Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother.
She's really my superhero.
That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities,
perspectives, and emotions about this world.
In these difficult times in human history, we need to bring the people of the world together.
And when we hear the voices of women, when we listen to real lives of women from other
countries, we connect our cultures without differences or stereotypes, and we get inspired
by their stories to live a better life.
That's what this podcast is all about.
My guest today is Frida Zee Avwantom.
Frida is a Cameroonian girl currently learning Dutch and living in the Netherlands.
She loves photography, videography, Netflix, listening to music, and other forms of entertainment.
Frida, how are you today?
Hi, I'm doing very great today.
I'm very glad that you invited me on this podcast. It's a pleasure.
I'm honored, lucky, privileged, and very happy to have you here.
And I'll begin with this nice first question, which is Frida,
if your friends and the people who know you best could describe your personality,
what would they say about you?
They would probably say I'm very goofy and extremely sarcastic, but very kindhearted.
That's great. A lot of people don't know how to be goofy or funny or have humor.
How did you discover or is there a specific thing that you're thinking,
what's funny about this? What's something I can say that is funny? Or
how can someone develop their goofy, more comedic fun side?
Well, I love people being very open with me and being comfortable with me. That's always
a priority for me. And I think the best way for people to remember you is by just smiling
and making them laugh. Like if you can just say even one joke that they can remember,
I think that is, you know, it really does spark someone's day. But I would say that
I got my humor from my dad. He's a very funny man. And he always told me jokes
and his way of communicating was always through humor.
I love that.
At the same time, sarcasm is not associated
with making people open up
because some people don't understand it
and feel a bit hurt by it.
How do you deal with that?
Well, for me, it comes easy.
There's a very fine line with being sarcastic
because it can either come across as being rude and mean,
but it all depends on the environment
which you're in, you need to know the people, you need to read the room, and you need to make sure
that your friends or whoever it is you're being sarcastic with know that it's not serious. But
it's also because I am West African and we tend to be very, we tend to have very what Westerners
would say a harsh way of complimenting people. And so you just have to force yourself to laugh,
Really.
I understand.
And now curious about your life in the Netherlands.
How do you spend your day?
How do you organize your life
to take care of your mental health?
Your entertainment needs,
your need to bond and connect with people
as well as study a new language
that you need to be good at
in order to go further in life.
Honestly, Dutch people are very welcoming people.
And so it's very easy to find communities
that's also, you know, they have days where you just go out and interact with the people.
We have annual celebrations in which you could participate in, but also I go to the library
quite a lot and I meet a lot of new people there from different parts of the world,
which is also very important to me because I grew up in a very multicultural environment.
So I'm always attracting people who look different from me, who have different ethnicities
and different beliefs and backgrounds.
That's always a pleasure for me.
And because of that, they get to invite me to other events
like clubbing or going to festivals or concerts.
Those are always a very great way for me to spend my day.
But typical day for me, I would say,
is that I wake up and I do morning chores
and then I do my devotions.
And then I go out to the library to learn my Dutch.
And then after that, I'm pretty free
for the rest of the day.
That's the days that I'm not working also.
Yes, I love that.
And you mentioned that you attract into your life people
from different backgrounds, different looks, et cetera.
What is common between the people
that you get along with the most?
Is it that they're multi-cultural and very open-minded?
Is it that they have interesting stories that you love to learn from?
Is it the sense of humor and you want to take jabs at each other sarcastically and you love that?
Or what seems to be the commonality between the people,
although they look different, they have different backgrounds,
that makes them be your kind of person?
Typically, I attract more of people who are TCK, which means third cultural kid.
So it's people who were born in one country, but then they were raised in a different country
most of their lives.
So in my case, I was born in Cameroon and I lived there for my first eight years,
but then I went to Tanzania, Arusha, and I went to international school there,
Braben.
And after that, I went back to Cameroon into an American international school in the capital.
And then after that, I left and I came to Netherlands and then I went to other European
countries.
So people who can understand what it means to have like a dual cultural background,
I think, really do relate with me the best if you know what it means to be raised
in an African culture or an African society
and then having to come into the Western world
and understanding the different cultural shocks.
I think for me, that is very welcoming
because it feels like I'm not the only one
who's going through it.
I love that.
And you mentioned Cameroon and Tanzania.
To some people, they might think,
well, what's really the difference between both?
Because some people don't know.
What is to you the difference since you lived in both
between the culture of people in Cameroon,
people in Tanzania, what is similar? And what is kind of the differentiating factor? You mentioned
you are from West Africa, while going on the other side, that means there's something different.
What can you share with the listeners to understand more about that?
Well, I think that Tanzanians tend, or East Africans in general, especially Tanzanians,
they tend to be more peaceful.
And they really do go with the flow of hamna shida
or akuna matata, which means no worries.
And it's a very beautiful thing to be part of.
And they just, they take their time.
They really do indulge themselves into nature
and to their land and taking so much pride.
But in West Africa,
I feel like it's a lot more fast paced, right?
and it's always my next move. How can I make money? And how can I feed my family? And how
can I get better? And things like that, I think. But then also West Africans, especially
Cameroonians, we also love to party, and we party for days. So we could work the entire week,
and then the weekend, we just leave that for partying. And I feel like East Africans don't
still a very, very beautiful, beautiful culture, both of them.
I love that. And I noticed as well, you mentioned early on, now in the Netherlands, you wake up,
you do your morning chores and your devotions. What did you mean with that? Can you share a
bit more and why is that an important part of your day? Well, it's important for me to do
devotions because I did grow up in a Christian environment and most of my life I've been
attending Christian schools.
And because I've been having a really hard time
finding a good church here that I can relate with,
it's important that I still keep that spirituality,
even though the religious aspect of it
is a little bit difficult for me
to apply in my life right now.
And also because God is the center of my life,
and I believe that there's really nothing
that I can do without his help.
And that's why it's always important for me
to keep that relationship with him and keep him in mind,
and make sure that I, and most importantly make sure
that I apply what I read in the Bible into the real world.
Thank you.
I appreciated knowing even more about you related to that.
And you're now moving your life to the Netherlands,
which is very, very different to Africa.
Why did you choose the Netherlands?
Why not any other part of the world?
And how was adapting to the Netherlands?
Was there some kind of culture shock in the beginning or not?
How can you describe that experience?
Well, I actually came to the Netherlands
because my dad works here.
And so it was actually supposed to be only for a year.
I was supposed to take a gap year after high school
and I loved it.
But unfortunately COVID happened and I couldn't travel.
No one was traveling.
and no airports were working.
We were all in a lockdown for a real long time.
And so after that, it became really hard for me
to like start applying to schools abroad.
And I didn't want to do online schooling either
because that's just, I know I would not be,
I would not have been, what's the word, committed to it.
And then, you know, a few years later, I started to really like Netherlands. And I really did love
people. I loved the environment and how safe it felt here. But I would say that the most
cultural shock for me was, I would say would be the people and how they interacted with things
like in African culture,
I believe that people are very involved in your life
and you just cannot do certain things
that you cannot speak to your elders disrespectfully
because they will discipline you,
even if they're not related to you directly,
they kind of take that burden of having to, you know,
discipline you as their own,
because we have that family,
It's a communal community type of mentality,
whereas here it's like you can do whatever the heck
you want to do and no one really cares.
So for me, that was a little bit odd.
As well as the food, the food here is very different
and it took me a very long while
to even consider trying it,
but I have tried some of the food
and I still don't like it that much.
But on top of that is also the weather.
It's very cold here, rarely any sun and when it does, when it is sunny, it's too sunny or, you know, it's just very different.
I understand and it helps, you know, a lot, imagine your life and your experience.
And you are someone who loves videography, photography and music.
How are they becoming a big part of your life?
Are you going to dedicate yourself,
let's say in your education within those fields?
Or if not, is it your primary hobby?
How do you learn more about that?
How do you enjoy it more?
How much of your experience is dedicated to those fields?
Well, I've always really loved photography
ever since I was really young,
but I was never really good at it,
but I have improved.
I think, again, I learned from my dad, because he used to take a lot of pictures and he just used to do it for fun, and he bought me a camera at a very young age.
And, you know, when now I was during the pandemic, actually, that I was like, you know what, let me just learn a new skill and let me see where this actually going to take me and photography came up in mind.
and so I spent a lot of time on YouTube trying to self-teach myself and I bought all the cameras
and all the lightings that I have or I knew of and I started practicing with those in my room.
I posted some of the pictures on my Instagram account and I actually got a few likes from it,
which was very surprising because I did not really think that anyone would care about it
because I was just doing it because, you know,
just finding a new hobby.
But then now that I have a little bit more experience,
I really would want to, you know,
continue this into high university level
and perhaps like take a photograph
of like the school magazines
or just be part of that creative area.
That would be lovely for me.
Thank you.
And what do you see for yourself for the future?
Do you have any vision for the next steps in your life or do you dream of being or becoming a specific kind of person, influencer, career, whatever you have in mind?
What goals or vision are you working towards?
Well, I want to be a physiotherapist, but I also want to be a businesswoman and I want to do photography and videography.
So that's a lot to pack in. I want to do these things because physiotherapy for me is very
important. I do see a need to help people and in West Africa especially there's so much
help for that. There are a lot of people who have you know muscle pain or nervous pain and
they think oh let me go to the doctor but that's actually something to do with a
therapist and we don't have a lot of physiotherapists in my home country and also because you know they
don't really have that much respect because you know if you're going in the massaging field
a lot of people would tend to disrespect um a lot of physiotherapists because they associate
that with um sexual work which is not necessarily what that is it's just you know to loosen your
to loosen your muscles and loosen the nervous system.
But then also with the business,
I want to become my own entrepreneur.
So I want to own my own physiotherapy clinic in Cameroon.
But because I am very, as I said before, multicultural,
I want to set a clinic here in Netherlands also
and in my home country, Cameroon.
And then for the videography and photography,
Well, that's just me being a little bit extra, but I would love, if that is possible, I would love to start a new YouTube channel and show people the cultural differences between Cameroon, Africa, and the Netherlands here.
I love that. And I notice a lot of confidence in your words, the way that you describe your goals.
Many women nowadays, whether because of the pandemic or social media or society, they feel
they worry about the judgment of others. They don't go for their big dreams because they think,
oh, what if I fail and my parents will judge me and people will hate me, especially you
coming from African cultures. There will be a lot of gossip and talk about someone who fails.
How do you overcome that? What's your advice for yourself and for women to
reach their potential, go for their big dreams and find their confidence, no matter what other
people might think, say or anything like that? Well, when I was a really young child, it was
already like destined that I was going to eventually come into the western world and study
here and potentially live here for a very long time. And because of that, my grandma always
told me, never forget who you are and never forget your way home. You always need to come
And you always need to represent your culture and you need to represent your country and
you need to represent your continent.
And so for me, also being surrounded by really strong women, like my aunties and like
a lot of family friends that have helped with my upbringing, really did make it
a lot easier to have the confidence that I have in me today.
But it's also because, again, I go back to Scripture, I always go back to my
Bible.
and I always pray for God to give me the confidence
because sometimes it really is,
you really do get tested by people here.
For example, when I first came
and I was trying to apply for like a career job
in Scrum Master, they would always neglect me
because they would see my full name.
Like they'll see Frida and then they'll see Avantom
and it's like, wait, that's not a Dutch name.
That's not, that sounds a little bit exotic.
And so they would not necessarily give it a second thought, right?
And that really did discourage me for a very long time.
But then remembering what my grandma always told us, remembering what my aunties and
other people who raised me always kept saying that you need to be proud of who you are.
You need to remember the meaning of your name, which means, well, freedom means
a peace barrier.
and then avuntum in my mother tongue,
it means someone who never gives up.
So remembering those, the meaning of my name really did
even give me even more confidence.
I would say to women around the world
that you just need to know who you are
and no matter what anyone says,
you always have to keep that in mind.
You need to keep your pride
and you need to be confident in yourself,
believe in yourself.
Thank you so much, Frida.
It was my privilege and my honor
to have you in this podcast,
to share your life, your voice, and your story.
I wish you all the success
and thank you so much for participating.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really did have a great time here
and I wish you all the best.
And I think this is such a great podcast,
the thing that you're doing, Empowering Women.
I'm very grateful for you
because we need a lot more podcasts like this
around the world.
But thank you.
I'm very honored to be,
to have been part of this work of yours.
You are welcome.
You are welcome.
You are welcome.
You are welcome.
You are welcome.
You are welcome.
