Hello friends,
How are you at the other spectrum of your world?
Had a good weekend?
Welcome, if this is your first time on this website and visit to my blog. If you’ve been reading all my articles then hello again, I’m sure now you know why I’m writing this article. If not, here goes why…
Have you seen my videos on social media, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook? Have you read the description? At first, I followed my intuition when I started making these videos, at first, everything felt like injustice, I didn’t care what others thought, it was my truth, but then I realised that this is much bigger than me. I can change something; I can change what happened to me to awareness, I can change what happens to others to awareness and get the attention of the world’s governmental bodies, humanitarian services, civilians and whoever out there who believe in valuing a life by the type of passport a person has. The passport doesn’t care that you were born on planet earth. The fact that you were born on this planet already makes you worthy of having and doing the most incredible dreams and visions you have of and for yourself. With you being born and alive is the reassurance, the fact that you were born on this planet means you have a purpose to fulfil. The fact that you were born on earth gives you the invisible passport to the world which is built on self-belief. It’s only for the taking if you believe in your worth and value. To this day the world’s system only cares about passports more than people. This is for real, when was the last time you visited your local Home office, Home affairs or airport immigration?
Believe it or not, if the world didn’t put focus on wars, flags, boundaries, religion, hate and other terms there would be no stamp and judgements on accents, skin colour, traditions and ways of living. Maybe the world would be more accepting, maybe there wouldn’t have been anything called BAME for writers.
Brace yourself, not with a whiskey on rocks, or shots… Brace yourself to a really harsh reality. Don’t bite your tongue. Here is the exclusive reality by someone who has been there and done that. Take a short break, get yourself a coffee/tea, and be seated when reading this. I don’t know how upset, angry, sad, shocked or whatever you’ll feel. Now that you will find out the truth, what are you going to do with it?
You know when you grow up in your house it’s a good thing to grow up with a sense of entitlement. Trust me, just the right enough. It gives you something to be strong about especially if the sense of entitlement is worn on a heart of good intentions. The reason why I choose “house” and not country is that South Africa was the country I was born in and anyone who lived with Apartheid not being in their favour had no sense of entitlement. This entitlement and no entitlement can leave you powerless and right in the hands of abusers. This is where a passport to a better life and love becomes complicated. The world has put such importance on passports before people that it makes it hard for the person in a less powerful situation to just completely fall in love with a person who is a citizen of the country that they’re an immigrant of. It creates a sense of ownership/power from that person in love with the person in a less powerful situation, the foreigner. This is why love is such a risky matter to foreigners and this is why there is such a bad stigma attached to it. I write in my description at the end of my videos, “Foreigners aren’t the takers and this statement should stop being served to foreigners around the world.”
The system in the United Kingdom; to get your residency especially when it was tied to the European Union left non-EU citizens in a very vulnerable situation. It helped create domestic violence. It promoted domestic violence silently. The waiting time it leaves you in is ridiculous with no explicit instructions of whether the foreigner is allowed to work or not. It creates a sense of value; your value through your passport or acquiring citizenship.
Abuse victims increasingly denied the right to stay in the UK
While I lived in Spain, the ignorance around Hindu girls just made it impossible to shift the thoughts of those who meet a Hindu girl for the first time. I had to become a political figure if I wanted to shift so many minds from this sort of thinking. In Spain, the majority of people thought that all Indian/Hindu girls come from India. Now can you imagine the chances of you getting an English-speaking job in a company that is not International/Bluechip? You cannot explain in every interview or with every person you meet including the man serving you a “café con leche” (coffee with milk) that South African Hindus speak English one hundred percent and go into the history of why there is two percent of Indians in South Africa. Besides, employers can pick from the many millions of English people who settled in Spain specially to face English speaking clients.
Love and a passport to an entitled life
Falling in love was risky during my travels, I knew this ever since I turned twenty-three years of age. If I had a rule book, then this would be my number one rule on the list. No one is that smart to figure everything out at twenty-three. When you really fall in love it’s sabotaged with what you think is in the gut feeling of the person you’re in love with; will they tell you what’s really sitting in the pit their gut feeling? I mean I got it, I saw so many people from India after Indian girl’s papers that if they didn’t get it they married South African African girls to get it. Every time there was a new story we heard of at home, I was made so aware of it through my surroundings that I ensured I stayed far away from that kind of thing, so now the tables were turned, and I knew exactly what stigma people carried overseas around foreigners. When so many people tell you the same thing it becomes the truth, it becomes your reality because no one tells you any different. Imagine resisting that for eighteen years. Love as a foreigner is a needle in a haystack. I carried on as strong and independent as I possibly could even if I did fall in love, I kept love as a long-distance thing and then one day the stigma finally got inside me. I was called the foreigner who used someone when that was very far from the truth. The stigma created against foreigners works to create hate against foreigners. No one thought of narcissists using these stories to trap foreign women. No one even learnt or looked at the place I came from. I came and come from a place of values which foreign life tried to corrupt over and over again through people’s views of foreigners.
When the world wants to keep what is theirs it’s a statement, go with your own kind. This was my experience in Switzerland. The racism in Switzerland even against Germans finally showed me and made me ask, “Should I go with my own kind, my own people? If that’s the case, who are your people? South Africans or South African Indians?” Seriously, what is the world thinking? Aren’t we all humankind…maybe I should remove the word kind… Kind in the foreigner’s world … Okay…
By the way, it’s hard to understand what your own kind is, when you have chosen the world as your own kind. T. Dench Patel, 24 February 2020, 22:22
South Africans are only learning now about the term “living a purposeful life.” A lot of South Africans think you come from another planet when you say that. The average South African has to come to Home Affairs at least three times, get treated like dirt in their own country to finally get their turn to have their passports and IDs done. People have to fight basic issues and petty stuff before they turn to serve others. This is how the third world countries average citizens view the words “live a purposeful life.” People are telling me, Dench Patel, you have no idea how Africa works, this place, you need to play within the system, this is what works here but I still don’t buy into it.
Try your best and lose everything or have everything and try turning back to live a purposeful life just to lose everything or gain everything… nothing in life is guaranteed… only self-belief T. Dench Patel, 24 February 2020, 22:11
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.
