A recent visitor from Britain was approached by a tiny Rwandan child. She could hear the tottering infant stutter: ‘ungu, ungu’. What was the child saying? An adult swept in. “That’s right, mzungu, mzungu,” the adult applauded the child. Not long after the mzungu in question arrived in Rwanda, was explained to her that mzungu meant white person. But she was puzzled, was this not rude? She laughed at the idea of an African coming to London and being called to in this way. Later, when she was with a Rwandan friend, a slightly bigger child wanting to ask her something called out “mzungu, mzungu.” The Rwandan snapped back, “don’t you know that’s rude?”The answer was no. The child, like most of Rwanda, does not think it is rude to address all white people like this. They are known as mzungus and it is thus apparently completely normal to call them this. Small children will chant mzungu at any passing white person. And it’s not just children who are guilty. People of all ages from all different walks of life will address our white visitors in this way. In fact, mzungus here for any length of time will often end up referring to themselves as such. I wondered about all this after seeing a group of uncontrollable kids run behind a group of white people with their mzungu choruses. The whites, who were from the USA, looked on smiling, not knowing what was going on. Some could be seen trying to inquire from an old black man what the mzungu word meant. The mzungu label originates from when Europeans first flocked to East Africa. The name was given to them so they could be easily identified. They were after all a bit different from the almost white Arabs along the coast. The mzungu word later infiltrated all Bantu languages of east Africa. You will find that in some schools in Rwanda, the English language is known as orujungu and whoever comes from English speaking countries, a mzungu. Canadian Nancy Colleens says at first she was uncomfortable with the name, knowing that may be it could have been discriminatory but she was later told that it’s simply a way of identifying them. Chantal, a mother of three, says the mzungu label is nothing to worry about and is by no means meant to offend. Parents teach kids many things. They teach them how to separate things. Through this, kids know white is different from a black, a Chinese and an Indian, said Chantal. But such categorisation can give the wrong messages, a visiting American explained. “We aren’t different and it’s dangerous for these children to think, for example, that all whites are wealthier than blacks.” “It might be more polite to ask the white person their name.” Ends
