Relearning My Identity

An Essay by MUTINTA NANCHENGWA

Depending on who you ask, my motivation to learn Swahili came from a desire to understand Nyashinski’s songs. Nyashinski is a wildly popular singer and rapper from Kenya, and the way he weaves narratives and commands the microphone captivated me so deeply that I just had to understand everything he was saying. However, if someone closer to me were to ask, I would say that I wanted to understand my mother’s roots better. My mother is from Kenya, and my father was Zambian, and understandably, this meant identity building was a little bit harder. And if you were to interrogate me, you may discover that I have always held a fixation for Kenyan accents, and hope that learning Swahili would give me this accent. All of these answers would be true, but fundamentally, I wanted to really take some time to understand me. 

Growing up, I liked to refer to myself as a continental African. I often reminisced on Sauti Sol’s Afrikan Star - Your papa Uganda, your mama Burundi. Except, with me, it was my papa, Zambia, my mama, Kenya. Sometimes I would refer to myself as COMESA’s greatest export— love personified, solidified across borders, tribes and even tongue to create the truest African Star. When people asked, “What country are you from?” I would smile coyly and say, “I am African in the truest sense.” I didn’t grow up in any of my parents’ countries. I started school in Botswana and grew up in Zimbabwe. I consumed South African television and devoured Nigerian afro-pop. I didn’t need to narrow down to an identity because I was already shaping up to be an amalgamation of several cultures. Except when that one crippling question came: what language do you speak at home? I always felt feeble and meek when I responded, ‘English’. 

As I mentioned earlier, I did not grow up in my country of origin. Zambia was almost part myth for me; I was born there, and my father was from there, but my memories of Zambia were scanty. When I was on the cusp of four years old, my family and I moved to Gaborone, Botswana. I was enrolled in a nursery school, where English was the primary language of instruction. My parents spoke English with each other as well, and my older brothers were all enrolled at an international school. My vernacular language, Tonga, was not something that I thought about often, if at all. When we did learn Setswana, Botswana’s most widely spoken language, it never assimilated the way English did. My father always maintained that he wanted us to be global citizens, and global citizens not only spoke English, but were competent and confident in English pronunciation, grammar and lexicon. We were often teased as kids for having English accents. As we grew older, the English accent we had accidentally adopted became a source of pride for me; my English was impeccable. In Zimbabwe, I went to a private Catholic school, and most of the time, we spoke English on the playground. I never felt the need to speak Shona, and I never had the chance to learn Tonga, Nyanja, or any other Zambian languages. Today, I disagree with my father’s choice not to teach us any of our local tongues, but the decision made sense at the time. After all, I hadn’t seen the inside of Zambian borders between the ages of four and sixteen.  

My father did not live to see us realise his dream of being global citizens. He passed away when I was young and before we could return to Zambia. In the years after his death, while the Zambian community did show up in their own way, I found myself mostly in the company of the Kenyan community in Harare. The majority of the parties we went to were Kenyan, and to this day, most of my childhood friends are from Kenya. Navigating what it meant to be a foreigner in Zimbabwe, whilst figuring out who I was, became an interesting challenge. I so badly wanted to fully identify as a Kenyan. After all, I had a Kenyan mom, and could confidently say that most of the foods I ate were Kenyan, the accent I heard most growing up was Kenyan, and there were always Kenyan people coming in and out of my house. I almost felt like I was crazy— I wasn’t Zimbabwean, I didn’t feel Zambian, and I couldn't claim this part of me because of the massive barrier of my stubborn English tongue. 

My identity as an African was at odds. It was easy to escape questions about my identity when people asked, but as more Africa Days passed by, in which we were asked to describe aspects of our outfits, or maybe the traditional food we had carried with us, I was always at a loss, despite proudly carrying chapati or pilau rice. I would introduce myself as Zambian, but I would carry Kenyan foods. At the time, I barely knew any Zambian traditional foods. I visited Kenya once when I was very young. We went to the beach and visited some of my cousins in the village. I spent my second birthday in the hills of West Kenya, but even then, Kenya seemed like a distant memory rather than a place of identity. I had distant memories of Zambia, too, tucked somewhere in my consciousness. A house in Makeni, a nursery school somewhere in Lusaka. 

I knew I was Zambian and Kenyan, but I didn't know which side I identified with the most, if any. I came to learn that identity was more than just your nationality, but it was shaped by things like the language you spoke, your tribe, your food and even the little traditions you held in your family. 

The older I grew, the more I began to question things like what does identity mean in nation-building? As we passed through seven years of social studies and eventually World History, we learnt about Colonialism and the Struggle for Africa. I would listen with bated breath to the stories about the Chimurenga wars and the bravery of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi. I would look at my classmates’ faces, and see them too enraptured by the heroes of Zimbabwean independence. I would sadly realise that I did not know anything about Zambian or indeed Kenya’s independence. I may be the perfect Pan - African baby, but I was beginning to feel like a colonialist's dream - African and yet detached from my roots. 

I would hear and ponder on things like how colonialists stole African identity by forcing them to adopt English names. I would look at my name badge that proudly bore Michelle - my middle name, which I preferred because it was easier to pronounce. I wondered if I really was a continental African. 

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenyan writer and academic, said, “If you know all the languages of the world but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement. Knowing your mother tongue and all other languages too is empowerment”. When I was younger, I often felt helpless in my cage of linguistic enslavement. By the time I had the opportunity to ask my father to teach me more about my country and culture, he was gone. This added a new thread to the tapestry of my identity. I was now confronted with the term “single orphan,” one I would have never imagined would be used to describe me. 

I was back at the drawing board. Who am I? Kenyan, Zambian and partly orphaned. 

It feels crazy to say, but I spent the later years of my teenagehood as an identityless entity. Agenda 2063 of the Africa Union has seven aspirations, and five on the list are An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics. At 17 years old, if you had asked me how I felt about this, I might have wept. My experiences and feelings towards Africa were a myriad of different cultures and values. I used to argue with friends that if we wanted Africa to be better, we couldn't emigrate en masse to study or work; I was adamant that a Shona accent was just as valuable as a French accent, I was insistent that being an African person should not be a source of shame, but I felt like such a hypocrite. I did not own a single piece of chitenge fabric at that time, the only Zambian vernacular I knew was my first name. As for Kenya—don’t even get me started. 

I felt like a cultural imposter. 

I was stealing the best parts of each culture I was part of, without fully engaging in the good, the bad and the ugly. I knew about the Chimurenga wars, I had heard about the Mau Mau uprising, and I knew vaguely about the Chachacha. I told the story of Nyami Nyami with pride, because it was the only Tonga lore I knew, and I would carry my tiny sisal bag to church sometimes. I tried to run from the feeling of emptiness, and learnt how to code-switch, so my accent wouldn't sound as foreign as it did. When people accused me of faking my accent, I would simply shrug. I felt like a fake after all. I was plagued with terms like coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside). 

I was running successfully, until I moved back to Zambia. Something about being in your birthplace confronts the innermost parts of you. I was again enrolled in an upmarket school, but something was different. I was hearing Nyanja and Bemba being spoken on a daily basis. I can recall struggling with the pronunciation of “kandolo”. I would elongate the letter ‘o’ in the word, and it made my classmates laugh each time. I would laugh alongside them, in a public display of good-naturedness, but internally I wanted to scream. I couldn’t hide behind being a foreigner anymore— I was Zambian with a very Zambian name. It was, therefore, unsurprising that people would speak to me in Nyanja automatically. Once again, I was engulfed by shame, as my tongue stumbled over words like “muli bwanji” or “zikomo”. The illusion of being a continental African shattered. It no longer felt impressive to say I was ‘African’, it felt lame. But even though I was Zambian, I still felt foreign in my hometown. Especially that my mother wasn’t Zambian, and that had its own challenges too. 

If you cannot identify with your own people, with whom will you identify? 

The hardest part about learning your own language when you are older is your accent and pronunciation. Even now, when Nyanja is much more familiar, I have been plagued with the still sad, but less pathetic phrase: “I can understand Nyanja, I just can’t speak it.” By the time I was graduating high school, I realised that while I may have never been taught to speak Nyanja or Tonga or Bemba, I was responsible for learning to communicate with the people I was around. At that time, I was considering the idea of going abroad for university. If I had moved to Europe or China, I would have had to learn the respective languages to survive. Would I then use the flimsy excuse that I was foreign? Probably not. 

I then began diving into trying to learn Nyanja, the lingua franca of Lusaka. It started small, learning to say “tiseluka apa” when using the bus, and “ma tomato ni zingati?” when my mother sent me to the market. I would listen to Pompi and Mag44’s music - two gospel artists, who use a mixture of Nyanja, English and Bemba in their songs, to learn the language and pronunciation. I would ask my friends what certain words meant. I had mishaps - I thought that mfwiti was a broom when it actually means a witch. I would sometimes mix up tenses and phrases, and my pronunciation was still awful, but I could understand and attempt to speak the language. Today, if someone approached me and held a conversation in Nyanja, I could respond. And the more I beat my tongue into submission, the more malleable it became—until it could shape itself around  Nyanja. Progress felt beautiful.

But there was still something missing. 

I came to realise that belonging to a culture is a lot more than just speaking the language. I still didn’t have too many cultural artefacts from Zambia. I had not yet reached the stage in life where a chitenge was normal for me. Sure, I could cook nshima, but to date, I mostly eat the majority of traditional vegetables like lumanda and katapa when I visit a matebeto restaurant. I realised that in our household, we rarely knelt to greet elders. This does not mean that we were outrightly rude to elders, and only ever ate pasta and lobster. It just meant that certain cultural practices were different. In Kenya, for example, my mom told me it is taboo to visit someone empty-handed. And I remembered this from childhood: every time we visited a friend, we would carry something, even a bottle of juice.

Culturally, I still felt excluded. I once visited a friend, and her grandmother was home. She explained that we needed to kneel before greeting her grandmother. This was new to me. Whenever I met elders, I would shake their hands and curtsy slightly. This was typically met with a hug and a smile. In Harare, I was taught to clap in appreciation when receiving something, and to receive with my right hand and a curtsy. I genuinely was not aware that you were supposed to kneel for your elders. I noticed that many of my peers didn’t use terms like coconut, but I did still hear things like “uyu ni muzungu, she isn’t Zambian.”

I don’t want to sound like I am whining, but it is truly hurtful to have your whole identity questioned on the basis of what you cannot do. If we look at the facts, truly  I was a Pan-African’s greatest desire. But it begins to chip at your self-view when your identity is constantly questioned. I was not a muzungu, no matter how foreign my accent sounded. 

I had come to realise that my background was met with a combination of admiration and disgust. On one hand, some people envied how I spoke English, “in a smooth and polished manner,” and others abhorred that my Nyanja was pathetic, that  I had to take a few seconds to compute what was being said to me. I was Zambian, living in my father’s land, yet I had never felt more foreign. I slipped back into old habits. ‘I am a continental African,’ I would say. But this time I was more shy, it was a question, not a statement - I am an imperfect African, would you still accept me? 

One of the problems with preemptively knowing that you might not be accepted is that you will inadvertently shrink yourself into dark corners. In a bid for self-preservation, I kept my “golden mixed nationality status” under wraps. I tried to keep to myself as much as possible, and blended in, accepting my vernacular faux pas with as much grace as I could muster. 

Despite my self-acceptance, I still felt like an incomplete puzzle. 

As I grew older and closer to my mother, as inevitably, most young women do, my curiosity towards her heritage grew too. My mother has always had a polyglot’s tongue. She picks up languages with the ease of native speakers. My mother has been my sole guardian all my life. Her eyes have shaped my experiences of culture, society and citizenry. It began to feel unfair that for all I had learnt at her knees, I knew so little about her and her heritage. 

I was privileged enough to visit Kenya recently. As soon as I stepped off the plane, onto the smouldering asphalt of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, my eyes grew wide with wonder. I had never stopped to consider if I looked Kenyan or Zambian, but hearing Uber drivers ferrying me across Nairobi, commenting that I looked very Kenyan, unlocked something vulnerable and raw in me. I immersed myself deeply into the richness of Kenyan accents, reminded subtly of how my mom speaks. I would send her pictures of Nairobi, and she would respond with joy as she remembered landmarks. I was met with such wide and welcoming arms, even from strangers. Even when I said I was Kenyan but could not speak Swahili, they would laugh and say, “hebu, nitakufundisha” - well, I will teach you. 

It felt like I had finally come home to my final puzzle piece. 

Today, I wear the Kenyan wristband with pride. It is a marker of my mother’s heritage passed down through me. From my father’s side, I am trying to carry the rhythms of Zambia. I sometimes attend Nyanja mass to boost my vocabulary and continue to force this stubborn tongue into submission. I still play Nyashinski’s albums with the fervour of a fan girl. And I fixate on the last line of Afrikan Star under my breath - African time baby, sitachelewa! - African time, baby, I won’t be late.

It may have taken me a while, but I am not late to learn.