Chapter 2: African Calling
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Published:2025
Claude-Hélène Mayer, 2025. "African Calling", Intercultural Autoethnographies: Voices of South African Gen Z, Claude-Hélène Mayer, Alyssa Govender, Present Raymond Ramalepe
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Did you ever think that you were born in the wrong place?
I remember a day when I was sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, eating oats, when I suddenly realized that I was born in the wrong place. Ever since then I have that feeling that I belong to the African continent. That day, when I was sitting in my grandmother’s cold and dark kitchen in the middle of a rainy West German autumn day, I decided that, one day, I will move to Africa, I will go home. Growing up 20 kilometers from the East German border, in a medium sized German town, most of my friends were from Turkey and Yugoslavia. Little did I know at the time that intercultural stories and interactions would define my life.
