The Ayi Diaries: Poor little black girl

A letter to the ignorant people out there,

It's hard to think that living in a country for 15 years would justify being treated the same as the residents of that country but that never appears to be the case. Being the poor little black girl who comes from the 'country' Africa can be very exhausting. For one I speak in approxiamtely 17 different accents because identity crisis- duh.

It's mind-blowing to think that the western culture is still not fully assimilated to all races. I live in Ireland and there seems to be this preconception that since I moved out of my home country- I must be poor, homeless and *insert* other tragic situations here. I must be smelly as I clearly resemble a monkey in shade and features. I must be illiterate and if not me, my parents definitely are. Wrong. There mustn't be a lot of money in my family heritage hence why I emigrated from my home town (also wrong) but the list goes on.

The problem with society is that you are curious but you don't know the right way of going about asking something so you presume. You make up scenarios in your head of what that poor little black girl must have been through based on what you see on commercial ads.

You think every single black person is from *insert popular African country here*. You think everyone in South Africa is white. You mix up Nelson Mandela with other black heroes. You say the word 'nigger' more often than you should, given the history that occurred. You use it as a level of leverage because you simply cannot think of anything more insulting than someone's skin colour and native origin.

You automatically assume that you are superior to the black fellow in every way, either in the condescending sense where you dash out pity or in the blunt sense where you just 'hate the blacks' and how they steal all of the irish jobs.

You forget that one time Irish people had to emigrate too. You presume that because I am black I would know everything there is to know about the history of every country in Africa. No, I am not aware of the factual details of the Civil War in the Congo.

Worst of all, you are shocked when you find a black girl to be particularly pretty and therefore have to flood her with compliments on how amazing her 'caramel' skin looks.

In reality you have no idea what it's like to be foreign and even if you do, you have no idea what it is like to be in the 'minority', to have to listen to people tell you that you're not really Irish (again presuming that I wanted to be Irish in the first place) but then again you were only born in Africa so what even are you?

If I'm honest, I don't want your sympathy, keep that for yourself. All I want is for you to Google a few things before you ask, visit a new continent and most importantly get out of your comfort zone, it's a lot harder to do than you think. Here's to 15 years of achieving that. 

Kudos to me.

Important!: If every one of you could say a little prayer for the 234 kids that went missing in Nigeria a few months ago, I'd be forever grateful! #BringBackOurGirls