‘The South in the North’: Worlding Kenyanness in Alex Chamwada’s TV series Daring Abroad

ABSTRACT

Recently, there has been a proliferation of narratives that recount the daily experiences of Africans in White spaces. However, the scholarship on how Black people navigate predominantly White spaces has remained scanty. This article aims to help fill this gap by interrogating how Kenyans abroad negotiate, re-imagine and maintain their Kenyanness, especially in Euro-American urban spaces. This article argues that the Daring Abroad TV series by Alex Chamwada re-imagines, resituates and worlds Kenyanness through retention and continual use of Kenyan food and Sheng' as a lingua franca. The paper locates itself within the Bhabhasquan idea of third space and Afropolitanism theory in interpreting the use of Sheng’ language and Kenyan food in Euro-American urban spaces. Employing a lit-crit methodology, the paper mines data comprising running motifs, tropes, and themes found in narrations of Kenyans abroad in these episodes. The argument developed is that Chamwada’s show Daring Abroad is not just about how Kenyans are conquering Majuu [abroad] but also a show deconstructing the idea of home as a geographical place by presenting it as a state of mind using Kenyan food and Sheng' language to craft a worlding of Kenyanness in the globalised world that threatens and constantly ignores its existence.

KEYWORDS:

• Daring Abroad
• worlding Kenyanness
• South
• North
• Kenyanness
• Alex Chamwada

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Here I adapt the definition of Sheng' given by Githiora (2018) as a non-standard variety of Kenyan Swahili closely associated with Nairobi’s urban youth largely deployed as a marker of social identity, and is characterised by extensive code-mixing within a Swahili matrix, thus placing it on a continuum of Kenyan ways of speaking, or ‘Kenyanese’.

2 In this paper, Kenyan food speaks more to its preparation than its origins. This means that when I talk of Kenyan food, it may be food from a Western city, but its preparation is Kenyan.

3 This paper argues that the Sheng' language acts as an invisible bridge that Kenyans abroad use to shift psychologically into a third space; an in-between home and abroad. Home is re-conceptualised through Sheng' and Kenyan dishes which serve as symbols of their survival and subtle disconnection from home.

4 Kenyan Kitchen is a name of a hotel in Edgware in Northern England; Swahili Village is a hotel in Washington, DC while Safari Njema is a hotel in Seatle.

5 Abroad is an apex of success for Kenyans and therefore the Kenyans who have dared abroad are the definition of success back at home. Yet, abroad, these Kenyans are seen as poor, uneducated, dirty refugees.

6 I am using this word in quotes because of the negative connotations it has in Kenya, especially after it was used by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to describe a section of Kenyans who stormed a virtual meeting convened by the IMF director to express their fury over the international lender's continued loaning to Kenya. Invade, as it was used by the IMF, had animalistic underlying meanings.

7 When we meet in the bus we chat and when we get to know each other we exchange numbers but here in the diaspora when you board the bus you just stay mute you don’t talk to people you just wait for the bell to ring so that you alight.