Eiköhän suomessa ole rasismia??

Am at work and counting the hours till the shift is over and i go home to sleep and enjoy my easter. I have nothing big in particular for the long weekend ahead but tomorrow evening my sister has invited me over for dinner, am looking forward to that. She is a good cook and by far much better than me(or so i think:yaani whatever she decides to put together in the kitchen..be it potatoes and cabbages(lol) or chicken, anything(apart from chapos)always comes out so nicely and leaves everyone licking their fingers. The only thing i have never given her credit for is her chapos...am the expert in that, yes, pls allow me to blow my own trumpet on this one..at least this once. To eat her chapos, one has to exercise their jaws a few hours beforehand if they plan to remain with a functioning jaw after the eating the chapos. Not forgetting that she makes various' countries maps using dough and serves them in the name of chapos. Woi, if she sees this she'll strangle me!!
I have mad love for my sister though and if there's anyone who deserves happiness and all good things in this life, its her. She has a big heart, she's very PATIENT, loving, kind, name it all. Am not just saying this because she is my sister but because i know it. I sometimes feel like the evil one compared to her, and at times i feel guilty because of the things she has to put up with from me. She's seven years my senior and sometimes am sure given a chance, she'd happily smack my backside coz of the things i do.

On a different note, i am tired of this country. We all say that regarding out jobs, locations etc but for real am tired of this country. Having lived in this godforsaken place for exactly 4yrs, 11 months and 5 days, one would think i am already used to living here lakini no, its completely the other way round. One never gets used to living in finland!You see, when you move to a new place, the first few years or months are full of mixed feelings:surprises, new things to discover, new friends, new work places..the list is endless. It was like that for me when i moved to finland, at first i hated it, then i started getting used to the way of life here so i kinda liked it then three years on i started asking myself critical questions like, is this the kind of place i'd want to live in for the rest of my life?get married in, bring my children up?The questions have remained unanswered until now and the answer is NO. If i get something better tomorrow i'd be off before the end of today. I believe i have good reasons for that answer and i know no one is forcing me to stay here but i am planning on my next move and before my plans materialize, i guess i just have to try and hang on in there.

why would i want so badly to get of this country?someone may ask. Of late, i have experienced a few cases of racism, the latest one being last weekend at a night club;i dont even want to start going into details about that, brings a nasty taste to my mouth but i felt humiliated, angry and i so badly wanted to give a piece of my mind to the person involved but i refrained, does no good and anyway, from past experiences, its their country, no matter who started 'it' am still on the wrong...am the black one!!At my work place i have been called by the n-word several times, and for no apparent reason..someone just didnt like the fact that am from africa and he so openly shared his feelings with me and with some of my work colleagues. Yaani i just dont get it at times, here i am minding my own business, offering my services to someone and instead of being grateful or just keeping quiet, they show disgust on their faces and go ahead to even call me names.
when i graduated last year i had to move out of students' apartments and because am employed by the government, i had the priviledge of getting one of our work places' apartments. when i got the key to go and view the apartment, i immediately fell in love with it and decided that am going to take it. its neither too big nor too small, in the right neighbourhood with supermarkets,public transport, library, etc within easy reach..lets just say the almost perfect apartment. To top it all off, on the same day i met with my next door neighbour and she was unbelievably friendly, she even volunteered to show me where the communal sauna is and everything she thot necessary for me to know..without me even asking!!!!Too bad that within a month after i'd moved in she moved out.
however, of late am starting to feel like it was the wrong place to live in after all, why?i have noticed several eyes staring at me from the balcony, peeping from the windows thinking i cant notice them and have received several cold stares at the parking lot. all of a sudden am this alien that everyone fears or hates..i dont know which... and so all they can do is watch from the safety of their houses and balconies. last week i met the owner of a red station wagon that's always parked next to my car at the parking lot. I was emptying the car boot when without even saying hi he asked me whats my parking lot/space number. and not in your usual friendly-trying to make conversation-manner but in a very rude manner, those ones of you are black, have you even been assigned parking space here to start with?me being me, gave him an answer thinking he'd go away but i was wrong..the guy asked if i pay my parking fee!at first i thought i'd heard the wrong thing so i asked him to repeat and he boldly asked if i pay my parking fee!!!!!the balls!!!i hesitated for a while and i told him that yes, i am a tenant there and so i have the right to parking space and have paid my parking monthly parking fee. the guy walked away.
Yesterday morning, i received a letter from the talonmies-janitor in english(sp) i guess, asking me if i'd paid my parking fee, and no, the parking lot guy is not the janitor so he must have called them and told them whatever he told them and so they had to contact me to enquire. And you tell me these are the kind of pple i should call neighbours?i thought neighbours are supposed to be friendly but i guess all this changes once you are black living among whites.
yes, i have paid my parking fees. Am disgusted with the kind of behaviour my neighbours have displayed, and am disgusted with the uncivilised manner in which some finns behave. am tired of pple looking at me like am some creature from space, am tired of being asked stupid questions that are my own business anyway and am tired of this country and everything about it. I have asked God to guide me out of here and i am positive that by the end of this year, i'll be out of here. No one chooses to be born black or white and sme pple need to get that into their heads. am not moving out of my apartment because of the haters, they can keep hating and can keep peeping out of their windows whenever i pass by and am not chaning my parking spot. hell, i pay for it every month so usiniletee!

'Eiköhän suomessa ole rasismia' is a sentence i saw years ago when i had just moved into this country. It was used on posters on a campaign to eradicate racism in finland: on the poster was a gal(judging from the looks, probably of ethiopian origin) sitting all alone in a seat meant for two in a tram and with finns around her standing-and none bothering to occupy the seat next to this black girl. And in bold letters was the question 'eiköhän suomessa ole rasismia'? loosely translated as 'isn't there racism in finland'?I remember by then my finnish language skills were next to nil and out of curiosity i asked the guy who i was with(a former classmate from Gambia who's lived in finland for over 6 years) what the words meant. He explained it to me so i gitched what the poster was all about. For some reason that picture remains very clear in my mind upto this day and following the recent incidents in my life, it all came back to me so i decided to borrow and use this as my title for this post.