Kenyan-born Nanjala Nyabola Share Realities Of Travelling While Black
Reading Travelling While Black feels like engaging in a conversation that I have always wanted to have. The foreword bluntly informs you that โthis is not a travel memoirโ โ and rightly so. The bookโs 17 essays span a wide range of issues inspired by the authorโs individual journeys.
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Nyabola, a Kenyan-born writer, speaker and political analyst, raises questions and provides eloquent insight into experiences that people living in the West may sympathize with but are unlikely to ever endure: appalling processes to get a visa, crossing the Mediterranean to seek asylum, or knowing no other home than a refugee camp.
Opening with her first trip to Haiti as a human rights volunteer, the essay โMโPa Blan: I am Not Whiteโ reflects on how the locals called Nyabola white despite being visibly black, because she is not Haitian, had travelled from the United States and was educated โ she has a law degree from Harvard. The author finds herself in unexpectedly close proximity to whiteness and its privileges in Haiti, realizing that being black is not the same everywhere.
By contrast, after spending six weeks in Togo and another six in Ghana, Nyabola finds an additional 10 days to explore neighbouring Burkina Faso where at times she goes unnoticed. Filled with a sense of insecurity from reading guidebooks about West African countries, her second essay โTravelling While Blackโ documents Nyabolaโs โglorious discoveryโ that her morning walks could take place amid regular people carrying on with their day and absorbed in their journeys.
Postcolonial structures are ingrained into every part of the visa application process, but minor mishaps can make the experience even more precarious
One recurring theme is the politics of mobility. In โPeriodic Offering to the Visa Godsโ, she calls out the degrading โ and costly โ process an individual from the Global South must tolerate to be granted a visa. Postcolonial structures are ingrained into every part of the process, and minor mishaps can make the experience even more precarious. This is illustrated with Nyabolaโs visa application at a South American embassy in Kenya, where refusing to apologize to a consul cost her a visa. The process reinforces a sense of inferiority, while reaping the financial benefits for the embassy: rejection rates are high, but applicants must pay non-refundable fees upfront.
The consequences of the hostility faced by black and brown people reach a critical point in the chapter โThe Sea that Eats our Childrenโ, where Nyabola explores the effects of Europeโs cruel policies that make it challenging to migrate to the region in a humane manner. The bookโs lengthiest essay opens with the authorโs last-minute whim to participate in a conference, hoping to recover a โsense of purposeโ after three frustrating years seeking to establish herself as a human rights lawyer in Italy.
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Despite the disappointingly abstract nature of the conference discussion, the author sets off โto witness one of the most urgent humanitarian crises of the 21st centuryโ. On seeing traumatized refugees arriving at the dock in Sicily, the reality of privilege is clear as she juxtaposes the difficulties she has faced travelling as a tourist from Rome to settle in Palermo to volunteer to help refugees, with Europeansโ ease of volunteering in Kenya โ they can even outstay their tourist visas.
Still on the issue of citizenship, in โWho Do You Say I Am?โ, Nyabola unravels the humiliating similarities between wearing a pass around your neck during the colonial period in Kenya and the system of obtaining citizenship in that country today. The national identity card should be an entitlement for Kenyan adults, but the application process often resembles a convoluted rite of passage of which the author had first-hand experience. In order to confirm her identity, Nyabola had to travel to her late fatherโs home region to verify her lineage as her motherโs heritage was not enough. In the bookโs signature style, the essay paints a broader picture of Kenya full of conditional citizens, including the hundreds of Somalis with Kenyan citizenship, who were detained in a stadium with refugees from Somalia for not having identity cards.
Other essays that stand out include: โAfrica For Beginners,โ that points out tourism guidebooks were never written for non-white people; and โThe African Is Not at Home,โ which poses questions on the practicality of Pan-Africanism when xenophobic attacks are rife.
Overall, Travelling While Black is thought-provoking due to Nyabolaโs proficiency in taking on conventional wisdom. She rightly reminds readers that the world needs to be seen through the lens of others. Throughout the book, the author constantly questions what she can do and concludes that small acts of resistance can achieve slow but ambitious progress on issues that shape many lives.
With Nyabolaโs proficiency in taking on conventional wisdom,ย she rightly reminds readers that the world needs to be seen through the lens of others
Inspirational, thoughtful and informative, the book expertly reminds you that Nyabola is a sister and daughter with her own history and story. She is a writer conscious of the untold or unrecognized stories of black and brown men, women and children whose dehumanizing experiences testify to the legacy of colonialism and other ideological structures that persist.
As a black woman exploring various continents solo, I am a frequent recipient of discrimination, at home and abroad, but I am also privileged. What does travel hold for those who do not have a British passport, an esteemed education and a palatable accent? Despite her difficulties, Nyabola ends with a hopeful call to action: โTravel has taught me that a different world is possible and even attainable, and that, even though the beast is large, and its tentacles are long, there are enough of us to do something meaningful towards destroying it.โ
By Vivienne Dovi
Source-https://www.chathamhouse.org/
Kenyan-born Nanjala Nyabola Share Realities Of Travelling While Black