EMT
Platinum Member
- Jan 13, 2010
- 14,483
- 15,308
Again, no offence but I'm watching you. You could be one of those Malawians who can speak Kiswahili so fluently. I met such Malawians abroad and I was dumbstruck!
Here we go again. The "where are you really from question." Should I answer this, or tell you what I think, that you're just another xenophobic trying to judge people by where they come from? If I were to question or argue with you on this, would my actions be interpreted as reverse xenophobia on my part?
But if you're looking for an answer, of course, I know what you mean, and you've no any real malice in mind. You're not saying I couldn't possibly be a Tanzanian. Rather, something about me - perhaps my JF posts, my ID or the color of my avatar - has lit your curiosity.
Still, like others I always resent the question because it implies that I can only really and authentically be one thing, the one thing, incidentally, that I had no choice in choosing and have no power to change.
I don't want to be misunderstood. Like millions of other Tanzanians, I, too, have a hyphenated identity. Left of the hyphen, I'm Libyan, and a very proud one to boot. But that's not all I am. I'm also a writer, a doctor, a Muslim, a German speaker, a passionate (but terrible) singer, a lousy swimmer, a New Yorker, an Arab, the youngest of three children, a drinker of way too much coffee, a lover of W.B. Yeats' poetry, a hater of injustice, a husband, a frequent flyer, and, according to my wife, a person in some serious denial that he's getting older.
The question "Where is EMT from?" may help you locate me, but it will never describe me. Got it?