The Displaced African

Before reading this, please make sure you have read: Part one, Part two and Part three of my story as an African immigrant

PART FOUR

First Half 2005

• Get rejected by film school, and too lethargic and lazy to show up for acting school auditions. Get chosen by my third choice University where I am to get a Bachelor of Business (Entrepreneurship).Selected course because my mother has a Masters in it. Follow in parents’ (father had a more general Bachelor of Business) footsteps. Mother asks me if I’m sure I don’t want to pursue acting. I say, “I’ll be alright.”

• Among the caliber of people I am with in business school:

a) CEO of Nissan is mentor

b) Young, high flying Entrepreneur is one of the lecturers

c) Have regular successful speakers coming in such as hundred-millionaire Andrew Giles who founded Hitwise.

d) Young people who have been in business successfully for years

• Feel I am with good group to learn business. Feel like everyone, including myself, is very tactical about who they associate with.
• Make good friends with some Greek guys and help one of them start up a business, which runs to this day.
• The other Greek guy introduces me to CDs of Malcolm X. Have began reading leftist literature including Noam Chomsky and he is also a fan so we connect on that.
• Join the local Uni Socialist group and begin to learn about the history of grassroot struggle. Only attend one meeting of the group because I still feel lonely.
• Become obsessed with reading leftist literature and listening to leftist thinkers such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti.
• Silmultaneously begin reading business books such as Richard Richard Branson’s autobiography (If you like business stories, BUY THIS BOOK! Reality is stranger than fiction) and the E-myth by Michael Gerber.
• Try reading Karl Marx book, the Communist Manifesto: great ideas in it but kinda boring.
• Discover one of my favorite thinkers, theologians and speakers of all time who reaffirms my faith in the church, Erwin Mcmanus.
• Decide I eventually want to own my own African production company which I’ll use to push forward a positive Pan-African identity: Defining idea!
• Realize I am not too bad at the whole busines thing: Don’t mind writing up marketing and business plans and do it competently. Don’t mind doing the research and the work neccesary to get a business going. Idea of working on a business if I see the sense in it doesn’t scare me: Cool!
• Sign up to do play with theatre group where I did the Wizard of Oz.Play the Puppetmaster in Pinnochio. Do a good job. Get nominated for the same award that I lost last year and win!
• I finish the semester but not before the loneliness and isolation hits me again (It took me 5 years to discover this is why I kept dropping out and leaving things so cut me some slack. I didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing) and I defer the course.

Second Half 2005

• Drop out of school and stay home.
• Listen to leftist professors and study the diplomatic history of the US, a bit of UK and a moderate level on Africa.
• Discover people such as Biko, Lumumba (Patrice of DRC not the Kenyan lawyer), Nkrumah, MLK, the Black Panthers, Che Guevara, Malcolm X among others who were important to Civil and human rights in the world. Inspired and fascinated by them.
• Daily routine for a while: Wake up, listen to leftist thinkers, watch some dvds, cook and sleep.
• Begin listening to more and more self help tapes.
• I keep on obsessing over plans for my future but have little idea how I will get there. Just feel tired and worn out.
• Do my first adult play, where I actually have to kiss a girl (blush, guffaw and draw map of Africa with my feet). Perform it at two short play festivals in country towns. At one of them, get deep connection with audience and can do no wrong on stage. Win award as Best New Actor and get $50 (I’m rolling in it now, lol!).
• Try out amateur wrestling and Olympic weightlifting because still obsessed with looking like an Adonis. Don’t feel any human connection at the training institutions.In spite of that, discover two sports I will pursue in future to develop strength and coordination.
• In an effort to make money I try to become a door to door salesman of car servicing vouchers. The job isn’t scary at all really. Regardless, I make less than 10 sales over 4 weeks and decide it’s not for me.
• Go and get trained as an aged care nurse and begin working immediately. I don’t like the monotony of the job but like talking to old people, they keep it real!
• Only friends are my few fantastic Kenyan friends: things about to get a bit shaky though.

Early 2006

• My cousins come over from Kenya to study and we have a house full of young people: Chaos ensues.
• Almost immediately me and one of my cousins (Big up, K) hit the club scene hard in spite of the fact that we are not that wealthy.
• Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Go to the Village and hang out with the athletes-a lot of them are great guys who are way too obsessed with carnal pursuits. My obsession with drinking and sex begins to hit an exponential upward trijectory. Become an overactive social creature who gatecrashes as many parties as I can.
• Rejoin University but end up dropping all of my subjects except an elective subject: Creative writing for which I attend one three hour class every Thursday. Means I only go to school one day a week, spend the rest of the time working as little as possible and partying as hard as possible.
• Lose my virgnity when I, and am not even bragging here, have the most fluid flirtation session I will ever have in my life. I am one of six people she is juggling at the time. (Sweet girl, but at this stage of life I want my virginity back!)
• Try to become a conniving, manipulative playa type but it really doesn’t suit me too well, and I am too broke to live it up anyway. Though I fool around a few times, I set the record, as far as I know for the man who can “sleep (like with eyes closed and dreams) in the same bed with the most women,” without any physical connection. Expression begins to be formed: “Mwangi boils the water for others to bathe!”
• Attend quite a few business seminars where I have the double honour of being the only African and the only person under 30. Learn a lot from some of the finest business thinkers.
• Also attend free lectures and talks from a wide variety of thinkers including neuroscience and technology. Learn the expression: “As human beings we all feel as though we are Angels trapped in the bodies of beasts!” Metaphor still resonates with me today.
• As a result of being a bad friend and lying to cover for someone else, I lose my best friend. He was a good man, and what I did was wrong (if you are reading this, again, sorry A)

If you haven’t please make sure you read: Part one / Part two/

Continued on: Part four /Part five

Tags: African, African immigration, Immigration, Mwangi, the Displaced African

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 1:33 am and is filed under My Story as an African Immigrant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.