By accident, while looking for something else, I came across this interesting blog post on a blog I'd never seen before. It's by a women living in Addis Ababa, written a few months ago. She discusses an interesting aspect of her experience living as a foreign white woman in Ethiopia.
for the love: a ferenjwa on ferenji (or ferenjoch, however you want to put it: Ferenji don’t want to cause a scene. We get stared at. Two ferenji crossing paths feels more like a social experiment in a closed room with people standing around ready to take notes. People are watching to see what will happen. And so we ignore each other. Observations are made but at least we can be sure the conclusion is not “all ferenji know each other.” The other part of it is the message that ferenji in Ethiopia are no big deal.“We don’t make a big deal about each other so please don’t make a big deal about us.”
The relative privilege of whiteness in the world has an interesting side effect in the way in which white people can interact with each other among the non-white. A kind of embarassed self-consciousness.
As an aside, I am fascinated to learn that "ferenjoch" is the word for people of European descent in Amharic. "Gora" is used in Urdu as the normal and perhaps slightly perjorative way to refer to white people, but there's also the word "ferengi," as in, amusingly, the big-eared short people on Star Trek: The Next Generation who had a religion of wealth-acquisition. However, I am quite certain that both words are transported from Arabic "al-Faranj", which means "Frankish". That is: "Crusader."
"People are watching to see what will happen. And so we ignore each other."
This is very interesting (I wrote a short story about this for another blog, but it hasn't been released yet - maybe in the next month or so).
This kind of behaviour is very typical in areas where there is a larger pop'n of white people vs. in a city of mostly non-whites (like in some parts of TO!). I know - I'm guilty of it too (in the past of course!!!). It's odd cause when you see white ppl interacting in 'other' countries, they pretty much run towards each other - because they've been saved from the 'locals'. They hang out at the upper-class bars, tourist places etc... They pretty much bond over whiteness. Whereas with us, we do our best to avoid, and then someone who is TOO KIND and 'clueless' will burst your bubble by using the line "oh finally someone from my country - can you pls help me," and you are suckered in to help them even though they are 'weird looking' and have just used a 'familial relation' to draw assistance from you. And they notice how youre embarassed and you notice how you're embarassed and it's like you've just been caught with stealing or something else equally embarassing.
So sad really.
Posted by: AradhanaD | February 14, 2007 at 12:49 PM
I didn't have too much experience with it---my high school in Ottawa was at the time very white. I do remember being expected to bond with the one other Nerdy Asian Kid in grade 4. We became friends but it became clear that we had different priorities in life---intellectual success to me meant more than math.
Posted by: Mandos | February 14, 2007 at 12:54 PM
It's interesting to note, however, that because there is, apparently, an entrenched non-directly-ruling white population in Ethiopia due to the aid industry, it's pretty likely that they might start to exhibit some of the characteristics of minorities of colour in white countries.
Posted by: Mandos | February 14, 2007 at 01:00 PM
Wow mandos - im surprised. I've had many such experiences like this - in the various cities I've lived in.
Once I went to uni though it was a whole different story.
Posted by: AradhanaD | February 16, 2007 at 12:42 AM
This is an an interesting post. UC and I have been reading about white culture and how it relates to feminism.
Posted by: Adorable Girlfriend | February 16, 2007 at 11:12 AM