“So you were giving them the benefit of the doubt.”
“Precisely. And that is probably what kept me sane. If I admitted that I was not getting the job because I’m black, that would have killed me. I would have probably given up a long time ago. But I kept on telling myself that with the qualifications I had, including a master’s in applied economy and finance, there must be somebody out there, and I would find that somebody. But by 2009, 2010, there was no longer that hope, no longer any explanation I could come up with.”
“At that point, did you come to the conclusion—you were honest with yourself and said, it’s because I’m Ugandan that—”
“Yes, I started even telling Nanna now, openly I told her, ‘Nanna, these are the real problems. First, my age. Second, where I come from. Third, the way I look. I don’t think it is qualifications, I don’t think it is a lack of positions to be filled, not at all. It’s those three things. This was in 2009, 2010. By this time, Nanna would ask me something and I would not answer. It was too painful to respond to her questions, even when she greeted me. She might ask, ‘Emma, today you sent an application, where did you send it?’ I wouldn’t answer, because it had reached a point where I told myself I would never get a job in Denmark ever. I even went looking for a job as a sweeper or cleaner, but they told me I was overqualified. I looked for jobs that suited my education, and they told me, ‘Ah, there are many who have applied for this position who are more qualified than you.’ Those were the answers I was getting from almost everybody. Either I was overqualified or there were people more qualified to take the job.”
CHEAP PLASTIC SANDALS
By the time Nanna suggested we break for lunch, I had lost track of time. Emmanuel’s story had, by turns, absorbed, amused, and perturbed me. It had also made me angry, despite my conviction that decrying the injustices of this world is seldom the best method for dealing with them, for the perpetrators of social violence are often immune to our outrage and indifferent to the consequences of their own actions, while the causes of social injustice all too often remain beyond our power to change. It was for this reason that, over lunch, I turned the talk to the ingenious ways in which Emmanuel had come to terms with his situation and the uncanny similarity of coping strategies in cultures across the world. One of these strategies is to rework our experiences of adversity as stories, thus sharing with others the ordeals we have undergone. Not only does confession free us from thralldom to what has been repressed; it clears the way for a fresh start in relationships that have been lived under a cloud of ambiguity and shame. There is no more moving example of this transformation than Emmanuel’s trip to Uganda and his decision to recall with his sister Mariam the abuse they had suffered at the hands of their maternal aunt and to clarify exactly what had happened. I remembered an e-mail I received from Emmanuel in October 2010 in which he expressed gratitude for my willingness to remunerate him if I published his story and for providing a “breath of hope and an eye opener.” Just as Mariam had been liberated by Emmanuel’s recounting of events that she had, for many years, scarcely believed to have actually occurred, so Emmanuel, inspired by Mariam’s desire to know more about their father, seemed to have come to his own reckoning with the past. I had been so troubled, however, by the echoes in Emmanuel’s humiliations in Denmark of his maltreatment and marginalization in his mother’s village, that I had interrupted his story about his schooling in Uganda and now suggested we go back to his boarding school years.
“Initially,” Emmanuel said, “I didn’t perform very well. Too much of my time was taken up with appeasing my classmates and catching up with the schooling I had missed.
“I was much older than the average student. At least two to three years older. So by the time I began secondary school, I had to deal with the pressure of meeting my basic needs and the pressure of being older but not yet able to convert that into being better or the best in class. I failed to do that. Why? Because I was spending more time solving the basic needs thing, getting something to eat from others, appeasing them. And though I passed my O-levels with a poor performance, considering my abilities, I now faced new pressures because of the opposite sex. There was an understanding in the school that every boy should have a girlfriend. Those who had girlfriends were good at sports or studies, or they had money or were popular. I didn’t know how I was going to survive this new experience. I was the oldest in the class, every class I was going to, and all the boys had girlfriends except me. The girls communicated with me. But I was afraid of them. I had no money to buy them presents. And I was spending all my time amusing and appeasing the other boys. So there it was, silently killing me, and since I really wanted to be like the other boys, I also wanted to have a girlfriend. And that brings me to my second most memorable situation in secondary school. When I reached the third year, I was suspended from school—for a full month. I was sent home because I had been working so hard to get a girlfriend that I ended up being caught sitting with a girl.”
“How did everyone else get away with having a girlfriend?”
“That’s the point—they knew the system. Me, I was a newcomer, and you know, I had never developed a sense of having relationships with the opposite sex. I learned later that the others did it by avoiding being seen, because even touching a girl’s shoulder warranted expulsion. They would hide at night, get out of the dormitories through windows or whatever, and go and meet their girlfriends in the bushes. I thought it was, you know, okay if I did that too, so one evening I was sitting with a girl, and I got arrested and suspended. The problem was, how do I go and explain to my mum that I had been suspended from school because of a girl? She’s struggling to pay fees and everything, so I didn’t tell her, I didn’t even go home, I went and hid at my friend’s place. The problem is that my mum got a letter. The school was very wise. They give you a letter of suspension, and they also send one to your mum [Emmanuel laughed]. So when you go back to school after the full month, you are required to come with your parent. So how do I convince my mum? I went around and found a friend. I had become so good at making friends, amusing them with stories, entertaining them; I had made friends with a full colonel in the military, and by then, in the ’80s, having a friend who was a soldier, a colonel—[Emmanuel whistled to emphasize this value of this connection]. So we had become friends, and he is the one I took to school as a ‘parent.’ But they didn’t allow it. They said, ‘Emma, I thought you said your father was dead? So who is this?’ Of course they caught me in the lie. I couldn’t explain—”
“You really are a trickster!”
“That was the problem. When I started secondary school, I didn’t tell anybody that my father was dead. Nobody knew. Because being an orphan was a very negative thing.
“A stigma?”
“Yes, indeed. And so I had told lots of stories about my father.”
“And you had to turn up with someone?”
“Yes, I had to come with someone. But I was so occupied with trying to convince my friends that my father was alive and was a soldier or something, that I forgot that when I registered for school I had actually registered as an orphan [Emmanuel laughed at his entanglement], so I was caught in the lie. So they told me, ‘Go back and bring your parent.’ I had to go to my mum. That was the first time that I had approached my mum with a problem. What has helped me a lot in life is knowing that when you have no alternative but to do or say the wrong thing, things will only get worse unless you go back and correct your mistake. So if I lied about something, I would immediately start thinking, ‘Oh, what lie will I have to use next?’ So I usually went back and corrected my mistake. I went straight to my mum and told her, ‘Mum, for the last month I have been away, suspended, and I’ve been living with so and so. When I went back to school, I went with somebody that was not really my parent. I didn’t want to bother you, but the school knew I didn’t have a father, and they sent me away to collect a parent. I told them I would go and collect you.’ I didn’t know what to expect from my mum. My mum just kept quiet for a while. Then she said, ‘Okay, when do they want me?’ I said, ‘They want you tomorrow.’ So my mum never reacted. And Michael, that was new to me, because one thing my mum was good at was appeasing, but