Hi. My name is Kristin and I'm a Muzungu. It's a multidimensional, loaded word and title, but it fits, connotations and all. We've been in Africa a week now and have seen and experienced some amazing things, but it is hard to not be aware of the color of our skin and the amazing privileges we have been bestowed. Muzungu means more than just "white person", though. It means "wanderer", an eponym I am happy to claim. I've always had a nomadic spirit, finding it hard to rest and always questioning the status quo to find the next best thing. Muzungu also means "rich person" and though, by American standards I am doing just fine, but not rich, here we are wealthy. "What do locals think of us," I asked Benson, our local driver and guide while here in Uganda. "You are money. They see you and know the Muzungu are rich. They make baskets and things in the market for you to buy. They don't buy them because they can make them themselves." We tried to think of comparisons for us. Who are the Muzungu in our world? We ruled out movie stars and even royalty because, though wealthy to extremes that we can't comprehend, they are names and faces we know, whereas we are total strangers passing by to them, yet are given a title. The closest we can relate is some man driving past in a Ferrari and we stop to yell, "rich man"! It's actually quite laughable if you give it context driving down a familiar street in your world. But then you have to layer on the racial segregation or identification and it's like seeing that Ferrari driving by and us yelling, "rich Indian man who travels all the time"! That is our experience here. We are called at, pointed at, and waved at. The children sometimes even yell, "give me money" as we pass, and one time a grown woman yelled something which caused Benson to laugh. "She wants you to take her children home with you", he translated. Be careful what you wish for, lady...! Here we are royalty.
But Jonathan and I don't think it's self aggrandizement that spawns our travels-- we don't seek out developing countries as destinations to make ourselves feel better about our place in the world. We seek to be wanderers in order to understand the world and different cultures. I read in an Economist article this morning that Lagos is projected to reach almost 12 million people by the end of the year. 12 million. And maybe 95%of the world, myself included, wouldn't be able to identify exactly where it is on a map. 12 million. And we think NYC, with it's 8 million is huge and the epicenter of the world. How can we live without at least trying to understand the world outside our fishbowl? How can we not look for, and celebrate, what makes cultures unique and similar? How can we not want to understand interconnectedness? Without travel there would not be a face and a name, Mark, to the story of the man who walks three hours a day EACH WAY to his job to serve us breakfast. Or a face and a name, Nicholas, to the 20 year old boy who sells crafts because he cannot afford the $900 that secondary school costs for a year. Or a face and a name, Kevin, to a survivor of the atrocious Rwandan genocide when he was merely eleven. It is these anecdotes that spawn our travels and put our privileged life in perspective. Again, not in a way to make us feel better about ourselves, but to provide reminders of all that we have to be grateful for. These are the stories and faces that provide color and salt and three-dimensionality to an otherwise flat world. At once it makes the world incredibly huge and incredibly small and we are honored to play witness to it.