Chigger

The day began with Gugs sending me a video of a woman cutting a chigger out of her foot in coastal Kenya. It wasn’t as gruesome as it could have been as I’ve got form for having botfly larvae cut out of my head in Nicaragua.

This week has been accompanied by much anxiety around work, so I’m focusing more on the self care than I was able to when in what felt like perpetual limbo in the UK. I’m describing my current state as ‘catatonic floundering’, which is as toxic a combination as it sounds, but through which I can see glimmers of calm penetrating.

At lunchtime I made it to Tunduru Gardens for the first time since I returned. As I craned upwards at the roosting fruit bats, a man started talking to me and introduced himself as Antonio Buque. He said he occupies a bench near the fruit bats every day and started criticising the municipal police for not cleaning the seats of bat faeces. The way the police carry themselves in this city, I’m not sure he’s got much hope of that complaint being resolved. Plus, wiping away bat crap isn’t a task typically done by law enforcement.

Antonio insisted I take a selfie of us and send it via WhatsApp to his daughter Jennifer. Even though her WhatsApp profile picture was of her sticking her middle finger up to the camera, obscuring her face, I obliged. I’m sure she was delighted to receive the image of a random man with her father, but at least she responded more meekly than I feared.

As always when these moments occur, I was approached due to my clear ‘difference’. It is useful to remember the experience of others in other places who are made to feel obvious in a crowd, with many more negative connotations and without the privileges I carry.

I started thinking of my innate privileges and the society I stem from, whose government I complain about frequently, but where opportunities and resources are much more available to the average person. In the context of the UK I can do and achieve things whilst being no more remarkable than the average Joe Bloggs. The UK is unequal, but even if currently going backwards, social mobility is generally higher than in most other counties. In Mozambique, people with far superior natural talent than me may not be able to take advantage of opportunities due to all sorts of barriers. In global terms, being a white, British male confers on me a status that others in the world can only dream of. It is a stark realisation that I have experienced in various corners of the world when being approached by a stranger for a selfie, or when someone insists on swapping phone numbers even though we don’t know each other’s names.

This happens because the status and role that I occupy in the world are coveted or glorified in some way by those with less innate privilege. The history of privilege in society has created these perceptions. It’s a feeling that’s both humbling, embarrassing, and not very avoidable the way the world currently functions. These interactions tend to be good-humoured but it’s worth remembering the privilege dynamic that leads to them.