose surgeries, especially around bat mitzvah time.

While we think people with ‘Chinese eyes’ are sexy, Asian girls want to widen their eyes, to create double-lipped eyes they see their western, Caucasian celebrities have. Google it, it’s trending.

I didn’t know that dreadlocks were a symbol of freedom because slaves were not allowed to grow their hair. African American women were forced into slavery with an African ancestry, after slavery they were displaced. No longer African, just Black!

Yes the streets I now walk on as I head to breakfast, to the refectory are safer. I can walk alone at night and worry less about my safety, but these streets are not home. What can I do to ensure I feel safer on the streets at home as a woman, in South Africa?

My point being, I also learnt that it’s no use leaving where you are thinking its better elsewhere; there must be a better reason. The grass may not be greener on the other side. Our former colonizers are also in trouble, everyone is in crisis everywhere. The world is in crisis. In Spain, four women are killed per week. The phenomenon is called ‘ femicide’; the killings of females just because of their gender.

My peers from different parts of the UK grumbled too about how education is also expensive for them. People there are also getting degrees but end-up getting low-skill jobs afterwards. Sounds familiar? Am learning there are struggles that are international struggles for the working class and the poor, yes at different levels, but they correlate nonetheless. All stuck in varies spots of the vicious wheel cycling capitalism.

Capitalism has consumed all, and continues to disposes others for more space, for more to consume. We are all looking for a space in the world, for a spot in the hierarchy but its run out. This leaves no option but for us to constantly be migrating for survival. In the hope that somewhere, there must be greener pastures. We are willing to risk life itself, driven by the innate human desire to survive.

I need to speak my truth. As a young woman I am at cross-roads. Realising the need to learn why it is a privilege to be Black. I realise the need to believe and learn of attributes either than our sufferings. Never being formally taught this, I consciously must un-teach, decolonise my mind what it has been fed about being Black. I need to find out why I dislike walking into a room and being the only Black/brown person. Am I the only person who is uncomfortable with this?

Does Feminism currently need more Black African voices that are unapologetic and can be identified; contributing to universal gender platforms? Yes. The struggles of African women need to be heard, even those that mascaraed as ‘cultures’. For example; little did I know that FGM (female genital mutilation) exist in three major types. First type: slicing the clitoris, performed by older women. Second type: partially slicing the clitoris and the labia, again, performed by older women. The third type: slicing the clitoris and the labia and sewing-up most of the vaginal opening; again performed by older women. Then there is a celebration, consecration of the marriage, an explosion of blood; for the man. I should have learnt about this in High School during History maybe, Biology or Life Orientation.

People may question your work so you must always thoroughly know what you are doing to be able to understand and stand firm for it, and be able to clarify it when the need arises.

As women, even in academic spaces we are made to conform, dress a certain way, talk a certain way; when permitted to that is. This is not for the sake of professionalism but because within such spaces conservative, traditionalist mentalities still harbor.

There must be men who do not want to enjoy the current benefits of existing, entrenched patriarchy; be it culturally, professionally etc; right?

Last night at dinner, close to the bottom of our glasses of wine, African literature came up in the discussion and people mentioned Chinua Achebe and (how) ‘Things fall apart’. I suggested they also read Zakes Mda and journey through the ‘Madonna of Excelsior’.

“Why is there no significant Black African feminist scholar? An African Bell Hooks!” one asked me. I should have had the perfect answer with correlating discourse but the question took me by surprise. Not because no answer exists in my mind but the honesty of it startled me.

In one of the conversations we talked about how the discrimination of people with disabilities and mental health ailments is a universal issue. How many times a day do we all unnecessarily and unconsciously say: “You must be crazy? You are crazy?”

More than talking, more than discussing and more than debating. I learnt to listen. Had I not listened more, I would have had no chance to observe, which would have left me with fewer stories to tell and little to share.