Airing Out My Dirty Laundry - - "Ferenj, Ferenj!"

I worry too much about what people think.

I see them staring and I forget how to walk. I hold my breath, trying to mask any measure of being out-of-breath. My surroundings get fuzzy and my mind gets clouded, making it difficult to perform simple tasks like entering a taxi or walking through a store.

My life choices is a different matter. Unless you are family or close to me, I don’t care what you think about my life or my choices. It’s mine, and the consequences of my decisions are my own (not a rando-stranger’s). But when it is about who I am, then I get paranoid and over-anxious.

It’s ridiculous, but it is a struggle I face daily. 

No matter where I am, I hate falling into a stereotype, but this rings especially true during my life in Ethiopia. Any foreigner who has visited this great country has undoubtedly heard the term “ferenji” tossed about. It means “foreigner,” but there are connotations that come with it. It isn’t a derogatory term as far as I am aware, but I accept it as such and take slight offense when I walk down the streets of Bishoftu with a barrage of verbal utterances.

Now, to interject with objectivity, I’ve come to intellectually understand and accept this constant outcry. In Ethiopian culture, greetings are a big thing. Even if you can’t get out more than a name paired with a wave, you greet everyone you know as you go through your day-to-day. See your high school buddy across a busy street? You call out her name and continue on with your day. See a neighbor walking passed your house? You throw out a grunt, a hello, a wave with their name following the greeting. More pleasantries are allowed and often utilized, but this is the basis of almost every encounter, despite the brevity or distance.

My beautiful Ethiopian mother. 

Taking that cultural artifact and applying it to my “ferenji” assault, it becomes more of a greeting than a slur. They feel as though we are familiar enough to call out in greeting, and my name, as it were, was ferenji. 

I take offense not that they call me the term, but that they associate me with stereotypes and the identity of what is a “ferenj.” (Note: ferenj, ferenji, ferenju, ferenjo are all interchangeable as you might see the different forms used herein.) Typically, the identity associated with a “ferenji” is a rich(er) person who lives and travels throwing money out the window. They have a big house, expensive housewares, money in their pockets at all times, or they don’t think twice about spending extra money on things or services.

For me, the only association to the identity of ferenj that applies is the fact that I am white. All other stereotypes often slide off: I am frugal; I argue with every price I am given; I don’t carry any more money on me than I need (travel and emergency travel cash). People who actually know me call me habesha (a term for the local people). People who recognize me, though aren’t close, have been known to correct other people on the street who call after me using “ferenj” by saying I’m a habesha, not a ferenj. 

But the dirty laundry that I am airing out today isn’t the name-calling. I can deal with that. It is the issue of identity-related expectations and how everyone is watching me through the lenses of their stereotypes and can’t seem to function when I go against them. 

It’s a crazy cycle of expectancy violations that drives me insane.

For example: I take public transport because it is cheaper than private and a lot cheaper than personal transport. I’m not rich, so I’m going to save money however I can. The average person I encounter struggles to realign their expectations, and ask why I am taking a taxi and not my own car. Often times it is in conjunction with a weight insult, saying I should pay double fare because I am fat(ter) or something equally rude.

A Bajaj, the rickshaw type vehicle. 

I get that I’m not skinny and could stand to lose weight. So to combat that and to get in a little more exercise, I would walk around town or go by foot from my house to the main road (about a 20-minute walk) instead of taking a rickshaw type vehicle (called a Bajaj). But even then, I get overwhelmed with a near constant “he needs to exercise to lose that weight” or “wow, look how big!” or “is that a woman? Look at his boobs!”

Again, as an interjection to preserve Ethiopia’s integrity, American norms of society state that being blunt is rude and to keep negative thoughts to yourself. Ethiopian norms of society state, generally, that being blunt is acceptable. And I think too many ferenji people (and I do use that term with the appropriate identity markers) don’t take the time to learn the local language, and therefore create a sort of culturally acceptable buffer to allow for rude comments at the expense of foreigners because they don’t understand what is being said by the locals in passing.

But I do. I understand almost every word they say about me. And the reason why I know it isn’t a direct verbal assault is that it has never been said to my face, but said about me to the person sitting next to the speaker or to their friends as they walk past. They aren’t intending to be rude; they merely are being blunt with their friends or peers.

I get that. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

Even in my daily chores, I can’t escape this level of culture shock. When I examine the situation, I don’t really blame anyone as it is a cultural difference. Americans are generally raised to beat around the bush and never describe things in definite terms if they are of a more negative nature. Ethiopians generally are raised to say what they think. They aren’t trying to cut you open with their tongues, but merely calling out things for what and how they are.

Today I washed my laundry. A normal thing for every person in every culture. Americans many times use a machine to do their laundry, but I, like many people in Ethiopia, do it by hand. That means the three towels I washed had to be pre-rinsed, wrung out, washed, wrung out, then rinsed again and, yet again, wrung out. Then the rest of my clothes the same way (minus the pre-rinse). I don’t have a dryer; I have to hang my clothes on the balcony railing and stairway railing. I couldn’t even finish my laundry since I ran out of room to dry. 

Back in the hamper for another day.

Oh the struggle. </sarcasm>

But the main problem with this whole ritual is that while I am hanging my clothes out to dry on the balcony, everyone below stares. Like the “locked-on-stare-while-walking-away-until-the-neck-doesn’t-turn-any-more” type of staring. Then there are a couple of double takes after they get to that point in the road.

It’s the ferenj identity expectation violation. They expect a ferenji to hire someone to wash their clothes or to buy a washer and dryer. I’m washing my own clothes, so that’s a challenge to their preconceived notions and it is hard to cope. They stare as I put my underwear on display and as my shorts drip from not being wrung out all the way because I had already wrung out three towels and a jacket.

I get it. I am not angry or anything like that. I get annoyed. And over time it can be overwhelming. But today it’s just another aspect of my nomadic-wannabe life. I’m not all that different from the people in my neighborhood here in Ethiopia, but I come from a country whose lifestyle presupposes that I spend extra money on conveniences. I live frugally and do things for myself when I can, but my skin color betrays me because the norm that Ethiopians have encountered with other white-skinned people is the opposite.

It’s a small level of culture shock that I have found myself experiencing.

I have problems just like you, I just experience my crises in new and different places. I just am forced to see my problems in a kaleidoscope, seeing from a plethora of perspectives. No one is better or more right than another, but each perspective is a different reality. 

I am a nomad wannabe and this is my story.

-Kevin, the nomad wannabe.