To my 6-year-old self from a peer in the playground:

 

“You have eyes like a frog.”

Is it because my eyes are too bulgy?  Is it because they are too big?   I squint my eyelids to a halfway closed position in the hope that my eyes appear smaller.

“Mom, do I look like a frog?” I ask, as soon as I see her.  “Don’t be silly, child!” she responds.

I am able to briefly empathise with the silly prince trapped inside a frog.

 

To my 10-year-old self from a peer at school:

 

“You look like an Eskimo.”

While my adult-self now knows that this label is culturally offensive to the various circumpolar tribes, the only point of reference my child-self has is the caricature on the chocolate-coated vanilla ice-cream Eskimo Pie wrapper. I imagine talking polar bears, snow-covered ground as far as the eye can see, and a round, smiley face framed by a fur-lined hooded coat. 

That day, I bought an ice cream at the Polar Bar Ice Cream Parlour in West Street on my way home from school and wondered what it must be like living in an igloo.

 

To my 15-year-old self from a popular boy in the neighbourhood:

 

“My friend thinks you look like a Jap chick!’”

By Jap do you mean Japanese? Is it because my hair is black?  Is it because my hair is straight? Is it because of the shape of my eyes? Is it because of the tone of my skin?  Do I look ‘different’?   I realise I have never met a Japanese person before.  As for the ‘chick’ reference…….let me not even go there.

 

To my 18-year-old self from my contemporaries:

 

“You look like Liza Minnelli!” says one.  “No, you look like Jackie Onassis” says the other.

I am thinking that both these personalities have their eyes set w-a-a-y too far apart in their heads for my personal liking.  Ohh…wait a second…..I finally get the ‘frog eyes’ analogy now!  Sheesh…that took me a while…..

 

To my 20-year-old self from an associate:

 

“You look like Cleopatra.”

Is it because I look like a Greco-Egyptian, or perhaps like Elizabeth Taylor when she played the Hollywood version of Cleopatra?   Hold on….am I wearing too much eye make-up?  All at once, I think of pyramids, sphinxes, pharaohs, desert sands and strong, powerful, misunderstood women in leadership. Am I being overly dramatic? Wherefore art thou, Shakespeare? 

 

To my 23-year-old self from an overseas traveller, a customer at my place of work:

 

“Where are you from?” she asks in an accent I am not familiar with.

“I am from here. Durban…South Africa.”

She is staring at me intently and probes further: “What is your ethnicity?”

“South African,” I offer.

She is not convinced. “What other background heritage do you have?”  

Eish…I am feeling uncomfortable with the inquisition. This woman is persistent and her conversation is getting too personal for this impersonal cashier-customer business transaction context. 

 “I don’t know,” I mumble.  

She is still staring at me, quizzically, as if I am a most unusual laboratory specimen or a UFO (aka Unidentified Foreign Object). 

Eventually, she asks: “Are you white?”

Oh no! She didn’t just go there, did she?  Since the colour had just completely drained from my face, I could politely answer her in the affirmative.  

Why do I feel like I have something to hide?  Am I sweating?  Why didn’t I ask her where she was from? Why was she so interested anyway? Did her intrigue with South Africa’s racial divisions and her desire to ‘categorise’ prompt her to ask a socially unacceptable question in a 1980’s South African apartheid context, where ‘posing as white’ could lose you your job?

 

To my 25-year-old self from a blond-haired, blue-eyed, inebriated 20-something year old male at a party:

 

“You look like a scary witch with your long black hair and dark eyes.”  

Mmmm….funny you should say that because I was just thinking you look and sound like an idiot drunk person. I keep my opinion to myself.

 “Abracadabra!” I retort with a degree of sarcasm, promptly turning my back on him and vanishing into the moonlight on my broomstick.

 

To my 30-something-year-old self from ‘others’:

 

“Are you Italian?” “Are you Portuguese?”  “Are you Spanish?”   “Are you Greek?”  “Are you Turkish?”

No. No. No. No. No.

“You must be mixed with something.”

Eye roll. You think?

 

To my almost 40-year-old self as a recent immigrant to New Zealand from a New Zealander:

 

“You look like a half-breed.”

POW! OUCH!  Sucker-punch alert!  I am momentarily speechless. Did she really just say that? Open-mouthed and gaping like a cultural fish out of water, it occurs to me that I probably did look like a half-breed in that moment. Half-fish, half-human.  I experience my first undercurrents of racism in New Zealand.  Who knew? 

 

To my 50-year-old-self from an Indian international student and new arrival to New Zealand:

 

“Are you Indian?” 

“No. I am South African.”

 “You look like my people who come from the North of India.  Do all South Africans look like you?”

 “No, not all. Paradoxically, I am an allsorts version. South Africans are an ethnically diverse group.”

I like this young lady.  I like her warm, open, friendly face.  I like that she has her own people that she identifies with.  I like that she saw them in me. I feel strangely included. I am imagining myself in the North of India, wearing a colourful sari and wonder if any of my ancestors originated there.  I think of spices, curries and my hometown of Durban.

 

To my almost 60-year-old-self from a stranger, an American, a fellow passenger on a plane:

 

“You have the most amazing colours in your eyes.  A mixture of greens, blues, and browns. I have never seen that before!”

I smile graciously and say “Thank you”.  I tell her I think it must just be the way the light from the cabin window is reflecting off my eyes.  (Did I mention we were flying over the continent of Africa at the time and I was heading ‘home’ to my tūrangawaewae for a visit?)

I gaze out the window and my eyes rest on Mother Africa below.  I cannot stop smiling as the green rolling hills of Kwa-Zulu Natal come into view; the blue seas and blue skies of Durban; the rich brown earth and coastline of the land that birthed and grounded me. The land to which I belong.

I am overjoyed that my fellow passenger recognises the colours of my birthplace mirrored in my eyes. 

I remember my 6-year-old self grappling with her amphibian identity. Frog’s eyes?  Haibo! No ways, my good friend.  These are African eyes. 

 

©Words by Gaynor Clarke, 2021

Further professional learning: