Always to be an Outsider just looking in.

Written

by

Sally Spencer.

They Say I don’t belong to Africa.

I have always wondered what my place in this world was. The belonging part was never a problem as I knew that I was a Zimbabwean/South African and that Mother Africa would always have a country where I belonged and was part of.

That is what I thought until……

When I was growing up I always felt like I was the ‘’outsider looking in’’ on my family because I never really belonged. I am adopted so the family I had/have was never really mine. They were always some one else’s. They had roots and shared the same blood with others.

All I shared with them was a surname.

My history started at the tender age of 10 days old.

Every one else’s went back centuries. So here I was from a very young age, feeling like this child that stands with her face pressed hard against a window looking at people laughing, crying, fighting, just living. Even though the door was wide open I could never find the way into that room with all those people.

One thing that kept me grounded and secure was the fact that I belonged to a country and people called Zimbabwe which was part of this huge and beautiful continent of Africa. I have always been so proud of where I came from no matter what anyone said or what was going on.

I had my place and my people.

So I thought.

At one stage I went to live in Europe because of the family of my husband. It took me exactly 24 hours of landing in Europe to realize I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I wasn’t European. I was African and I didn’t belong anywhere else. It took me 13 years to get back to Africa.

They were the worst and the best times of my life. I needed them to wake me up. They changed my whole way of looking at things. They made me even more proud of where I came from and who I was. They made me fearless. I stood for what I had been taught by my adopted Dad. They made me face things and I never ran away from anything.
I had the security in knowing that I was a Zimbabwean and that I belonged to Zimbabwe so, even if I was tossed out of Europe they would have a country to send me to.

I belonged to a country and a people.

I eventually got out of Europe and came home to Africa. I wanted to go home to Zimbabwe but for reasons beyond my control I was unable to do so. I settled in South Africa, the next best place. Although I was first Zimbabwean, I was also an African. Just being on African soil was home for me.

On my return I decided to look for my birth Mom. Both my adopted parents had passed away while I was in Europe so I felt free to find out about my birth Mom. I wasn’t looking for another mother or another family. I was just trying to finally close the door on who I was. I knew where I belonged, so I thought, the only thing was who I was. I needed a complete history not one that started at 10 days of age.

During my search things were changing around me and where I belonged started being questioned. Not by me but African people.

I heard the loud, screaming whispers of ‘’white people are not indigenous of Africa so therefore they are not African.’’

I didn’t pay too much attention or even take it to heart because it was just the extremists talking and they were trying to get a kinda of revenge on White Africans for the degrading history. In a way I agreed with these so called extremists.

Never for one second did I classify myself with those White people.

So, “them” being told they were not African didn’t bother me at all.

Those people had always had one foot in Africa and another in some European or American country while I had both feet very firmly placed in Africa.

I didn’t and don’t have anywhere else to go to.

So I am not part of that group, so I thought.
I eventually found my Mom and met her and the family so I found where I came from and my blood line/links but I have told that story already. The only thing I will add about that is I am so glad that I was adopted and grew up with the parents I did.
So now instead of feeling all fuzzy and content that I now had everything to make me a whole person, I had a completely new problem.

I had come out of the cold only to face something else.
The whispering had now become loud and so very real.

Indigenous Africa now had a face and a colour.

To be an indigenous African you had to be Black and there were no ands, buts or maybes.

It was Black and nothing else.

Well with those words I was thrown outside again and well and truly thrown out this time and there was no way back in.

No matter how hard I press my face against the window.

No matter how I search for a way in the door this time it is well and truly closed.
I am not Black.

I am White.
I don’t have the right to own land, own a business but I have the right to vote and pay taxes.

I don’t even have the right to a job or social help from the government but I have the right to vote and pay taxes.

I am told that I must go home to the continent that I belong to.

Well I am home in the continent that I belong to.

Africa.

But, I am not Black so I don’t belong.
I don’t have anywhere on ‘’that continent’’ to belong to because I don’t come from ‘’that continent’’.

I wasn’t born there, I have no ties or family history in any of ‘’that continents’’ country’s.
So where will I go?
Where do I belong?
I am now a faceless person with my face pressed so tightly against the window with nowhere to call my own.

No people.

No country.

No continent.

I have no roots.

No place to feel safe.

No place to grow and be nurtured.

No common culture.

I am just an outsider looking in.

I can never be an insider again.

I belong nowhere.

THE SALADMAG BLOG.