Achom
July 14, 2016
Why am I even going to school? Here suffering with 15 essays, four assignments and six exams to study for, all for what? It is 3 a.m I can’t seem to find any answers or any sleep. Mixed emotions, confusion but anger tops the list. It could be the moods, the cramps killing me, still have like three more days. All that money, will go to waste? Because I am a Dinka. The best and private schools from kindergarten to the university, but still a slave to my Sudanese culture. What’s the point?
They named me Nyilweth Malual, but today, I give out that Sudanese name. I wish it was food or something to give away and make someone somewhere smile. I don’t want it anymore, letting go of these handcuffs that have made me a prisoner to culture for many years.
“Nyaiko don’t do this, the Dinka culture does not allow it, Nyaiko don’t forget you are a Dinka that is not how we do it. “
Give a sista a break, 20 years in Kenya and you still expect me to be less of Kenyan and more of Sudanese that is not even logical or healthy.
I tried, I swear I tried, to reconnect and embrace my roots. Mama still taught us to eat our foods, I have no English or Christian name, Nyaiko is our name, never been proud of my melanin, although my Dinka is broken I still converse in our language. I’m asking why and literally putting letter Y in our, am done being a slave to your culture!
So when I blossomed, having been socialized here, I was bound to date Kenyans, not that I had anything against my people (refer to Your Dinka now). I related more with those I lived with for two decades, who can blame me? This was like a sin, they were ready to stone me, it is an abomination!
My cousins, who “messed up” and got Kenyan kids were an outcast, like that was the bigger crime, than a 70-year-old man having a sixth wife younger than my small sister. Sorry for making you have such an awful mental picture.
Sometime back, I visited my old man and it was a one of a kind 3 months. I got the opportunity to interact with all sorts of people. Definitely going to write a book someday, it will be the type of book you read and feel embarrassed that such people actually exist. The kind you wished you were an octopus so that you slap some sense into them simultaneously.
What pissed me off is that they claimed they were educated and learned. But those two things were distinct. “I’d rather you slept with our dogs, than with those men”
Now if a journalist can afford to verbally sh** like that, what kind of cholera is in that society?
Am I supposed to be rich in knowledge but still continue slaving this master or try kill it and bring change? I thought school was a way to expand ourselves, grow and leave the old fashioned ways and not just a means of getting money and the bright future you all been preaching about?
I don’t need the 20 minute lecture on how wrong it is to walk and talk to a male classmate. You don’t have to threaten my classmate because he is more of a man than you who is here getting in my business. Just because we share the same skin complexion doesn’t mean anything. Just because we share a historic background doesn’t mean anything either.
I view myself as an individual and will not be a slave to my skin color.
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