S1, E6: “Rodrigue Kabuya’s Story: Seeking A Home”

Rodrigue Kabuya

Hi, everybody! Welcome back and thank you for tuning in.

Today, we welcome Rodrigue as he co-hosts the blog and shares his story. Rodrigue is a political prodigy who relocated from his home country to the beautiful nation of South Africa. He is interested in politics, good books, tourism, and he is a little bit obsessed with watches, golf and the art of sapology. Rodrigue has always been vocal about wanting to make a change not only within his home country, but within the whole of Africa. He is president of the Congolese Society at the University of Cape Town (U.C.T) and he even has his own blog titled “Conversations With Myself”!

His story is titled “Seeking A Home”:

“I have titled this piece Seeking A Home because the plight of refugees is one of constantly defining what and where the home is. Like most refugees, my exodus from the DRC in the year 2000 was because of the escalating 2nd Congo War. My parents, a humble middle-class couple, could not stand the thought of having to raise their children in a war-torn country without certainty for what the future might hold. So, they began the search for the perfect destination, which they could call “home”.

The search started with a two-year stay in Zambia, living under some harsh and unbearable conditions. At the time, living in Zambia as an undocumented refugee was very risky. After my sister was born in 2002, we began the perilous journey down to South Africa. Having no money and three kids, my parents were plagued with endless thoughts of how to reach this land of comfort and possibility. Having to travel in fragments, my brother at the age of 15 traveled from Zambia to South Africa alone under a Zambia alias, to allow his safe travels. Then, followed by my mother with myself and my sister, and my father finally joined us close to 8 months later. 

This journey has been the motivating factor for trying to achieve some form of success. The entire concept of home came from wanting to become something and belong somewhere. Having to grow up in South Africa, I had almost lost the essence of what made me Congolese. Apart from the name and the family, one would have thought that I was South African.  However, despite my attempts at wanting to belong, I was always been reminded that I did not – be it through the lack of proficiency in the languages or from the inability to share in the experiences of other kids because the cultures were just very different.

After 12 years of this constant wanting, finally, in university I began accepting where I was from. I realized that home was not only about experiences but also about the place where you felt that you belonged. Regardless of the fact that my entire life thus far has been informed by my current location and its experiences thereof, I believe that when I set foot on Congolese soil, then will I truly feel at home. 

In light of this awakening, I have realized that South Africa was and is necessary to the person I have become today. I have, throughout the years, learned about her history and I have shared and admired her culture. I have even incorporated certain aspects into my own philosophy of life.

Although the concept of home might have a particular fluidity, the place where the heart is most comfortable is the place one should call home. South Africa has been and continues to be the place of my upbringing. Regardless of her flaws, she has provided us with a new glimpse at a future we never otherwise thought we would have.”

Some organizations close to Rodrigue’s heart are Scalabrini and the UNHCR. Please read up on them and lend a helping hand in any way that you can. 

I would love to invite anybody with a story: please share it. And those willing to educate themselves and get a different perspective: welcome, thank you for joining us. Join us in the next 2 weeks for our second co-blogger, and a piece on their story!

Love to you all!

For those wanting to share their stories, please use the contact information below:

martineilunga6@gmail.com

+27 61 580 4143

To truly discover one’s identity, one must first discover their roots.

T. Nsenga

S1, E5: “Daniela Bushiri’s Story”

Daniela Bushiri – proudly Congolese, proudly African.

Hi everybody! Welcome back and thank you for tuning in.

Today we are kicking off this segment with Daniela‘s story as she co-hosts the blog. Daniela is a Congolese creative who relocated from South Africa to the United States, where she currently stays. She is someone who is passionate about refugee work and she has a YouTube channel which she uses to create informative videos that aim to “disarm ignorance”. She recently embarked on a journey to highlight refugee stories, which resulted in a documentary series titled “Refugee Stories for Refugee Advocacy” – which can be found on her channel, alongside other informative videos that offer a refreshing perspective.

Here is her story:

“For the longest time, I never knew how it felt to call a place home or truly feel like I belonged. I admired people who were patriotic about their countries and culture, especially during sport events such as the world cups. People would paint their faces with their country’s flag as a declaration of how proud they were to be supporting their country. These people truly knew the privilege of how it felt to call a place home. Otherwise, they wouldn’t humiliate themselves on national television with their really creative outfits and intense displays of emotion. You know what I am talking about!

My identity crisis emerged as a result of escaping from war in Congo and becoming a refugee in South Africa at the age of 1. I never had the honor of growing up in my country of origin and developing a deep appreciation for my culture and my people. My parents tried to teach us about the beauty of our culture, but all their efforts somehow just couldn’t build a structure long enough to bridge that identity gap. As a kid, I didn’t want to be different from my peers. My desire to assimilate inadvertently drove me further away from my true identity. However, no matter what I tried to do, I was constantly reminded that South Africa was not my home and that I didn’t belong there.

One way was through our identity documentation. Refugees in South Africa are given a letter size (A4) identity document by government officials. So whenever a scenario would arise where you needed to show ID while everyone else would show a card sized ID, refugees would have to pull out a letter as a form of identification. The worst part is that not everyone was aware that this was what refugees used as an ID. When we were required to bring an ID for a school trip or to register for classes, questions like “Is this real?” or “Where is your real ID card” would come up! My favorite was when I had to open my first bank account and was passed on from bank teller to teller because no one was sure what the correct protocol was for people like me.

In 2008, a wave of xenophobia swept across my host country. South African citizens started looting refugee owned shops, assaulting and killing any person that was an immigrant or refugee. People would identify refugees by requesting for their ID at random moments. The letter sized document became a death sentence for many. These catastrophic xenophobic attacks against refugees destroyed all the desire I had to assimilate. I was just left with one thought: will I ever belong? One memory that I will never forget was an instance when my mother urged us to lock all the doors of our tiny house while she was at work. That very day the top news story was about a child my age (I was 11 at that time) that was burnt alive because his parents were from Somalia. I remember crying myself to sleep and worrying that my mother wouldn’t make it home alive.

Things changed for the better once my family got resettled in America in 2016. I saw something I had never seen before: I saw melting pots of cultures proudly expressed in unique ways. People embraced their cultures from all over the world while simultaneously adapting to the American lifestyle. People no longer questioned the validity of my existence in the country. My ID card was the same as everyone else. I found a place I could call home. I realized that maybe belonging to a society didn’t mean assimilating to being like everyone else, maybe it meant embracing every part you are and maybe humiliating yourself at a sport event with really creative outfits and intense display of emotions highlighting every experience that shaped who you are today!”

Some organizations close to Daniela’s heart are Coburwas and the IRC. Please read up on them and lend a helping hand in any way that you can. 

I would love to invite anybody with a story: please share it. And those willing to educate themselves and get a different perspective: welcome, thank you for joining us. Join us in the next 2 weeks for our second co-blogger, and a piece on their story!

Love to you all!

For those wanting to share their stories, please use the contact information below:

martineilunga6@gmail.com

+27 61 580 4143

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Raising awareness starts with sharing information.

T. Nsenga

S1, E4: “Returning – Personal Experiences: Foreigners and Refugees in South Africa.

Hi, everybody! I know this has been a long time coming, but thank you for tuning in.

As most of you know, I am starting a segment which will include the stories of foreigners and refugees all over the world. I believe that sharing your experiences and your stories is a way for us to break barriers between people. I believe that storytelling is freeing, it is educational and it allows different perspectives and bonding between different groups of people.

This segment starts with my story.

As some of you may know, I am a Congolese living in South Africa. I am proudly Congolese, and I don’t think there will ever be a time where I will introduce myself as anything other than Congolese. You may ask “Well, why is that?”. The answer isn’t because I believe my country is beautiful, or that it births beauties and legends, or that it is the literal heart of Africa, or that it has so much overlooked talent and potential – although ALL of those things are 100% true. Congolese people are so beautiful, and unique, and talented, and majestic and and and… I could go on for hours. That is not to say that people from other nations aren’t, but I love my people with a different sort of passion.

I arrived in South Africa with most of my family when I was 5 years old. My very first memories of this country are very foggy, but the memory of feeling different is one I will never forget. Like most foreigners, my family left our home country because of instability and war. My parents brought us to South Africa, hoping that their very young children could have a chance to live a life free of war and persecution. Although in some instances that was true, we had to fight a different sort of war: the one of discrimination.

Living in South Africa is basically all I have known. Most of my life was spent here, I started and finished all of my schooling in South Africa (grade R through to two degrees at university), my work is here, my immediate family is here, my friends are here – but despite having being raised here, I have always had the distinct feeling of being different and unusual. That is further exacerbated by the fact that as a foreigner, my identity documents are so different from everybody else, I have to go to extra lengths to get anything done, I am constantly worried about opportunities for my family, my friends and other people like me, and then there’s xenophobia.

Xenophobia in South Africa is a hot topic. It is widely believed that foreign nationals come to South Africa to steal people’s jobs, opportunities, and lovers (ha!). Now, I know many things can be stolen, but let’s be real: the opportunities available for South Africans far outweigh the opportunities available for foreigners – that is a known fact. There have been so many scholarships, jobs, internships and university programs that I have been eligible and qualified (sometimes overqualified) for throughout the course of my life, but I was not able to apply for those opportunities because their T&C’s would include being a citizen, which I was not, even after more than 15 years in South Africa (let’s not even get started with this story!). So to me, xenophobia and discrimination against foreigners and refugees doesn’t make sense at all. It is neither logical nor smart to persecute groups of people for the belief that they are stealing opportunities not even available to them.

I have been treated differently because of the way I speak, the way I look, and because of my culture. I remember during the 2008 xenophobic attacks, I was coming home from school and an adult came to me and placed a lit cigarette butt into my hair and told me to go back to my country – that was traumatic. I remember being told I couldn’t pursues studies in a certain stream because I was foreign, that I should go do it in my home country instead and leave those opportunities for students from South Africa. I remember missing my orientation week in my first year because universities classify anybody who is not South African, as international students – meaning double the fees, even if you did your schooling here – and you have to go through a strenuous process for them to correct this “system error” on a yearly basis. I remember having to fight for every single opportunity I have ever gotten, because “that’s just how it is”.

A lot of people go through so much more on a daily basis. So much worse. It is unfortunate that there are bottlenecks in place when it comes to Africans. Sad that they suffer in Africa, especially when they shouldn’t. It is sad to see a mother or a father working hard for their families, get discriminated against for inhumane reasons, and get treated like less than garbage, simply because they were not born on the “right” side of a border.

I hope that one day we build an Africa that is all-inclusive, a world that is all-inclusive. One full of equal opportunities for people, and that those opportunities don’t come with conditions based on race, nationality, or other factors. I hope we educate our brothers and sisters by sharing our truths and our lives with them, so that they can understand that we are no different from them. That borders shouldn’t separate us, should not create them vs us narratives, but should rather be an opportunity to learn about each other and fully immerse ourselves in each others lives, beliefs, and cultures. I hope for nations united instead of divided, with a goal of uniting our people, instead of getting distracted by petty things.

I would love to invite anybody with a story: please share it. And those willing to educate themselves and get a different perspective: welcome, thank you for joining us. Join us next week for our first co-blogger, and a piece on their story!

Love to you all!

For those wanting to share their stories, please use the contact information below:

martineilunga6@gmail.com

+27 61 580 4143

Not all wars are fought physically, and not all battles are won with fists.

T. Nsenga

S1, E3: “Scars”

Hi, guys! Welcome back to my YouTube channel! I know it has been a hot minute since I’ve written a blog post, but I had to be away for a while to focus on my degree. Do not worry, though, your favourite blogger is back with a bang! I’m super excited to continue on this journey and to reflect on what I’ve learned about myself throughout this year, and to continue learning with all of you.

A few months ago, I put up an Instagram poll for you guys, just to gauge if you were open to me posting other content. You had the option between a blog post or a poem and majority chose the poem. So we are bringing new things to this platform and I hope you enjoy it!

This particular poem is titled Scars. It was written for whoever has lost somebody in their lives – be it friend, family, a lover, or a teacher. Whoever you felt had an impact in your life but was suddenly taken away (does not have to be by death, it can be anything). It’s about the moments you lose before you even had a chance to share them with that person.

I hope you enjoy it and share it to those you think might need it, or just nje.

Love to you all!

SCARS

I didn’t show you the one on the right-hand side of my knee
Or the one on my left hand
Or the one from the operation
The ones behind my eyes when I sleep at night
Or the ones that torment me every time I think of what could have been
Or the ones dotted all around my heart because of time or circumstance
I didn’t show you the ones scattered around like memories
All speaking of a time already passed
Those etched onto my skin, those that do not allow me to forget
Those that force themselves to the front of my mind and want me to FEEL
But those I fight and resist
Those that slap me in the face when I hear a certain song,
Or have a mint flavoured piece of gum,
Or I see a type of t-shirt
Or…
Or…
I could go on, but…
You should’ve been here for all of this
But you’re not
And that’s okay
I think I let go of you the moment I knew that I will never force anyone to stay

Leave a comment below, share, and let’s continue interacting!

S1, E2: “TakeOff 🚀”

Hi guys! Welcome back to my YouTube channel! (I’ve always wanted to say this). I know you will have questions about that (drop a comment below), and about why the title of this blog is called “TakeOff”, but Toni couldn’t resist.

Anyway, let’s get into the mix of things, shall we?

The other day, I was talking to a friend and we were discussing identity. Identity is defined (by Google Dictionary) as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is”. As some of you just did: I had to read that definition a couple of times to wrap my mind around it.

I know a lot of us still battle with finding our identity in a world where sameness is celebrated and uniqueness is rebuked. Why is that? Let’s hold onto that for now.

Growing up, you can imagine the issues I faced with my identity. With moving to a country completely alien to what I knew, trying to learn a new language, and integrating into a new society. I remember my family arriving in Cape Town and me pushing out my mother tongue, in order for me to house the language common to these parts. Why did I have to do that? Because I had to adapt, I had to do what this specific area required of me, casting away what I had already learned to be normal. I had to learn “a new normal”.

You know what didn’t help? Going everywhere and sticking out like a sore thumb. Those were confusing times for me. I didn’t understand why I was treated differently, or why people would stop my Mom and I in the street to ask if all that flowing hair was my own, or why they’d ask me where I was from because it was obvious that I definitely wasn’t from South Africa. These were questions that I kept locked inside until I understood them enough to ask.

Luckily, my Mom was there. She will tell you now that when I started primary school and I learned how to read, I asked her so many questions – about anything and everything. She tells that story now to friends and family with a tinge of annoyance, but a lot of love. She says I constantly nagged her about the workings of the world and sometimes she’d answer with exasperation and annoyance, but always with love and understanding. I am grateful that she did because it helped me discover some part of who I was, and it allowed me to not be complacent, to always question things. Thank you Moms, you’re an OG 💕.

With that childlike curiosity, life seemed a bit clearer. I started understanding why I was treated differently, why I had to act a certain way, and why I had to do certain things. I can safely say that it helped shape me into who I am today.

Now many might have had similar experiences and others might’ve had different ones – but we can all agree on having issues with who we were at some point of our lives. One of those points in life could have been in high school and maybe in uni.

High school was a time of learning how to be a big kid, but also how to be distinguished from the other big kids. It was the glowing time of our lives where we wanted to do the most, and have others see us doing the most. To execute that, you had to find a niche, a squad, a way of life. These people and their behaviour determined how you would be classified. For example, if you were part of the group of cool, smart people who sometimes did naughty things, then you’d be the popular group that everyone both hated and admired. If you fell into a group that was liked – or maybe even tolerated – then you wouldn’t have an issue, you’d be at the top of the food chain. Fall below that and you’re a pariah of note.

This is the same in university – the only difference is that most people pretend not to care about you – which you see in how hard they try (and fail) to ignore you – or they genuinely do not care. It sucks that this is the reality of society – because it forces you to change yourself to fit a mold that was there way before you arrived, and that you might never truly fit into. This impacts your confidence and takes away from who you really are.

I won’t say that I have not had these issues because that would be wholly untrue. In the past, I felt that I had to fit the “extremely intelligent, sassy, agrees to everything, doesn’t cry, good girl” mold – and although some of those things were true, it wasn’t all I was made of, all I aspired to be. I was much more, I felt much more, experienced much more, and I had the right to create my own mold, my own narrative, one that was independent to what others thought to be correct. It took some getting used to and a lot of confusion but I started being myself – I am still learning though, until I reach the highest Super Saiyan level there is of myself (then it really is going to be a wrap).

I don’t think you ever stop learning and growing, and you have to forgive yourself – that is important. I advise that you start, and you never stop. You are entirely up to you. You decide who you want to be, not because of what you see or what you aspire to be, but because you’re comfortable with yourself and you love yourself enough to show it. Being pretentious pleases those around you but does nothing for you. So be you, be all of you and then some. Don’t apologize, don’t make excuses, just dive into the meat and bones of your identity and embrace it. Be confident in your growth and evolution, and just own it!

Love, light, and happiness to you!

“Who is being you when you’re so busy trying to be someone else?” – Tina N.

S1, E1: “Pilot”

Let’s start at the beginning:
My name is Tina Martine Ilunga Nsenga – I know there’ll be somebody asking me if my name is Martin and I’m here to tell you that no, it’s French and the feminine version of Martin (my grandfather). I was named after my late aunt – the first born on my father’s side.

I was born to Astrida Kapungwe Nsenga and Aime Yumba Nsenga, on a beautiful June day in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am of the Muluba tribe. I may be Congolese born, but I am definitely South African bred. I moved to Cape Town when I was about 5 years old, and I’ve never left since. So yes, technically, I should be able to call myself South African, but I’m not – but we’ll get into that later. I am proudly Congolese though, I love the diversity and beauty of Congo.

Let me give you 5 fun facts about myself:

• I never tell people that I have middle names because they can never pronounce them – some of my closest friends don’t even know my other names
• I believe that I am a tall human female
• I write things, but I rarely post them because I don’t want to be judged too harshly – I realize that judgement is inevitable but wow, people can be brutal
• I am a lover of books – the fact that words can transport you to another world in such a short span of time, immensely intrigues me
• I like trap music (skrrr skrrr) and I am betrothed to Quavo Huncho

Many of you will be wondering what this blog post is about and why I have started it.

Initially, it was because the NGO that I am part of – One Africa Project (check us out, we are awesome) – required me to have one. Then I started thinking “Tina, you love writing and you have been wanting to do this for a while, why not write about your experiences?”. So thanks to my inner voice, I decided this would be an amazing space for me to write about life, university (I know a lot of people can relate to the struggles of uni), my love for my Creator and the proof of His influence in my life, advice (yikes!), and life as an African child living on this beautiful continent.

I am so happy that you have chosen to begin this journey of self discovery with me. Hopefully as I start discovering myself, you might also find a piece (or two) of yourself with me. Thank you for getting on this ride that does not have a definite destination… yet.

Love, light, and happiness to you!

“Life does not wait for you to decide anything – you either decide with it, or you watch it decide without you.” – T.N

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton