Zimbabwe: Struggles for Diaspora kids
Published: 2/Nov/2017
Source: Bulawayo24 (Zimbabwe)
by Dr Masimba Mavaza
Children who are born from parents who are immigrants are normally called third culture generation. They live a particularly interesting life growing up abroad in a culture different to that of their parents. This experience is often very difficult to explain to those who haven’t been in this situation. The children swim in a very different social pool and are completely different from their parents. These children are not Zimbabwean; going to Zimbabwe with them shocks them.
They are not welcome even at the airport. They are asked to pay fifty pounds for a visa to visit their father’s land. They always ask in awe and say how you can pay to enter into your own country. With the dual citizenship clouded in serious confusion and its administration is at best described as dog’s breakfast, the children who visit the land of their fathers feel so much distant from the country.
The children do not feel reunited with their relatives as they consider them as the relatives of their parents and not theirs. The welcome they get from aunties and uncles is somehow alienating. Kumbirai, a sixteen-year-old said, »I felt lost, everybody called me Mu British and others called me Mukaradhi » she went on to say she felt lost and the word coloured was so insulting to her. In trying to learn Shona or Ndebele all the relatives were speaking to her in English, she left Zimbabwe without learning a single word in vernacular except « ndipoo mari »
Read further: http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-121040.html