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Finding the Bottom of the Riverbed by Melissa Edoh, Class of 2002

October 18 [Lusaka, Zambia]

Very rough day. I was in tears by 7:30. We went through several compounds like every other morning to pick up Kennedy, the clinic nurses, the OVC guy and so on, but today for some reason, everything I saw outside the car window got me thinking about this whole "Am I really African" thing. So many questions came into my head all at once, and every answer I came up with seemed to point to "Well, no, not really, Melissa...." Which then not only left me wondering "Well, then what exactly am I," but it also made me question whether everything I've done so far that was built on or motivated by my African-ness was just a joke, an illusion, a delusion. Which, inevitably, brought me to "What the hell am I doing here again?" At some points I felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack. 2 weeks in Lusaka and I'm already breaking down. Promises to be a fun year.

***

We were driving to the Center in the UNICEF-donated Range Rover, weaving our way down the bumpy dirt roads of the compounds where we pick up Center staff every morning, so conspicuous in the midst of the surrounding destitution that although the Range Rover goes through the same streets at the same time with the same passengers five days a week, it still remains a curiosity for neighborhood children and adults alike.

That day for some reason, I felt like I was seeing the world we drove past, rather than letting it fade into the background, as can so easily happen when you've passed the same scene enough times, no matter how abnormal or unnerving it may have been initially. Somber burial parties; groups of elderly women who should have been enjoying their old age, but who, instead, were digging trenches by the side of the road, barefoot and with rudimentary hoes as their only tools; children with inflated bellies standing by the side of the street, mesmerized by the Range Rover; young weary-looking women with babies on their back standing outside the community clinic, waiting for it to open; a young girl sitting by a small vegetable stand; a young woman sweeping the front of a neighborhood pub, music already blaring at 7am pre-opening or post-closing clean-up? I wondered.

Echoes of college lectures and heated debates, flashbacks of papers read and written about the plight of girls and women in the developing world, the impact of urban poverty on the family unit, the effect of the AIDS pandemic on communities' support systems they all rushed back into my mind as we drove past. "Wow, this is what it looks like. This is Africa" I thought.

But how could I think that how could I look upon these scenes with so much distance, so much detachment like a foreigner, when I call myself an African?

Am I African?

As we drove deeper and deeper into the compound, the question rang throughout my head, incessant, increasingly urgent, making me panic and bringing me close to tears of despair. Am I African? Can I call myself "an African"? If I'm not African, then what am I? Maybe I should call myself Togolese rather than African? I couldn't just call myself American could I? What could make me African when the glance I cast on the scenes outside my car window was not one of recognition nor even of familiarity, but rather one of wonder and amazement at just how screwed up things are for us?

Us. It surfaced, even as I was questioning who I was in relation to them. Whether there was an "us" to speak of. Whether the category existed where the women outside my window and I could ever be grouped together.

My head buzzed with questions as I literally tried to construct an identity for myself before reaching the Center where I was carrying out my research. Who's to say what it means to be African? Am I not always fighting against monolithic representations of African people anyway? Then am I not just one of the many faces of young contemporary Africa? But still do I share anything with these people? I say that it Zambia is all familiar to me, that it's similar enough to other African countries where I've lived, that the customs bear enough resemblance to those from which, for whatever reasons, I chose at a young age to distance myself Might the key to my problem lie in that distancing?

Maybe I have a hard time calling myself African because even though "it" is all familiar to me, I don't know any of it in depth. What do I really know about Togolese culture? I understand Mina perfectly, but I don't speak it fluently. And when I do speak it, I have a wretched French accent! I thought I could recognize a couple of our traditional dances but when my great uncle asked me the name of the dance I joined in at my grandmother's funeral in Lom last summer, I said "akpesse" (the only dance name I know) and hoped I was right. I wasn't.

A few years ago, an acquaintance asked me "So, what are some Togolese writers?" when I told him I was from Togo and that I had studied African literature. The thought had honestly never crossed my mind! How could that be? At once stunned and ashamed of myself, I quickly mumbled a confused explanation about Togo being a very small country and its writers hence not being well known abroad, but that "Pasteur Alou" was one. The last part I mumbled particularly fast, hoping the man wouldn't catch the name. Pasteur Alou was assistant principal to my father at the Collge Protestant when we lived in Lom. I remembered seeing a small book (it may have been a pamphlet) he had written God knows what about on one of our bookshelves when I was 7 or 8. So I wasn't technically lying when I said he was a Togolese writer...

This train of thought didn't do much to repress the anxiety growing within me or the tears that were already rolling down my cheeks. I looked out the window as intently as I could, feigning deep concentration on the scenery, in reality hoping that no one would notice that I was crying.

I was angry with myself. It slowly dawned on me that maybe I couldn't claim being Togolese, not knowing enough about my heritage, my culture, my country Maybe the most I could claim was that my parents are from Togo. But as for me, what did that make me?

Am I/can I just say that I am American? I've often made the distinction between what I think I am African and American and what it is often assumed that I am African-American. But perhaps I've been going about it the wrong way, emphasizing the African component. Maybe I'm not helping to redefine what it means to be African, but rather what it means to be African-American? Maybe I'm not "one of the many faces of young contemporary Africa," but rather of young contemporary black America? I think of my best friend, an authentic African-American "just plain black," as she says and I wonder how I am any more African than she is does it just come down to more or fewer years of removal from "the source"? But then I hit the same stumbling block: what do I know about African-American culture?

In college, I repeatedly heard African-American students lament over the fact that they don't know what constitutes their culture. But I remember not understanding Tennessee born-and-bred Carl's accent, I remember not getting the jokes, I remember knowing that I looked and dressed differently, I remember wondering what exactly it was that they appreciated in rap, I remember not knowing what "soul food" was," I remember my parents jokingly referring to African-Americans as "les cousins". Even though they might not always readily agree, I know African-Americans have a culture, because I have been outside of it. And even though I am more familiar with it now, in some ways, I know that I will never completely be in it.

Does embracing my American-ness automatically propel me into African-American-ness? Jamaican-Americans, Bajan -Americans, Haitian-Americans, etc. clearly show that it is possible to be black and American, but not African-American. Applying the same naming logic to my case would make me "Togolese-American," probably the most accurate identification for me. Yet it leaves me unfulfilled. Why?

American children born to Jamaican, Bajan, or Haitian parents in the home country (or raised there) can either identify themselves as the hyphenation of their parents' nationality and "American" or as Caribbean-American. The American-born children of African parents, however, can solely be known as an extension of their parents' nationality, the term "African-American" already being claimed. This limitation is not particularly problematic if the parents are Nigerian or Ghanaian, or from another of the few African countries with immigrant populations that have been settled in the US for many years. Because a community exists to which the individual can relate him/herself, it effectively means something to be a Nigerian or Ghanaian living in the US. By extension then, it also means something for their children to be Nigerian- or Ghanaian-American. If, however, your parents are Togolese and no Togolese community can be said to exist in the US, what can it mean for you to be known as a Togolese-American?

***

November 10

Maybe the reason that I feel like I'm not being completely honest when people ask me "where are you from" and I tell them "Togo" is that I know that when they ask me where I'm from, what they're really asking is "why do you walk, talk, dress, act the way you do?" And truth is that very little of that has to do with the fact that my parents are from Togo and that I spent my childhood there.

***

What makes you "from" somewhere? "I come from" is commonly understood as "I am". Does that mean that your identity is defined by your geographical space? How then did I get to be who (or how) I am?

From a normal upper-middle class Togolese childhood in Lom, I was catapulted into the expatriate community in Harare. I attended the tiny Ecole Franaise de Harare where I was one of the very few black students, the only one in my class for 4 of the 6 trimesters I spent at the school. My family lived in a large house set in a lavish landscaped garden complete with a small wood, a small man-made waterfall, and a swimming pool, yet it all still managed to be inferior to my French school friends' houses, which had even larger gardens and tennis courts to boot.

When my parents decided that it was about time I learned English and dumped me into one of the best girls' high school in Harare, I had a hard time making friends. I was black, yes. I was even African, yes. But French was my native language. I struggled enough with English learning Shona was not a primary concern for me. The black Zimbabwean girls felt that I was different, maybe because my family seemed well off. The white Zimbabwean girls felt that I was black, simply. In the four years that my family lived in Harare, I made three Zimbabwean friends: Danai, the daughter of a government minister, Peta, her middle class cousin both black, and Leann Williamson, a middle-class white.

How to qualify life as a West African living as an expat in a southern African country? Life as an expat has little to do with the life of locals and more to do with expats trying (and having the monetary means) to replicate their home way of life in their new space, as I am repeatedly reminded whenever I walk through Manda Hill shopping center in Lusaka, the Western-style shopping mall my American co-volunteer affectionately dubbed "the white ghetto." What did that mean for my family living in Zimbabwe if the expat lifestyle was not that of our home, but rather that of the home of the characteristic expat, a white Westerner?

Well, for me it meant being in between worlds: no longer at home, living a completely different reality from that which I had known until then. Not in Europe or America still in Africa, yet surrounded by white people who looked down on me and black people who despised me. For the first time (and from that point onward), forced to situate myself across multiple racial, social, and linguistic cleavages: did Camille and Ophlie, my French classmates from the Ecole Franaise, treat me like I was disposable because I was African and they thought they were worth more than me as my parents suggested? Was my white Zimbabwean teachers' apparent reticence to commending my academic achievements on report cards linked to the fact that I was black? Wasn't my intense irritation towards Tapiwa, our maid's toddler, due to my feeling that she was somehow below me? Didn't I after all feel different and perhaps better than black Zimbabweans because French was my native language and I had an American passport?

Living in the US was my childhood dream. The third of four children, I am the only American citizen, as I happened to be born while my parents were completing their graduate studies in Arizona. Growing up in Togo, I made it well known among my friends that I was American I had the passport to prove it even though I had no recollection whatsoever of America, my parents having left Tucson when I was 18 months old. I was ecstatic when my father told me one night in Harare that he had been offered a position in Washington DC and that we would be moving to the States in a few months. I could hardly believe it. To my 12 year-old mind, America was the land of long and perfectly straight hair la Rudy Huxtable, a place where all the Barbies featured in catalogs were actually available in stores, and the home of Tevin Campbell. Quite simply, a haven of coolness.

I don't remember much about my first impressions once we arrived to this Promised Land, except that the cars looked more rounded. After three years at the local French International School, I found myself at MIT, being introduced to life at the Institute through a minority pre-freshman program. For the first time since my arrival to the US, I was interacting with African-Americans. I remember becoming conscious that unlike other program participants who could forge a certain camaraderie among themselves because they hailed from the same city or state, there could be no instinctive bond between me and Ebraheem or any one else from the DC area because even though we may have shared geographical spaces, life in my small, expat, French-speaking community had very little in common with theirs.

Being foreign to the two ethnic groups predominantly represented in the program, it was easier for me to integrate the one where I was clearly different, and where there were thus no expectations of what I should be. So most of my friends during the program were Hispanic. It wasn't until my last year in college that I felt comfortable in the African-American community, having slowly learned the culture through close friendships with a few African-Americans.

My second year in college, I finally mustered up the courage to approach the African Students' Association. I'd been afraid of not fitting in with the "real" Africans coming straight from the continent. However, I immediately found a home among them, these real Africans, being able to relate to them despite my years of distance from the continent. This was the only community on campus where I felt completely at home, where I could comfortably bring all parts of myself (though a new student from Zimbabwe eventually confessed to me that for the first few months he knew me, he thought I was "one of those Afro-centric African-Americans").

I had it figured out. There was obviously something still there even after my years of removal from the continent. I was African.

So when I moved to Zambia after graduating from college, my apprehension was much less linked to concerns about fitting in or being able to relate to my surroundings than to the AIDS-ravaged landscape I had read so much about and expected to find.

***

December 3

I feel so much pressure. Just going to town is stressful. On the bus, I'm afraid of the conductor saying something to me rather than just reaching for the bus fare I try to casually hold out for him. Because he'll speak to me in Nyanja and I won't understand and he'll give me a puzzled look and when I answer him after he finally asks me again in English, a couple people will turn around to see who spoke with the American accent. When I go to the market, the women speak to me in Nyanja, and they don't seem to get that I just don't speak their language that I'm not from here. I spoke to the other volunteers a couple days ago and they say going to town is also stressful for them they are incessantly hassled for money because they're white. I took the bus with them a couple days ago and I was startled to hear the bus conductor ask them their destination in English. But what other language would he address them in? They're clearly foreign! That's when I realized that even though we're all foreigners and being here is often stressful for all of us, we are living different realities. Even though I look different enough to stand out (because of my clothes, my shoes, my bag, or my natural hairstyle), when I go to town and I get hassled, it's not because the men think I am foreign and thus have money. It's because I am, before anything else, just another Black woman an object of lust.

***

December 12

Since I started walking to work with the other volunteers, I can tell that people's stance towards me has changed. One of the guys who used to hassle me as I walked past greeted me with a cheerful "good morning Madam!" this morning. The others who sit by the minibuses greet me and ask for my water in English now. I politely greet them back, I still don't give them my water, and I still walk on without stopping. All I really want is to be left alone, to not be seen. Can I just not be anonymous here? I think back to the African writers living in France who write of the coldness of the French and of the anonymity they felt upon arriving to their new "home" and longingly recalled the warmth of the home they left behind a place where they felt they existed, where they were seen. And here I am, miss wannabe African, wishing people would walk past without noticing me. Maybe that's why I'm in Zambia. Maybe I'm here to learn that I'm not meant to live in Africa after all. Maybe I'm here to learn that even though biologically I am 100% African, even though I understand African cultures by virtue of having been exposed to several of them for over half of my life, and even despite my stereotypically large African ass, I am not at home in Africa

***

My anxiety in Lusaka came from having a sense that this wasn't it, but at the same time, not knowing what "it" was, or if it even existed. It was like being in a river, desperately flailing my legs to try to stay afloat, unsure of whether it was safe to stop struggling, of whether there was ground below for my feet to rest on. Being back in Boston after three months in Lusaka was like finally touching the bottom of the riverbed: I came back to find that I had a home.

The realization first came when I found myself surprised to run into people I knew: on the bus, at the grocery store, on my way to work... It felt so odd so pleasantly odd to be known: to hear my name called out behind me, turn around, and find myself face-to-face with someone with whom I shared personal history. To have memories attached to places in the city, that I could laugh or cringe at with those who experienced them with me. Home was where my relationships were.

But at the same time, it was where I could be anonymous when I needed to be. Being able to walk through the city aimlessly, whether to clear my head or simply to explore an unknown part of town. Either way, lost in my own world, the people passing me also in theirs. Those African writers living in France once more come to mind they found France to be too anonymous, diametrically opposed to what they had known back home. But for me, being at home meant having the freedom to choose when to be recognized, and when to be invisible, which I don't know that I could ever obtain in Lusaka, even with time.

As I neared the end of my stay in Boston, I anticipated how much harder it would be to go back to Lusaka, finally being able to name what made me so miserable there. How could I afford to accept or recognize Boston as "home," when I knew that in a few weeks, I would be back in Lusaka and that Lusaka unchanging Lusaka, Lusaka where I would always remain a foreigner would be all that I would see for the next eighteen months?

***

February 15

A few days ago, the teenage girl who works at the video store asked me where I was from. "I'm American," came my reply. And with it, a feeling of peace and freedom. Is that feeling brought on by the fact that claiming my American-ness instantly grants me power in this place where black Americans are idealized quasi-mythical beings, and with that power, the freedom to be everything I am even if it doesn't exactly match the widely held image of what black Americans are? Basically, does it grant me the freedom to be whatever? Or did I feel peace and freedom because I had stopped pretending stopped fighting abandoned the battle?

Today, as I walked past a group of teenage boys on my way home from work, one of them said something about me in Nyanja to the rest of the group, to which another boy responded, "No, she's a foreigner" in English. That literally made my day. I had to struggle not to walk home with a big stupid grin on my face. At last! They get it I AM NOT FROM HERE!

***

Rather than making it harder to return to Lusaka, it turns out that realizing that a place existed that I could legitimately call home actually made living in Zambia easier. Because I could now tie myself to a specific space and group of people outside of Lusaka, I was finally able to accept that I was different, and would probably remain a foreigner, here. Without necessarily making a particular effort to stand out, I accepted my visibility and allowed the expression of those aspects of my person that I had previously decided to repress by fear of not blending in. I go running around the neighborhood, I've stopped covering up my dreadlocks (exercising and natural hairstyles both seem to be male bastions in Lusaka), I wear my Tevas and carry my EMS knapsack, and when I can't say what I need to the bus conductor in Nyanja, I simply say it in English American accent and all. More genuine self-expression has not only moved me towards finding inner peace in Lusaka, but it has also ironically eased my integration into the community where I live here. I feel freer in my interactions with locals and they are better able to situate me in their categorizations.

No longer negating these various expressions of my self and finally claiming (admitting?) my American-ness has been a way of carrying "home" with me.

***

April 4

I might have figured out how to answer the infamous "Where do you come from" question at least here. Here's a rough transcript of a conversation I had with some guy while waiting for the bus to church this morning:

"So, where do you come from?"
"The US"
"Oh I could tell when I saw you that This one, she is not a Zambian.'"
[Chit-chat a bit: How do you like Zambia, life in Zambia is hard, isn't it? In America things are good (usually the prelude to "I want to go to America") Well, not for everybody, it's a very big country, we also have people sleeping in the streets, you know, etc.]
"So, what's your name?"
"Melissa"
"Melissa who?"
"Edoh" [pronounced y-d, not ee-dough]
"You're Nigerian?"
"Togolese."
"Oh [Thinks about it for a few moments] But you've been living in the US for a long time."
"Yes, almost 10 years."

From there it was easy to admit that no, I don't know much about traditional Togolese ceremonies, and well, I do understand a Togolese language Mina perfectly but I don't speak it fluently, no, it's unlikely that I will move back to Togo permanently, and yes, I probably am more American than Togolese now...

***

Addendum April 7

I should have known better than to expect it to end there, shouldn't I?

Sitting at a table in the American ambassador to Zambia's garden last week with Americans who work for the embassy here, for whom the compounds where I work are forbidden zones ("We're really not supposed to be in any of the compounds"), who exclusively travel between town and their expansive expat neighborhoods towering 5 feet above the ground in their Troopers and Land Rovers, and who mail-order turkeys from the US for Thanksgiving, I once again felt like "No, we're not the same either."

But I've just found the bottom of the riverbed after a few months of flailing. Now the shore that might take a while.