In most Bantu languages, including Swahili, Muzungu is the standard, blanket term for white person. I’m a Muzungu. And self-consciously so - Nairobi is a city with very few whites, most of which are either “exotics” like myself, here working for NGO’s or Multinationals, or the rarer colonial descendants who spend the majority of their time in their sprawling countryside estates, only emerging for rugby games and cricket matches. Although there are a fair number of tourists, the locals rarely see them. Most tourists are here on package tours that are carefully designed to ensure that they never “touch the ground.” The tourists arrive from the States or Europe, check into hotels that are, in essence, separate little worlds, human terrariums that replicate virtually every aspect of American and European culture and comfort. They are
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