First year English student at UCL Victoria Nambi, inspired by a documentary looking at race and gender, imagines how long we could wait for a black woman to lead the UK and explains inequality in terms that young adults will understand, with a Hunger Games analogy.

Recently, while procrastinating from revision, I watched Cecile Emeke’s brilliant Strolling documentary series in one sitting. Strolling is a documentary split into 11 episodes, each following an interviewee - all Black British and predominantly women - as they stroll through London talking about their lives and perceptions as refracted through experiences based on race and gender. One thought I had after watching it was, ‘what would I say if I was one of the subjects on Strolling?’ I brainstormed and boy was my list long! The following article is constructed from some of my ideas about how being a black woman can lead to stacked odds in the world of power and politics.

With the results of the 2015 General Election just settled and David Cameron back in 10 Downing Street, I wonder how long it will be before we see Britain’s first black Prime Minister? He will almost certainly be male and then, after an acceptable period for the public to get on board, we may see our first black female Prime Minister. Will any of this happen in my lifetime?

I ask myself a similar question whenever its election year in Kenya or Uganda because I have strong ties to both countries, and neither have had female Presidents. I have my doubts. I lived in Kenya for a decade and my parents hail from neighbouring Uganda; I consider myself a Londoner of East African descent. I attended a British-system boarding school for my entire residency in Kenya and during that period, I had not a single headmaster or headmistress of colour. I also wasn’t taught by a black teacher until I was in year seven. I remember thinking when he came into the music classroom for our first lesson, ‘black people can be teachers too? cool!’

Last month I was talking to a fellow UCL student, who is white, and the look on his face when I told him that I only speak English fluently was priceless. I lived in Kenya for ten years but I was not born there; people of colour can be expatriates too! The first seven years of my life were spent in London. My first word was an English one. My mother is not Kenyan and neither is anybody else in my family, so we are not fluent in Swahili. Though Swahili, along with English, is the official language of Kenya, you could feasibly get away with not knowing it. English was the language we used in school and Swahili was not even one of the prescribed language subjects, though French was. At school we had flag-raising every Friday morning during which we sang Kenya’s National Anthem. We always sang the English version of the first verse before the Swahili version. I never questioned that order until now.

Truthfully speaking, the likelihood of someone who looks like me becoming President of Kenya or Uganda, or Prime Minister of the UK any time soon is demoralisingly slim. Perhaps when Kenya and Uganda show less of a preference for Western dominance in their school systems, they will be a bit more amenable to the idea of having a female president, – however, the issue of gender expectations in East African culture is a barrier to overcome. When Kenyan women are given the opportunity to helm schools like the one I went to, this will be an indication of progress. Until then, how can one hope for them to rise to the position of Head of State? To see progress made at the top of society I think it must start from the bottom, in institutions like schools, before working up to positions like Secretary-General of the United Nations, Prime Minister or President.

Any reader of the Hunger Games will be able to recall Effie Trinket’s famous catchphrase ‘Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favour’. Well, I find that being a woman of colour is like having your name put in the Hunger Games Reaping Bowl three times as opposed to just the once for white men. The first one is automatic and universal and comes with being born, though, just like in the book, the more disenfranchised you are, the more times your name will appear in the bowl. If you’re a woman of colour the second entry is on account of your non-whiteness and the third one is on account of your non-maleness. The odds (or intersectionality) only get worse for women of colour who also happen to be any of the following: non-heterosexual, non-cisgendered, non-Christian or non-able bodied. You’d expect the non-white category to be rendered obsolete outside of the West but as the world becomes more globalised, and Western ideals increasingly re-encroach on non-Western societies, you find that non-whiteness actually does start to matter, as evinced by the rise of this #teamlightskin and #teamdarkskin malarkey on social media, as well as the decades old, lucrative skin bleaching cosmetics industry.

Sooner or later it dawns on every girl that no matter what her geographical situation is the odds are never in her favour, for all the major global societies are patriarchal. And the odds are stacked ever so slightly higher against women of colour, though this reality by no means diminishes the experience of white women. One of my favourite scenes from the American TV show 30 Rock is in Season 3, Episode 2, when Tracy Jordan (a black male comedian) and Jenna Maroney (a white female actress) attempt to determine whose life is harder and both wind up using Adrian Brody’s impromptu kiss of Halle Berry at the 2003 Oscars as one of the key exhibits for their respective cases. Interestingly, Brody and Berry both hold Oscar records - Brody is the youngest recipient of the Best Leading Actor Academy Award, while Berry is the first and only black recipient of the Best Leading Actress Academy Award in the Oscars’ 87 year history. I remember laughing heartily at the rich irony of this set up which inadvertently unified Jenna and Tracy in their struggles but at the same time illuminated something that the two characters failed to grasp: neither of them have it as hard as African-American women. That being said, these odds can and must be overcome by all human beings; it is the collectiveresponsibility of both the privileged and the marginalised to eliminatethese odds.

Earlier on I mentioned in passing that Strolling is brilliant. Let me elaborate: Emeke’s capturing of such a diversely intelligent and beautiful bunch of Black Britons is ineffably satisfying considering how starved I’ve been for positive media representations of African-diaspora women. She has taken this concept and applied it across the Channel with her Flâner documentary series set in Paris. There are only two episodes so far, both of which have been crafted with the same sensitivity and depth as the London series. Strolling is a must see for anyone who is interested in learning more about the Black British experience, or anyone looking to see themselves represented in a candid, nuanced light. I would also recommend it to aspiring filmmakers for the sheer ingenuity and the execution of her idea.

Ms Emeke, if you are ever in need of a subject for Strollinghit me up!