Thoughts on Being a Vazaha

vazaha (vah-ZAH): foreigner, especially Caucasian

One of the things that really gets my gizzard is when people call me a vazaha. It comes from cute little kids, posiposy drivers trying to get me to ride in their rickshaws, random passers-by, and even sometimes from my friends and students. Why does it bother me so much, you may ask? Well, that is not an easy question to answer.

When my friends in choir, or my students at high school, call me vazaha, I feel as though they don’t care enough about our relationship to learn my name. I am just another foreigner. Someone who clearly doesn’t belong.

When random people on the street call me vazaha, it comes with the assumption that I have a lot of money. On Thursday, a posiposy driver yelled at me to get in his rickshaw, when there was already someone else in it! He called me over with the expectation that he could overcharge me. He assumed, because I am a vazaha, that I am not familiar with how much a posiposy ride should cost, and that I have money to spare. So, he tried to replace his already paying customer with me.

A couple of weeks ago, an older woman came up and asked me for money. When I told her that I didn’t have any money on me, she replied “You’re a vazaha. And all vazaha have money.”

I took a taxi-brousse when I left Farafangana to go on the Madagasgals’ second retreat in March. Most regional taxi-brousse operate on a “we leave when it’s full” principle, and my brousse was waiting for two more seats to get filled before we left for Manakara. I walked in the office just to see if either had been sold yet, when the woman at the desk told me that I should buy the two extra tickets so that the brousse could leave. When I told her that I didn’t have that money to spare, she said “But you’re a vazaha. And all vazaha have money.”

Are you seeing a trend here?

However, I also have to think about the implications of being called "vazaha," beyond just what it may do to my fragile psyche… causing me to question my friendships or making me uncomfortable when people point out the money I have. The deeper implications of the name are rooted in colonialism and racism. Why should I feel so offended that people don’t use my name, when vazaha controlled the country up until 1960? Why should the Malagasy people have bothered to consider that vazaha might be individual people with names, when most white people they saw, until very recently, were in positions of power over them?

I have to admit, one of the things I find myself most looking forward to about getting back to the States is shedding the label of "vazaha." Being able to walk around and not feel like I’m attracting attention to myself. But why will I be able to walk around without attracting attention to myself? Because my white skin is the “norm” in America. When people call me vazaha, I am reminded again and again of the privilege I have both here in Madagascar, and in the United States, solely because of the color of my skin. Our Area Director, Reverend Andrea Walker, spoke to the Madagasgals about this some on our first retreat. She spoke about how she is too light-skinned to be fully integrated into many of the African communities in which she is present (as the ELCA Global Mission Area Director for West Africa, that is quite a few), but she is too dark-skinned to be fully integrated into American life. Let me repeat that. She does not feel fully comfortable in America, HER HOME COUNTRY, because of the color of her skin. How can I look forward to going back to a country where I will no longer feel out-of-the-ordinary, when that comfortableness is at the expense of People of Color in America?

There are nine students who live at SeJaFa and are albino. One of my best English students, Heriot, recently joined AKRIFA. And now, my choir has someone else they call “vazaha.” Heriot has told me he doesn’t mind it, but he is quite literally being called a foreigner in his own country! Like Rev. Walker, he is being seen as an outsider in his own home. Another one of my students, Nôry, was dressed up for the “Journées de Ecolés” parade we had back in January. A few of the SeJaFa teachers, as a form of admiration, called her “vazaha” because of her white skin and her fancy, parade-day clothes. Nôry enjoyed herself and worked the compliments as she struck poses and showed off her festival look. But, she has also admitted to me that she wishes she had dark hair, like all of her friends.

Despite whether people in my community think being called a vazaha is a positive or negative thing, (or maybe they don’t think about it too much at all!) there is definitely the idea that vazaha (white) is better. And this has implications on the self-confidence of both my brown Malagasy friends who are striving for something they have been lead to believe is superior (the racist effects of colonialism are still alive and well), and my white Malagasy friends who are just trying to be accepted in their own communities. For just one example, last week I drew a stick figure with curly hair on the board at my primary school (we were learning body parts). When one of my students was copying the lesson into her notebook, she told me that she didn’t know how to draw curly hair. Hair that is like her own, beautiful hair! And I think this is because everything she sees tell her that straight (milamina, in Malagasy) hair is better. So she draws all of her stick figures with straight, long hair.

I can’t imagine growing up and consistently being told that who you are is not beautiful. That you should strive to have lighter skin, straighter hair, longer hair. Where every person you see in movies, on book bags, on the covers of notebooks, on your very own school sign, does not look like you. And that, because they do not look like you, they are inherently better. And I know that the reason I can’t imagine that is because I was born with white skin in America.

Being a vazaha comes with a whole lot of guilt for me. Guilt from knowing that I am more financially secure than almost everyone in Madagascar. Guilt because of what people with white skin, my skin, have done in this country, throughout the entire African continent, and in the United States. Guilt when Malagasy women admire my “milamina” hair, knowing that so many of them use chemical treatments on their hair to get it to look like mine. Guilt at recognizing that the only reason I haven’t had to think about the color of my skin or the way my hair lays for most of my life is because I was born into a culture where white skin and straight hair is considered the norm. Guilt at my angry reaction at being called “vazaha,” when I have no reason to be angry.

To wrap-up my thoughts, I would like to share this excerpt from Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father. In recounting his time in Kenya, Obama writes “For a span of weeks or months, you could experience the freedom that comes from not feeling watched, the freedom of believing that your hair grows as it’s supposed to grow and that your rump sways the way it’s supposed to sway…Here the world was black, and so you were just you; you could discover all those things that were unique to your life without living a lie or committing betrayal” (page 311).

I am experiencing that span of time that Obama spoke about, where my "world is black." However, I am the one being watched because I am a vazaha. My experience here in Madagascar is NOT AT ALL similar to the experiences of People of Color in the United States. I am a beneficiary of systemic racism. Here in Madagascar, I am being watched, but my singularity comes with the implication of privilege.

When I return to the States, I cannot let myself settle back into the comfortability of my “normalness.” How can we be content until America feels like home to everyone who lives in it?

The sign for the bookstore at SeJaFa. There are no blind, white students there, so why does the child on the sign appear Caucasian? I know of at least one other school sign that features white children here in Farafangana, but I am sure there are more.