(Bill) Anonymous Wish

As I type this post, the power has just gone out and we’ve been without water for a day and a half.  So, we are letting the yellow mellow and flushing down the brown with water that we’ve been storing in buckets.  Our drinking water is now coming from other water containers that we’ve been keeping full for just such an occasion.  We have a decently large hot water tank, so there is some reserve.  But we are going into full conservation mode, just in case. 

We typically have 2-3 short water outages during a week, but longtime Blantyre residents tell us that it is not unusual to be without water for days at a time.  We’ll be grateful and dance a little jig when the water comes back and next time I’m at the store, I’m going to buy another couple of buckets.  When the power comes back as well, that will be a nice little bonus and I’ll be able to upload this to the blog!   

I’ve been considering the concept of anonymity quite a bit recently.  Frankly, I would like to be much more anonymous than I am in Blantyre.  I leave our house at least 4-5 times a day and sometimes that number is up to 7 or 8.  But I never leave unnoticed.  Of course, I first pass through the gate that our day guard, Brenda, has to open for me and I give the obligatory wave and smile.  Then, 10 feet past the gate, I pass what I call the “guard collective” consisting of other neighbor guards and gardeners that hang out near our home entrance.  This prompts another set of waves and smiles.  If my daily errands require the upper end number of trips (7 or 8), that is 14-16 wave and smile sessions with Brenda and the guard collective as I come and go.  I wave and smile because the alternative is unpalatable to me.  I’ve tried on for size the “ignore-and-look-straight-ahead-with-sunglasses” approach but I feel too entitled and too much of a jerk to do this consistently.  So, I wave and smile.  A LOT!

My runs (okay, jogs) are also a spectacle.  As Elizabeth has detailed in her posts, you can’t just pound the pavement in quiet and solitude.  First, there are people EVERYWHERE you might consider running and if you were running in places where there weren’t people, it probably isn’t a safe place to run anyway.  So, I always have an audience for my beautiful, effortless glide (okay, shuffling, wheezing, sweaty slog).

When I drive Elizabeth and the visiting residents to the Ndirande hospital, the road I navigate runs through a crowded market and people are packed all about Black Mamba.  Almost every trip (about 4 times a day), I hear people young and old shout through my open window (no air conditioning in the Mamba), “Azungu!”  This literally means, “White person!”  After living here for almost three months, I still don’t quite know how to respond to this greeting.  Most of the time, if it is a small kid and there is a look of wonder in their eyes like I have a horn growing out of my head, unicorn-like, I will smile and wave.  I don’t want to disappoint the lucky viewer!  But if it is someone older, certainly someone who has seen plenty of white people in their lifetime, I usually look ahead and ignore.  I confess it’s kind of annoying and I’d rather not be noticed at all.  Can you imagine shouting out in greeting to the people of Seattle their primary identifying feature?  “Hey, (fill in the blank)!”  Strange. 

When I walk into the office to pay the water bill (for what it’s worth!), I’m the only azungu and stares follow me.  When I go to the forex to exchange money, I’m the only azungu and stares follow me.  I don’t feel that these are malevolent stares, but without any interesting kitty or rainbow posters on the walls to look at, I must be more interesting than looking at the floor.  At least I hope so! 

I’m not offering any profound insights here.  It is just the reality of living as a distinct minority.  Perhaps this will develop in me renewed compassion for people who visibly don’t fit in to the dominant culture, whether it be here in Blantyre or Seattle or anywhere.  It perhaps helps explain the palpable lifting of weight that Elizabeth and I felt when we returned to Seattle from Kenya 14 years ago.  We experienced the same craving for anonymity then as we do now.  But don’t be surprised if when I next see you and you greet me with a boisterous, “Hey, white person!” that I look straight ahead and ignore you.

(Update:  We gained our water in the middle of the night last night after being out for 60 hours!  It was like Christmas morning around here.  We were prepared to raid our friends' pool this morning for some buckets of water to flush our gross toilets.  We had completely run out and all we had left were two large bottles of water for drinking. We also got our electricity back this morning (and was able to post this) when I had the brilliant thought to check our panel and switch back on the breaker that had been tripped.  Duh!  This was a 24 hour outage of self-imposed stupidity.  Oh well, the boys probably appreciated going out for dinner last night and reading Lord of the Rings by candle light.  Ahh memories....)