Day 81: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Called Shinwa

(Though Hee Hong still annoys me)

Integration into another culture is a topic that has been on my mind for a while, and I’m sure that it’s a subject that many expats come across sooner or later.

As an academic researcher, a certain degree of integration is important to me in order to avoid alienating potential research participants, to understand my subject population, and in order to have access to segments of the population that may otherwise be unavailable (such as those who are only comfortable speaking pidgin). But there is shallower part of me that would take pride in being a fluent traveler who can blend in wherever I go. I find this part of me rather annoying for several reasons, least of which is because its bombastic expectations are so often disappointed.

While third world immigrants who struggle to assimilate into the culture of a first world nation are often the subjects of various books, films, and documentaries, the expatriate who works to integrate into the developing world seems to have a less significant presence in the cultural institutions of the West. Having immigrated into the US at the age of six, I have some experience in integration into the developed world. It’s the latter issue that I am attempting to deal with here in Cameroon.

How and to what extent integration occurs can speak volumes about both the individuals attempting to integrate and the host culture in question

The American culture seems almost designed for integration: political correctness (enforced, to an extent, by law) discourages prejudices of any kind, but especially of ethnicity; the cuisine is a multicultural menu, on which few items are authentically of American origin; the socio-political atmosphere encourages the adoption of the American identity; etc. I don’t mean to say that integrating into American culture is free of tribulations, or easy. My experience was neither. How, then, when even native Cameroonians can be considered “whiteman,” can anyone hope to integrate into a culture with such a strong idea of who is and is not a member of its constituency?

I don’t know the answer to that question and I’m not sure if an answer even exists.

My heritage originates from an ethnically Korean enclave in China. I am an ethnic Korean, born in Beijing, with an American upbringing, which can make things interesting when a curious Cameroonian inquisitor asks me where I am from. The conversation usually continues:

Me: “From America”
Curious in Cameroon: “But you are Chinese?”
Me: “No, I’m Korean.”
Curious in Cameroon: “You were born in Korea, or America?”
Me: “I was born in China.”
Curious in Cameroon: “Oh… Do you speak Chinese? Ni hong!”
Me: “No. I speak Fulfulde. Jam na!”
Curious in Cameroon: “???”
(I actually do speak Chinese, but I deny it to avoid conversations in indecipherably butchered Mandarin. I also enjoy seeing the shocked-confused look on the faces of locals while they try to come to terms with a Shinwa who speaks Fulfulde, but not Chinese)

When I walk down the street, a fraction of the time I get a Cameroonian who shouts out whiteman! While this confused me at first, I preferred it much more to the calls of Shinwa! Chinese! Beijing! Jackie Chan! Ching Ching Chong! Hee Hong! and others that make up the rest of my everyday soundtrack in Cameroon. In the first few weeks, when walking through the market drew sneers of from merchants or idle men sitting at local chop shops, my hopes of being welcomed into the Cameroonian culture were dashed, as I believed myself relegated into a category of stingy Easterner. “I’m an American, damnit!” I wanted to shout at them. Maybe being a whiteman isn’t the greatest thing for integration into an African culture, but I didn’t come to Cameroon to be harassed. I’ve been told that the epithets are innocent, that most hecklers don’t mean any malice, but having grown up in California in the wake of the Rodney King riots, some of the calls strike a nerve.

My turning point was during an October afternoon in Limbe with Dr. Kamga, a close friend. During the drive down, we were bombarded with the usual salvo of whiteman and shinwa, and I asked Dr. Kamga what the Cameroonian views on the Chinese were.

“Twenty or thirty years ago, many of Cameroonians would not have been able to tell the difference between Chinese and Europeans,” he explained. “The Chinese are still considered white, because of their skin color, but now many Cameroonians recognize that the Chinese are different from Europeans or Americans. There is a certain level that is expected of the [Caucasians]. You would never expect them to do certain things or work certain jobs, even if they had stayed here for a long time. But the Chinese in Cameroon have taken their place in every level of society. They may take jobs like selling puf pufs or groundnuts. Some of them have even taken jobs that Cameroonians would not take! I told you the Chinese built Buea Hospital? When the workers came, they brought their families with them and their wives worked in the town. I think because of this, Cameroonians can respect the Chinese because they recognize that they are here to try to make a living, like them.”

Dr. Kamga continued, “In Bafoussam, they say that the Chinese are all Bamileke.” Dr. Kamga, whose father is Bamileke, laughs. The Bamileke are Cameroon’s entrepreneurial minority. Like the Gurage in Ethiopia, or the Luo in Kenya, Bamileke own a disproportionate percentage of businesses in Cameroon, and are seen as stingy and manipulative. To ask someone if they are Bamileke is an insult suggesting miserliness.
I tell Dr. Kamga about mamas at the market who sneer at me under their breath—Chinese worka!—when I haggle to hard or decline to buy their goods.
“You see? You are being treated like a Chinese, but the Chinese are treated like Bamileke!” Sitting lotus style underneath the Bodhi tree, a tiny part of me woke up.

By this time, we had reached Down Beach. The epithets continued, but their barbs had softened and they had lost their venom. I took Limbe in through new eyes and felt something shift inside. I still didn’t know the secret of integration, but it all seemed to matter less and less. I had gotten a wonderful insight into the interaction of two cultures, and what’s more, I was living that experience. That seemed to be far more important. Besides, those Chinese workers didn’t have a how-to guide, or a four-part business plan for Cameroonian integration; they came from one developing country to another, looking for a way to put food on the table. Being mistaken for Chinese national isn't a ticket to inclusion, but maybe it'll provide me just enough of a sense of integration to shrug off some self-imposed pressure and enjoy where I am. I approached the fish mamas and began to haggle with a renewed vigor—I had a reputation to live up to, after all.