A vexing notion about Zambia

 

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The  Pilgrim, April 22, 2022

Learning, a bromide goes, never ends. What that means to me is that until recently, I didn’t know what the word microaggression means, or that it even existed at all. It’s even self-deprecating for me to say that because writers aren’t easily surprised by words: they tend to know lots of them.

I learnt of the said word during a townhall meeting at my university as a colleague was discussing a case of discrimination. I looked it up later and Oxford Languages on Google defines it as “a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.”

So there you’ve it. A microaggression can be a mere statement. The problem or interesting thing is that it can be intentional or unintentional. A good example is a seemingly harmless question such as where are you from? Nothing egregious about it but in America this question is widely considered rude, impolite, insensitive, or simply a microinsult. It’s the undertones of the question that people have a problem with. To some it sounds standoffish or mockery!

This brings me to a good question: as a Zambian in America, have I encountered a microaggression before? Now that I can put a word on it, I’d say multiple times. But the most witless one is when my Mexican or Black American friends ask me: how many wives do you’ve back in Zambia? How many women can I marry if I came to Africa?

First, I’m not married. But that’s what makes the question even more slighting. It’s the assumption that a 25-year-old man like myself has multiple women swooning over him as wives. I mean, what kind of microaggression is that? There is also the assumption that men probably have it easier with women in Zambia in particular and Africa in general. I can also infer that my friends tend to imagine that African men are riotously virile and obsess over aphrodisiacs.

I don’t know who really fetishized Zambia or our continent. It might be the movies or the songs, or both. But what I know is that they have left a mess in their wake. They leave us with unpaid jobs to disabuse clueless people of such notions. I don’t even have to ask but I think that horny Americans who pose such questions think of Zambia as a place where you can find bare-breasted exotic women sauntering the surroundings with such captivating grace, waiting on male suitors out in the fields on a hunting spree. Give me a break!

It's the fantasy that gets to me. Maybe we can excuse the romantic thought, but the fantasy should be condemned. It’s good to think about a country like Zambia in romantic ways, but it’s dangerous to confuse imagination with reality.

I’m sorry to disappoint my American friends but dating doesn’t come naturally to any man born of a woman in Zambia. It’s as tough in Zambia as it is in America. Whether you’ve money or not, you might still be unlucky in Zambia that an attempt at love takes you through hell.

I’ve also not seen the polygamy that many people think exists in my country. Not to say that it’s nonexistent, but it’s not commonplace. You might have to actually stay among the Tonga or Mambwe people in the rural hinterland of Zambia to experience it. The same cannot be said about urban areas of the country. I stayed, studied, and worked in Zambia’s capital Lusaka and never once did I see a polygamous marriage. But just like in Illinois, USA, Lusaka has men trying to hit on as many women as they can find after a hectic day.

I should also warn my American friends against reducing women to mere sex objects because they’ll be in for a big surprise. The hearth is no longer a woman’s place in the home. Zambia has been firing on all cylinders when it comes to producing powerful women. Not only does the country have a female vice-president, but the country’s corporate world isn’t short of female business leaders. Talk of banks, media institutions or even universities.

What I’d say about microaggressions is that they are a sore point and reveal glaring misconceptions individuals hold about other peoples or countries. In this case, Zambia isn’t what some American people think it is. Its women are dignified, and they put a price on their love. The country isn’t a jungle, but it’s developing, and its men are industrious. Fundamentally, it’s a country like any other in the world.

*This column is published every Friday in Zambia's best-selling newspaper, the Zambia Daily Mail