IN THE 70s, my parents were a young couple on vacation in Johannesburg. They liked it so much, they packed their stuff and moved there from Switzerland. Soon after, I was born on a cold, rainy, winter’s day in Cape Town.
When I was learning to talk, my parents spoke to me in their native language, Swiss-German, but when I started nursery school I got very confused with having two different languages, so we switched to speak English all the time. Back then it was still apartheid, but I was too young to understand and it was normal to be surrounded by white people and immigrants., It was also normal to me that my mum would drive me to school with a loaded gun in the car. It was normal that when friends visited us, they would put their guns on top of the fridge, so we kids couldn’t play around with them.
It was also normal to have black servants ; a maid and a gardener, but my mum insisted on running the house herself, and the locals couldn’t understand it. We did however hire a gardener, Elliot. He worked in our big garden and turned into a play-buddy, driving me around in a wheelbarrow.
Increasing crime, the political situation, and an uncertain future for us kids in South Africa forced my parents to make the hard decision to move back to Switzerland. Until we departed I was sent to a German School, to make the transition easier. Most of the kids were German, with a few Swiss-Germans, but the teachers did not like the Swiss-Germans (they were not ‘true’ Germans). I had to learn German the hard way and I felt that I was not welcome at The Private German School of Johannesburg.
After 10 years of living in South Africa, we moved back to Switzerland. We sold all our belongings at a Jumble Sale in our garden, mostly by black people who could not afford to buy new. We are arrived in this little country called Switzerland with just a few cardboard boxes and suitcases. It was quite a culture shock for me – everything felt so narrow, all I saw were strangers, there were so many mountains, snow, cows in the fields, oh, and delicious chocolate!
We moved to a little village where the population was entirely Swiss. Now I walked to the school each day, the other kids would stare at me, realising that I was a ‘foreigner’ as soon as I opened my mouth and spoke the High German I had learned. Some of my words were very similar to the Swiss-German versions, but in a naughty way, so my classmates told my teacher I was talking rudely. Once again, I was made to feel unwelcome. One day, walking home, the kids asked me; ‘In Africa, did you have a bone in your hair and wear a skirt made of grass?’ I said; ‘Wait, what? No, we lived the same there as here!’ In the playground the older kids started to call me ‘Buschnigger’. More and more kids started calling me this and in every break I could hear them teasing me. My skin is very white and the kids started to ask if I was an ‘albino’. I said yes to keep them quiet but it singled me out even more and the whole village though of me as this strange girl with no pigment in her skin.
I started to dislike the Swiss people around me and I felt much closer to my family. I had an auntie from South-Korea, a cousin who had Tunisian blood, another auntie in Australia – all very different but accepted me as family, as I did them.
For many years I was homesick for South Africa. I didn’t want to make new friends, I preferred to be with kids who were a bit different to the others. Towards the end of school, I endured other nicknames, such as ‘poison-dwarf’ and ‘tiger-lily’ but they did not bother me – I was learning that I was special; I loved my freckles, my blond hair, my white skin.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard the word ‘Racism’. I went to visit the United States and met black, Mexican, Chinese, Turkish people studying English or Science at University or just making a living there. One Afro-American told me that; ‘I like Europeans because they are not ‘racists’ like they are here in America’. He told me how he could be walking down a street and get stared at, just because he is black. I was confused – I experienced the same when I moved to Switzerland, yet he looked the complete opposite of me and he is telling me the same story.
I have flown around the world, have family in the four corners of this earth, and everywhere I have been I hear stuff like this. Are we not all just humans trying to live with each other? Everyone of us has experienced discrimination; it could be just because you had crooked teeth, freckles on your skin or red hair. The word Racism does not exist for me, it’s a made up word from the Media. It’s a word to make business with, it’s a word that is thrown around in the news. We forget that each one of us has our own personal experience of judging or being judged. I try not to judge ; friends come and go, and family just accept. I am me, and I am proud to be me.
