Nicholas J. M. Black

Myself (right) with my Twin and fellow "Roomer", Alexander (left).

Hi, I’m Nicholas and I am another member of “The Room”, along with Alexander (who is my twin) and four other young people, and our leaders, Chris Parker and Claire McDonnell. My main church is St Andrew's Biggleswade, but another church community that I am part of sporadically is the Dundonald Elim Church in Dundonald (a suburb of Belfast in Northern Ireland). These churches have highly contrasted forms of worship, although both have outstanding facilities and programmes aimed at youth in the community. Currently, I work at Starbucks, and I am busy completing my TEFL, after being inspired by a teaching experience on a previous trip to sub-saharan Africa: to Kenya, the Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar. Here I got the opportunity to help reconstruct a school in Kilgoris, about 10 hours drive west of Nairobi in the Trans Mara Province and also had an opportunity to teach and learn. More recently, this February,  a visit to a school in Hong Kong encouraged me to follow though and qualify to teach English. In September,  I’m moving to New South Wales in Australia in order work and gain experience before I hopefully go out to teach in South East Asia.

I want to go to South Africa to serve the community there and also to experience life in a different part of the African continent.  Africa is the second largest continent, and many parts, e.g. Tunisia and Egypt are closer to the UK than South Africa and West African countries like Nigeria are about half way between the two, yet we still refer to sub-saharan Africa simply as Africa. The label Africa is, unfortunately, commonly associated with poverty (53 million orphans in sub-saharan African) but the experience we will have will not necessarily be representative of Africa, or even South Africa, just the tiny part of the Mpumalanga province we visit. South Africa is a country of huge contrasts between rich and poor, and while similar to other African countries, not identical. There are huge contrast between African nations and the types of poverty and hardship suffered: as I saw in Kenya, there are many rich Africans living opulent lifestyles in villas in suburbs such as Karen, whilst just over the fence, hundreds of thousands are living in intense poverty. I would like to attach a link to a TED talk by the Nigerian lady, Chimamanda Ngozi, who,  in a short video well worth watching, explains the dangers of the African single story, and why, when we return, we have a duty to speak of our experiences, not as an experience of Africa, but of the specific communities (in our case, rural Mpumalanga) here is a link to the video: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

This quote is long but hopefully explains why I’m so obsessed with avoiding the single story and trying to raise awareness of it; “I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronising, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. I must say that before I went to the U.S., I didn't consciously identify as African. But in the U.S., whenever Africa came up, people turned to me. Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia. But I did come to embrace this new identity, and in many ways I think of myself now as African. Although I still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country, the most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago, in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries.” 

The School in Kilgoris, Kenya.