At a dinner hosted by the Governor of the Reserve Bank (charming, throws a good party, enforces a pretty effective fiscal policy but needs to ramble less when giving a speech) a couple of weeks ago, a high-level diplomat from the Congo (La République Démocratique du Congo, to be precise) is introduced to me. He asks me where I'm from, and when I tell him, he (all 7 feet of him) flinches back in surprise.
"Mais vous êtes blanche!" (But you're white!) he exclaims.
I tell him each year of marriage to a gringo bleached my skin a lighter shade of pale. I mean, really. It's the age of globalization. Questions like that should be irrelevant, especially in this Rainbow Nation.
Nevertheless, a few days later, at Pilates, I tell the trainer what the black diplomat said. And she says, "But it's so obvious that you're Asian! I mean, you're olive-skinned!"
I don't know. Maybe the ANC has achieved the impossible and turned a nation colorblind.
Let's see what happens now with Zuma in charge. Though of course we don't intend to stick around.
OMG, I've just realized who the Reserve Bank Governor reminds me of. Ok, here we go again - who was Bobby Donnell's partner in The Practice? The black guy? Bald? Who had this habit of puckering up his lips and chewing on his cheeks whenever he tried to control his temper. Eugene, right?
On the left, Attorney. On the right, Guv.
Images from Google
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