The title of this piece has nothing to do with the Black Stars (Ghana’s national soccer team) World Cup victory over Serbia the other night and everything to do with a medical clinic in Chongqing that refused to believe that I’m Canadian.
To be fair, it certainly wasn’t the entire clinic that doubted my nationality. All I know is that the woman behind the reception counter made it obvious that she didn’t believe I’m Canadian. This despite her having my passport in hand and hearing me repeat “Jianada” , which means Canada in Mandarin (at one point during our brief exchange the 40-something-year-old looking woman even asked in broken English, “you from Canada?”).
Walking away from the counter I told my two colleagues, both of whom are Canadians of Chinese descent, that we blew the women’s mind. “You know to her only white people live in Canada,” I said, chuckling, “we just confused the hell out of her.” (The woman asked my colleagues several times if they were really Canadian.)
Although, the woman’s disbelief in my country of origin was blatant, I didn’t think she or anyone else in the clinic would type a new nationality into my file.
(If you haven’t read my post “Experiencing Cultural diversity in China”, you might want to go and check it out. In it, I point out that during my seven years in China many of the locals have a tough time accepting that I and other non-whites are Canadian.)
On Monday morning, Liu Qiang (the Canadian staff at my school call her Nicole, which is her English name), the principal’s secretary who also runs the foreign affairs department, told me that she received my health certificate (a document needed to renew my residence permit that expires in August) but said my blood type wasn’t included in the results (after the physical examination on Saturday, which included a blood test, I asked her if she could check my blood type once she was given the one-page results from the clinic. Yes, I’m one of those people that doesn’t know his blood type).
“But it’s very good that you asked me to look for it,” Liu Qiang said, smiling, “because there was a mistake on your certificate.” Standing up from her desk, she pulled out my health certificate from a file cabinet and said, “it said here that your nationality was Ghana”. (Liu Qiang wouldn’t have noticed the error if I hadn’t inquired about my blood type which led her to peruse my results and the health certificate.)
“Ghana? Where did they get that from?” I asked. The secretary was just as puzzled by the nationality the clinic gave me as I was. After all, I wrote, on the registration form that I was from Canada. She suggested that maybe when I said “Jianada”, the woman heard “Jiana”, which is Ghana. While I playfully added that perhaps the clinic knows something about my family lineage that I don’t. I later wondered if she had seen the Ghanaian soccer team and thought I resembled some of the players.
Either way for almost a day, I was, according to my health certificate, Ghanaian. Liu Qiang went back to the clinic on Sunday and had them issue a new one with my actual nationality. Oddly enough, I went from being Ghanaian to Canadian without providing the clinic with my passport or any other piece of identification.
Considering the Black Stars are the only African team with a winning record at the World Cup and Canada is, well, absent, maybe that woman behind the counter was doing me a favor by making me Ghanaian.
Ghana's National Soccer Team aka the Black Stars
Exactly, it really would have been.