I, Obruni

Obruni is the Twi word for foreign person or white person (they are interchangeable). It has become my name. Every time I step on the street, the word “obruni” bubbles all around me. They are talking about me.

In Africa, my skin is the most important determinate of my identity. I am a caricature, an exaggerated amalgamation.

I would like to say that being, for a moment, a member of the minority gives me some wonderful sympathetic perspective into the experience of minorities in my home country. However, there is an essential difference: everywhere in the world, my skin is the skin of privilege. It is the skin of the colonizers, conquerors and slave traders. It is the skin of those who have won the Darwinian struggle for the earth’s natural and manufactured resources. It is the skin of wealth and power.
I can go into any restaurant, hotel, business, hospital, or government office in this country and be treated a certain way based simply on my skin color. The reality that I am the daughter of an insignificant working class family who survived on top ramen and pretzels in college is inconceivable. In America, I am nobody. In Africa, I am a white person and that means I must be important.

Two other (white) women and I visited a small community church at the invitation of one of the associate pastors. We were seated in front. I don’t mean the first row, I mean the stage.

When I was here as a student, I wanted to do an internship. I took a bus to Ghana’s Department of Social Welfare to look at the bulletin boards. Within minutes, I was sipping tea with the National Director. (Not based on my merit)

This weekend I went to Cape Coast castle. It is a slave “castle.” A point of export for millions of slaves. This history cannot be erased from modern race relations.

Accra’s best neighborhoods are inhabited by obrunis (Europeans, Americans, Lebanese, Koreans). Lovely walled compounds with beautiful bougainvillea and lush grass. Foreigners control many of the major businesses. It is possible to be in Africa and totally surround yourself with other foreigners. There are lovely hotels, restaurants and beachside resorts that are priced exclusively for the foreigner. Eating at a restaurant where lunch is $5 a plate will out-price an average Ghanaian. Eating fufu and stew from a communal bowl sitting on a crate on the side of the road will overwhelm the average obruni. Lunch hour is an hour of apartheid.
Being a white person in Africa is like being at the zoo. Rather, I should say in the zoo. On display. An object of interest. Curious and odd to look at. The skin of privilege is a mobile cage. I cannot roam freely. Wherever I walk, the children call “obruni” to announce my passing and I, once a child on Vandiver Lane, walk the streets as an icon of colonization, slavery, The World Bank, George Bush’s America, and Hollywood.