2 weeks Ago By Michele Jarvie
Why Calgary? Out of the blue, I was recently asked what it felt like being a Calgarian. I examined my brown skin while listening to my incorrigible British accent, 40 years on. “Calgarian? Me?” Since I was taken from Africa at the age of five — my mom obtaining a divorce and whisking me to England with her — I considered Dar-es-Salaam my home.
It was a place to return to as soon as possible. That closeness was strengthened by my father, who stubbornly remained in Africa. Dad worked for an airline, and every school break saw me jetted off to Dar-es-Salaam to rejoin my father and the rest of our extended family.
Despite my English family loving me more than anyone could, my heart belonged to Africa. Every day that passed brought me closer to the day I could leave for home. The belief of being a stranger in a strange land was entrenched by the behaviour of those I met while training as an accountant.
I was now “elevated” from the working class to a milieu of the middle class. In training, however, I found the deep prejudice that judged me on how I spoke, not on how I behaved or performed. As much as I could not part with my accent — which betrayed my origins — I remained out of the fold.
The middle class in England is hospitably polite. Beware the Perfidious Albion. All the overtures of welcome never allowed me into a staff birthday party, let alone the workplace squash ladder.
Calgary was the only place in Canada where I had no relatives and could live an independent life — my mom, now a millionaire in England, and my father, the only East Indian in East African Airways, decided they were happy to remain where they were. Having been brought up as one-third atheist, one-third Anglican, and one-third Ismaili Muslim, I belonged to each, yet to no one, desperately needing space to discover who I really was. In the late 1970s, Calgary boomed, thanks to the oil the world needed.
It shone with the promise of dreams fulfilled if you applied yourself. The city’s lifeblood was its entrepreneurs. Yet, my mindset was still to leave Calgary within three years.
My one-room bachelor suite of 400 square feet was a camping ground — a sleeping bag, a boom box, an IKEA folding table and chair. That was it. Easy to pack up, easy to move on.
Three years turned into four, then five. It never stopped me from dreaming of my African home, sans family, sans community..
