Discovering Brussels from within, as a rare

I arrived here in the mid-80s and for a lengthy period of time spoke only French, excitedly breaking into English, Kiswahili or my mother-tongue when the occasion arose.

On the rare occasions I found myself in the Dutch-speaking Flanders, the locals, recognising me to be but a mere visitor, were happy to dust down their English and bring it out for my convenience.

I also enjoyed a long run as a rare and unique species, Kenyans then being few and far between in these parts.

Introductions would send the locals into a state of rapture; the Maasai, safaris and the Kilimanjaro — maddeningly for Rashid, the only Tanzanian of my acquaintance at the time — would be dreamily invoked and goodwill and hospitality would abound; I dined out on being a Kenyan for many years.

Then I met Billy and discovered I had been living in a bubble.

Billy lived with his family in Turnhout, an industrial town just beyond the port city of Antwerp if you recall your geography.

At Turnhout were a few Kenyans and their families as I was later to discover when I attended a party there last summer.

But for the odd Belgian, the community hall was full of Kenyans gathered there for an early celebration of a Kenyan couple’s nuptials before their flight out to Kenya for the real thing.

Enjoy nyama choma

I returned to visit Sammy and enjoy nyama choma at a pub he had recently opened in a hamlet just outside Turnhout and where he had successfully introduced Kenya’s weekend sport of beer and char-grilled meat to the locals.

But just as I was discovering a thriving Kenyan community in Belgium, elements in the Flanders were threatening secession and claiming Brussels as the capital of a future Flemish state.

Given Flemish intransigence when it comes to language usage on Flemish soil, I would presumably have to move to Wallonia, travelling abroad to visit Billy et al.

At its foundation in 1830, French, then the international language of diplomacy and of the ruling elites, was elected the official language of the Kingdom of Belgium.

In 1921 Flemish nationalists finally obtained recognition of Dutch as the official language in the Flemish provinces while Wallonia would continue to speak French and the capital city would be bilingual.

The creation of a federal state in the summer of 1993 — with each community having its regional government and Brussels being a region in its own right as well as being the federal capital and the seat of the federal government — was meant to put paid ethnic squabbles between the Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons but, alas, this has not happened.