Men, women,
affable liberals, xenophobic nationalists: they formed the melange
of the Turnhout City Council; the Gemeenteraad. Spread across four
long tables, they sat and formulated laws and argued into the night.
The council sittings were partially open and when I could, I went
and watched the faces, heard the voices of the men and women who
had our city in their hands. Mostly, I was the only black face in
the audience. And at the tables, there was not a single one. And
once I joked to an acquaintance, “this city council needs
a tanning.” As I saw it, it was democracy with a pallid colour.
That might have informed my decision to run for a council seat
in 2001, and again (more successfully in 2007). Add to that the
stubborn resilience of the city’s mayor, Marcel Hendricks,
and his recruitment (in 2005) of the then ambassador of Nigeria
to Belgium, His Excellency N. Umelo, as an ally to bully me into
contesting. With three children, a baby on the way, stacks of
ironing, and my writing, I was not sure I had the time nor, frankly,
the inclination to dedicate hours to pre-election meetings and
campaigns. While quite indulgent in certain things, my time is
an asset I am parsimonious with, having to ration it, spreading
out everything I have to get done in a day over a very short twenty-four
hour period.
I remember asking a friend, the writer Caryl Phillips, why he
insisted on climbing the Kilimanjaro for a third time, despite
the difficulties and he said simply, “Chika, because I’m
an idiot!” So knowing from experience, the difficulties,
the sacrifices I would have to make, why did I decide to run?
In Caz’s famous words, “because I’m an idiot.”
My idiocy aside, and the Mayor’s resilience aside, and the
Ambassador’s nudging aside, I decided to contest because
of the dismal invisibility of black people in Turnhout. Now, in
the eleven years I have lived in this ambient city, I have gone
from knowing every black inhabitant by name, to knowing them by
sight, to in 2007, knowing only a handful by name or even by sight.
This has got nothing to do with early onset of dementia. I am,
after all, only in my 30s. It had to do with the fact that there
has been an explosion of (black) African immigrants into Turnhout,
mainly from Nigeria and Ghana. Yet, this growth has not translated
into visibility in the labour market. Many of these people work,
but what sort of work do they do? University degrees (from African
universities) in their suitcases and bills to pay, they do menial
jobs in factories. Tucked away from sight, they heave and clean
and assemble.
It is 2007, but Turnhout has never been confronted with a black
person in the police force. There is no black fire fighter. No
black bus driver. No black teacher. No black travel agent. Oh,
how we rejoiced when in 2005 one of our own, Veronica, a Bini
woman, became the first African cashier at a local supermarket.
Africans, not just Nigerians, thronged the GB just for a chance
to see her – Veronica (hair extension down to her waist,
but very definitely black) smiling the flaccid smile of supermarket
salespeople. In the same year Samson, an Igbo man, became the
first foreign-born cab driver. Who could forget Samson’s
joy, his smile as he distributed complimentary cards telling every
black person he came across (in Dutch, alas) that he was now a
cabbie, “ja. Vertel maar verder.” He instructed us
to go out into the world and spread the good news. And spread
it, we did, for what he had done was show us that even in this
city where our children had no role models, things were capable
of changing. We could be the role models our children were lacking.
Samson convinced me that I should be more altruistic. Forget the
laundry, forget my rest. Be an idiot and put in my candidacy.
And if I won? I dared not think that far.
From the moment my candidacy became public and the election posters
were put up in the summer of 2006, I was stunned by the amount
of attention I got. A retired priest wrote to me. He had lived
in the Congo and Uganda, and was pleased to see an African on
the list. He had read my novel, De Feniks, and wanted me to know
that he was rooting for me. I was so touched that I sent a reply
immediately. Some days later, he appeared at my door, an old(ish)
man, leaning on his bike, wondering if I had election posters
of myself he could hang up on his window. He lived on a strategic
street and it would do my campaign some good to have a poster
there. I had none. Being painfully shy of publicity (honestly!)
I had only made bookmark-sized flyers. He said, what a shame,
but could he have one anyway? I gave it to him and thought nothing
more of it. The week before elections, we were out on a campaign
tour when someone shouted accusingly, “Chika, I thought
you didn’t make any posters of yourself? Kijk!” The
priest had made himself a poster by blowing up the picture on
the flyer I had given him. I also got a mail from a cancer patient
who had read my book and enjoyed it and would definitely be voting
for me. People stopped me on the street to say how happy they
were that I was running. A black teenager who was going to be
voting for the first time wanted me to know that I would have
his vote. My Kenyan neighbour and her popular daughters promised
to tell all their friends to vote for me. My Nigerian friends
were doing the same. When we went door-to-door campaigning, I
took my baby son (having a cute, friendly baby is guaranteed to
incline people to listen to you) and he got cooed over. Sometimes,
we were told where our party was found wanting. At the time of
my campaign, my party had been in power for the last three legislative
terms. People complained of traffic, of dirt on their streets,
of vandalism, of rising drug problems. And what would we do about
it? Once or twice, I was asked how I would manage to combine my
writing with council duties if I won. Did that mean I would stop
being a writer? I said it would not. They seemed, flatteringly,
relieved.
However, there were those who found particular displeasure in
seeing me on the list. A Nigerian man told one of my friends he
would not vote for me because “black people are not nice
to each other.” White people are better. Compare Nigeria
now to Nigeria of before independence! Another got into an argument
with another friend because, according to him, I was an arrogant
person. I was particularly guilty of not attending enough African
events. And I got to know too that I did not have such a good
record of visiting Nigerian homes, nor was I any good at saying
hello to people. A Nigerian woman would not vote for me because
she did not like the Igbo. It was not the comments that hurt (I
have quite the hide of a rhino), but the unabashed ignorance,
and the fact that thousands of miles away from home, we still
fail to understand the things that matter.
October 7th, we ended the campaign and the following morning
voting started. On my way to the polls, I ran into a group of
four young African men who walked with the nervous energy of first
time voters. I stopped them. Their English was hesitant, their
Dutch more so. I managed to establish that they were indeed ‘virgin
voters.’ I asked if they knew the party they would be voting
for. One of them giggled and said “no.” I said, well,
you have to make sure you vote for the right one. They did not
know which one was the right party. So, I did my civic duty. I
pulled out four of my flyers from my coat pocket and said, this
is the party you need and this is the name you need to tick (legally,
you can not campaign after 6 p.m. on the eve of the elections,
but why let four votes go to waste?) One said, quite incredulously,
“But that’s you!” They gazed at the picture
excitedly, and said they were pleased to meet me. With a rekindled
enthusiasm I was happy to see they went off to vote. I retired
home after the vote to wait for the results, which were expected
that evening.
I heard the news later at my parents-in-law, where my family
had gone, I suspect, to avoid my restlessness. My father-in-law
had been on the net to check the progress of the results when
I walked in. “Proficiat!” he shouted. “Congratulations!”
On January 2, 2007, I was sworn in, together with the 33 other
councilors, as Turnhout’s first foreign-born councilor.
Like Samson, the cabbie, I like to think that I am showing our
children that there are other possibilities for them in a foreign
land. And having the opportunity to do that is worth the sacrifice
I have had to make and am still making. 
