'Africans going Dutch' - Part Five: The Dutch neighbour
Let’s call him Alex. He told me: “When I first came here, I didn’t know that the internet is your father, your mother, sister and everything. TV and the internet are the only neighbours you have in Holland. If you ask these people, ‘Excuse me, where is...?’ They say ‘Google Maps! Internet!’”
By Ayobami Ojebode
Alex is from one of the troubled countries of Africa. I met him in The Hague, on his way from the alien’s police station, at Stadhoudersplantsoen. Alex wanted to talk, so we entered a coffee shop. He had been in Holland for three weeks, and was miserable about many things. One of which being his neighbour.
Back home in Africa, when Alex was a child in a village, he once found a stranger sleeping soundly in the living room. His father said to him, “Leave her alone. She must be a neighbour.” That’s what neighbours in Africa are all about. They are part of you, so they don’t need an invitation to come to your house. When you move into a neighbourhood, neighbours swarm around you, help you move your things in, tell you where to find good schools as well as government schools, where to get water and where to dump refuse — which is usually anywhere. Within a few days, you will know who has how many wives and whose kids cause trouble. Neighbours! What are we without them?
Alex came from such a neighbourhood. He had read a lot about the Dutch, but had forgotten much of it. He however remembered one important ‘fact’ he had read: Dutch men are friendlier than Dutch women. So, he thought, the first thing to find out about Dutch persons is their gender.
Having moved in in, Alex went straight to his next-door neighbour and knocked on the door. Apart from wanting to know the neighbour’s gender, Alex had other urgent questions, such as: Where to buy food? Which restaurants are for the Alexes of this world? He also had some not so urgent questions, such as: Why are there very few children in this country? Why are there no pregnant women? In Africa, everywhere you go, there is a pregnant woman holding a kid in each hand, carrying a third on her back while gracefully balancing a load on her head.
Alex knocked a third time. The neighbour appeared. He wore tattoos, hair braids, noserings and earrings. He had a male voice, but a female ‘front appearance’. And he was furious.
“Yes, what you want?”
“I’m your new neighbour, next-door neighbour... new... from Africa.”
“Yes, what you want?”
“I’m your new neighbour”. (Thinking: “Isn’t that enough reason to knock on your door?”)
“But what you want?”
“I want to say hello.”
“Yes, say it.”
“Hello.”
The neighbour slammed the door. But Alex still wondered: was he a man or woman?
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