Awesome Black Child (in Russia)

Earlier this year, towards the end of January, a group of students from my school went to Russia to stay with Russian host families for a week. The school has an arrangement with the Russian school in Murmansk, so each year students from Pasvik Folk High School are hosted by Russian families.

Murmansk is about 108km from the Norwegian border and so we drove with a mini-bus for almost the whole day. No, I'm not sure. We drove around 9 in the morning and got to Murmansk around 5 or 6 in the evening, I'm not sure. We had some activities planned with the Russian school for the whole week and then in the evenings we would get free time and go to the mall(s) and eat out or just chill. It was a great experience for me, especially since it was my first time staying with a host family in a foreign country.

In the year 2012, Murmansk had about 303,754 people. With this number I'm trying to suggest that atleast a handful of this people would be black people. Whether they were studying there, working there or were just on holiday. Frankly speaking, the year is now 2020 and that number has obviously increased over the years with the expectation that the number of black people living in the city would be fairly noticeable, if I have to put it that way. But then again, I could be wrong.

During the time that I was in Murmansk, I remember that I didn't really see any black people at all. The reason could be that I moved only within one area(although I went to the two biggest malls in the city), we spent a lot of time at the school and we were only there for four days I think.

You might be wondering why I'm talking about the black population of a city in northwest Russia, well here's why.

Firstly, my short stay in Russia was memorable. I've never had an experience like that, never even dreamed of one and as with everything else, I kept feeling like I was auditioning for a movie role. My host family was awesome, the activities we had were fantastic, it was just great sightseeing in Murmansk.

The highlight of the trip for me was eating at a really fancy restaurant and when we visited the ice-breaker "Lenin". According to Wikipedia, it was both the world's first nuclear-powered surface ship and the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel and it was launched in 1957. What amazed me about Lenin was that it was so huge, and it was an actual icebreaker back in the day. It's currently a museum ship so we took a tour around it, I loved seeing how it used to function. I'm not even crazy about icebreakers, I guess actually being on one made me see them a bit differently.

Oh well, let's get back to being me...

On the last day of school, which happened to be my birthday, the two schools were exchanging gifts and thanking each other for working together and that they would keep the relationship going. In the class we had the Russian students who hosted us and the rest of the group from my school, it was a full class.

One moment I was sitting and smiling at a chocolate bar that a friend gave to me, the next I heard the Russian teacher call my name and I was confused for a while. Then I realised that she was looking at me and ushering me to the front of the class, and so I stood up. Dammit, I don't even like standing infront of the class!

I thought I'd make an exception since it was my birthday and so I smiled and stood next to the teacher. She said something along the lines of:

"...we have never had a student from Namibia(she was trying to say a black student but let's carry on) and so we thought we'd give you a present to say thank you for being here(she was really nice)..."

She handed me a glass plate with paintings of women on it and said:

"..we want you to know that you are very beautiful, just like this Russian women here. Don't ever forget that.."

The teacher had a soothing voice and a pretty smile, which made me smile(awkwardly). I must admit that I was somewhat embarrassed that she had called me out in front of the class and just thanked me like that. It was a really nice gesture, but I feel like after everyone realised what was going on, the room became very tense. I thanked her and walked to my sit, wishing the ground would swallow me up.

A friend of mine who was also in that class that day asked me about that experience the other day and we laughed like crazy about it. He couldn't understand that they actually did that, since they might have come across other black people in the city. The teacher emphasized a lot on that part and that's where things got a bit awkward, but it was a really weird experience for me.

In the end I concluded that she thanked me for being 'awesomely black', that's why I appreciated the gesture. I mean who can avoid see all this melanin when it's glowing so much?!

People have different reactions to different situations, I learned that through this. I also learned that some people handle some situations better than others(the teacher was nice). For example, during that week I got on a public bus with some friends and found four Russian boys(about 14-16 years old) just staring at me. They did that until they got off and that was uncomfortable. Don't do that. Rather look down if you not even gonna say anything, that goes for me too when I see something I'm not used to!

This post is getting way too long, bye now.

hearts, Queen