Shifting Narratives: My Journey from California to West Africa
Country. Hot. Dessert. People in poverty. Lions. Dancing.
Those are some of the words that came to my mind when I used to hear Africa. After living in Burkina Faso, West Africa for two years, those words shifted to:
Continent
Intelligent
Beautiful people
Friends
Smiles
Delicious food
Diversity
Colorful
And the list goes on.
When I arrived in Burkina Faso in 2013, I quickly realized that the place where I would be spending the next two years of my life did not feel so foreign to me. It reminded me of the place I had grown up visiting – a village in Mexico, where my parents were born. I was used to waking up to the sound of roosters and giving cows the right of way when I stumbled upon them. In fact, this brought me comfort. It felt as if I was reentering a lifestyle I already knew.
And although there were a lot of similarities between this small village and the village where my parents grew up, there were also many differences. My two years in Burkina Faso were not always easy and did not go by fast. I had to give myself grace. I was creating a whole new family in a country that I had just learned existed that year. I also missed my family back home over seven thousand miles away in California.
Although I didn’t speak the languages in Burkina Faso for nearly a year, I got really good at talking with my body during that time.
I adapted.
I adapted to the hot days.
I adapted to the lack of electricity.
I adapted to having my bike as my mode of transportation.
I adapted to living with days of not talking to friends and family.
I adapted to the slower pace of living in the village.
In the end my French and even my Moore improved significantly, and my relationships with locals grew stronger. I was able to communicate easier and learned that for many of the locals in this community: rich, white people, America, American dream, money on trees, and big were some of the words that came to their mind when they thought of what many refer to as “America,” the United States. Initially in this village, many people thought I was white. They thought that the US only had white people. I now laugh thinking about that time when some of my friends at the time who were white came to visit me. I feel like that’s when my neighbors were like, “Wait a minute, her friends don’t look like her.”
After that day my neighbors asked me if I was Chinese. Which is also not new to me because right in the heart of Long Beach, CA and even in Chiang Mai, Thailand I’ve had locals come to me and start speaking Thai to me. I knew my neighbors in Burkina were confused.
The two years in Burkina Faso created an opportunity for me to teach them about my culture, my upbringing, my roots. I didn’t fit the images they had about the US. By simply being together in community and now being able to speak French, I was able to share that the US has people from all over the world and that the US was not always 50 states. I explained that not all of us are born “financially wealthy”. I drew a sketch of the continent of North and South America to explain where my roots came from and how the United States was only one country in the Americas. This type of exchange happened throughout the rest of my time there. They taught me things based on their experience and their stories and I did the same.
Just like the words I came in thinking about the continent of Africa shifted once I experienced a part of it, I know that at least for my closest friends in the village, the words that stayed with them when they thought about the United States also shifted.
In the end, my journey from California to West Africa was not just about adapting to a new place, but also about connecting, building community, and challenging and reshaping each other’s false narratives, one conversation at a time.
“In the end, my journey from California to West Africa was not just about adapting to a new place, but also about connecting, building community, and challenging and reshaping each other’s false narratives, one conversation at a time.” Shifting Narratives: My Journey from California to West Africa, By Edith Suárez Torres.
As my time in Burkina Faso came to an end, I reflected on how my own perceptions had shifted. Just as the words associated with Africa had evolved for me, I witnessed a similar transformation in how my friends in the village viewed the United States.
In the end, my journey from California to West Africa was not just about adapting to a new environment but also about challenging and reshaping false narratives, one conversation at a time.