Writer Musa Okwonga on "The Art of the Happy Expat"
The art of the happy expat is to feel at home anywhere, I suspect, failing that, you should look at home
June 09th, 2016
Musa Okwonga is a writer, actor, musician and model. He describes his life as an ‘expat.’ He is originally from Uganda, he then studied at Oxford University and currently he lives Berlin. Alexander Gilmour, a journalist from "Expat Lives" online magazine interviewed him on the issue of living as an expat.
Okwonga is 36 and has lived in the German city for a year-and-a-half. He was born in the United Kingdom, “my father arrived in 1971, my mother in 1972, with nothing but a handbag.” They were medical students and came to the UK as Ugandan refugees. His parents had four children and he is the eldest son. His father returned to Uganda in 1983, during the period of civil war. He was chief army surgeon and he died in a helicopter crash alongside General Oyite-Ojok. Okwonga has only returned to Uganda only two times, “even if I do not return, that is an important part of who I am.”
He attended Eton College, one of the oldest schools in the UK. However while attending England’s most famous public school, Okwonga felt foreign: “I lived only a few miles away, probably closer than most borders, but it mostly felt like another world.”
Etonians usually attended classes in tail suits, and dressed in “wedding clothes" and he felt that a black face was something not appropriate, as he affirmed “You had to look confident, even if you were not, otherwise you would implode".
Okwonga described how one day he heard a boy talking to one of his classmates “I hate that guy so much,” “I wish I could tell him that my great-grandfather was a slave driver.” His family was poor compared with most Eton families. He was on a 50 per cent bursary. He lived with his mother and three siblings in West Drayton, a suburb on the edge of Greater London. But he didn't feel comfortable there, he felt like he didn't belong there even if he was born there. When the journalist asked him "Where do you think is your home?" He replied “It isn’t really anywhere for me. I didn’t feel like I am from Uganda, but I didn’t feel really at home in West Drayton well".
About two years ago, he grew sick of England and decided to move to Berlin. Talking about racism in the German capital he affirmed "It’s fine, if you’re a middle-class black guy. Less good if you’re seeking asylum".
