hooks to hang me on

Large women’s eyes never welcome me as a fellow fatty. I don’t hear ‘English’ and think that’s me! I never get ‘we girlfriends gotta look out for each other’. Old ladies don’t see me as a comrade-in-arms. No one says ‘us Malawians’.

Calm down, don’t worry, this is not another boring rant about the evil habit of pigeon-holing people > face value. But I am slightly concerned by society’s apparent failure to squeeze me into a lovely cosy box of solidarity. What’s the criteria again? Perhaps if I tell you about myself, together we can find one suitable.

‘True friendship can afford true knowledge.
It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.’

Firstly, what you see first; my skin. Well I’d write about that… but even acacia would fail to pitch a sensory organ as a fascinating topic; I’d stifle sniggers at attempts to inscribe it with messages of history and hierarchy. And if I did manage to award my melanin (or lack thereof) a role in my identity, you’d be able to tell it was a mere exaggeration of something I usually think about when I’m on the beach.

I’ve lived in Malawi most of my life… but I don’t have an ancestral village here, or a whole other language of customs. Whenever I land at KIA I don’t kiss the soil or feel a mystical affinity with the immigration officer (as he stamps yet another tourist visa). Yet years of greetings and kwachas disqualify me from stringing together an insightful description of the country. I don’t have the fresh eyes of outsiders with other standards. I don’t know what living anywhere else in August 2009 feels like. I don’t know what hospital wards without guardians look like.

Surely having an English birth certificate is fertile ground for exploration … but I can’t remember the speed at which days pass in England, I don't know how to drive down the M1 or how cold the snow is. I can't remember the sound of the underground, or how it felt to be 10 years old (let alone the feeling of being born!). Last time I landed at Heathrow I didn’t kiss the soil or feel a mystical affinity with the luggage belt.

So maybe I should use my thousand words to sketch an outline of my physical presence, maybe that is me… well my face is not classically beautiful, no angular cheekbones, no big eyes. It is not typically ugly either, no bulging features, no awkward teeth. I am not thin - no jutting bony ribs. I am not fat, no stomach rolls (well no big ones). Which adjectives portray average curves?

Would it be worth delving into the common fate of ‘girlfriends’?... fortunately I'm not single enough to be hunting for prey or kissing around. Also fortunately I'm not couple-y enough to be holding hands with my man in the club, or arguing with him in the car park. I don’t compete with the premier league for his attention or look for recipes to spice up his evening. We're as together as much as we're alone. No hooks to hang an identity on there.

I’d love to provide an enlightening perspective on being 27… if it wasn’t an age perfectly poised between young and old. The mature end of music taste and drinking habits. The immature end of life lessons and wisdom. The skin on my hands is not smooth and tight, not rough and wrinkled.

I suppose the fact that I PRAY might encourage a logical-but-passionate monologue (the less clichés the better)…. except that I do not qualify for the title of ‘christian’ by many people’s definition, and persist in following God on paths far from the tracks worn by most church-goers.

I am not rich, I am not poor. I am not glamorous, I am not scruffy. There must be something. Education. Presumably most people can identify with one education system. Well I have MSCE and A-levels. I have a bachelors from Belfast, and a nearly-masters from Blantyre.

Even my surname has no story or accurate way of spelling... its' dubious origins give nothing away.

This is getting a little long, sorry I can’t package myself nicely in a few key phrases. Now maybe you start to see how absolutely impossible it is to communicate even a small part of me through the labels that you understand. Perhaps when they are all boiled away, I am a 'woman'... but even my experience of that may not be anything like yours.

Truthfully honestly I don’t know what most of these labels mean. I have friends who call themselves ‘African’, and we all saw what happened next link > african on thursday. I know ‘Malawians’ who are like chalk and cheese. I have met blond geniuses! I have met virgin sexologists (but that’s another story).

Suffice to say, my every first encounter is a slow-motion frantic flailing of arms; avoiding assumptions and desperately dodging expectations.

'Kinder the enemy who must malign us /
Than the smug friend who will define us'

Of course I find it hard when people gather a few misperceptions and decide I am different. They distance themselves. I clamber to associate, continually prove we’re together in this, scrape the barrel of belonging. Sometimes, from the outside, your box of solidarity seems snug and cosy.

But I find it equally difficult when people spot one or two similarities and think they are exactly the same. Suddenly I launch a relentless quest for disassociation, fired by the need to stand alone as a unique individual. Sometimes our little box can get unbearably claustrophobic.

So, dear reader, that is as much as can be said about Jess.
Criticise me, praise me, but please please see me.

‘The greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.’

___________________
Henry David Thoreau
Anna Wickman
Virginia Satir