History and Culture As Armour

I have a stronger armour now that I’m older. I call two countries home. I have learned about an African version of Kenyan history, have reconciled with my mother and am proudly African in ways that I define African. Being proudly Kenyan makes me a stronger Canadian. I enjoy the diversity of people here in Canada and the colourful summer festivals. I’ll over-indulge in the sumptuous perogies, roti, jollof rice, moussaka and other tasty dishes from places unseen. Bliss in my proverbial backyard. I’ll eat them against a backdrop of the snow capped mountains and blue ocean water that lured me here. I like the sensory experiences of exploring all that is exhilarating about the world, while my body stays put in this very beautiful country, Canada.

But at times I must admit that my paradise is an illusion, a smoothly executed, smiling magician’s trick, a landscape of all that is truly beautiful and entertaining about us illuminated so brightly it blinds us from seeing the growing well of collective pains of the diverse peoples of Canada. These pains lie silenced and unattended under the beautifully textured rugs and food.

Buried under the weight of these delightful tapestries are the smothered voices of too many racialised, highly educated or skilled immigrants whose credentials have not been recognised. They have become cheap menial labour, sometimes living in poverty with poor health. Drowned out by the trance-inducing din of drum beats from across the globe are the distress calls of Aboriginal peoples misrepresented, stereotyped and erased from the collective conscience. Close, too close, yet invisible to those who are mesmerised by the rhythmic moves of the synchronised dancers, I see immigrants mobbed, bullied and excluded from social places and workplaces because they’re racialised, presumed guilty or deficient. The palatable term “cultural difference” is used over racism to describe their exclusion and eviction. My Kenyan colonial past is disguised in my Canadian present in ways that are excruciatingly similar but tastefully different. Something magical about discrimination is that even if you can’t see it, it exists. And if you don’t believe it exists, it does.

I often wonder why we smother, bury and silence other people’s pain. Why we are so adamant about looking past it. I wonder why we create such pain in others by putting so much weight on meaningless differences. And yet I know I must focus on my difference, know my history and make sense of how others see my difference in order to survive any attacks on who I am. It is not safe for me to integrate or assimilate by pretending my differences don’t exist.