I wear my skin as a badge, my color tells people who I am, what I am about, where I should be, how I live. My blackness, my golden bronze tone can never lie, and unlike most badges, I cannot put it away at my convience and just flash it out when being black may benefit me.

Because of my skin, I belong to a tribe in America that is simply being called Black or African-American. Like most Jerry Springer shows, there is a mast of confusion within this tribe and although we try to organize we never make it out singing Kumbayah together. Yet, one thing is the same. There are still people who do not like me, nor truly understand me based up my blackness. They tend to think I have children with a nameless father, I am GED trained, I can’t say shrimp, I have stripped in my past, I can teach anyone to do the soulijah boy dance, I start every sentence with GURL…..and I think Tyra Banks is Oprah.

And at times I watch my tribe rally in protest of racist statement (nappy headed hoes), and injustice (Jena 6), and in these moments I realize that I am an outsider in my home and I just want my spot at the dinner table. I don’t like haterd, I don’t like racism, I don’t like sterotype, and judgmental statements and I now recognize that we, my tribe is one of the biggest perpatrators of this disease. That African-Americans are as ignorant, unknowledgable, and closed minded as any redneck, pitchfork carrying, white sheeting owning cracker when it comes to discussing Africans and our African country.

With my pronounced move to Liberia, i am overjoyed while some of my associates have been rallying ways to tell me that I am not making a good idea.
“You’ll catch AIDS if you sleep with anyone”
“You will get kidnapped.”
“You will get shot in a war.”
“How you gonna live in a hut that long?”
“You just need to visit for a while and come back.”
“You are not going to like it.”
“You will die of malaria.”
“It smells over there.”
“They are starving over there.”
“How are you going to talk to them?”

Have we become so accustomed to America that we have taking the tradition of sterotyping and refuse to realize that we are not so high up on an Americaize throne to look down and anyone, or any country that doesn’t celebrate materialism like we do? The comments and beliefs that we are sharing are done in the same ignorance that which was used to ban us from reading and writing during slavery. No matter what you think, Africa is our home, just like for White Americans, Europe is there home. America was never a home for anyone except Native Americans. We are all orphans and immigrants brought to build a land and empire, and once we have built it we successfully turn our backs on the ones who gave us the knowledge to be who we are.

I think it is funny that the same people who stated such agruments are quick to grab their T-shirts and bumper stickers to rally behind Barack Obama, because its, “Important to get a brother in office”. Because we are so behind the cause of supporting a black man and you fail to acknowledge him? How, because BARACK’s father is African, Barack without hesitation lets people know his full heritage. Africa is who we are, what we were, and actually the continent (which 47 countries) is quite fine, and all of them are different, just like IOWA is different from NEW YORK.

If you look at where you are, all the problems that people are so concerned of what is happening in Africa is definately happening 100 miles from where they stand. Starvation, AIDS, Poor economy, murders, gangs, drugs, obseity, West Nile deaths, and so much more.

I hope that my experience opens my mind to think, leave, believe, communicate, and understand life on an international level, not just locally. My goal is to know all the things that i can and experience them, not just watch it on Feed the Children.

“What will you miss the most?”  That was the question posed to me on a wonderful Sunday evening while I was enjoying one of my last suppers on American soil.  The question haunted me for a second because besides missing family, I really didn’t know.  I love my friends, but I’ve always been a drifter going wherever I hear my name called.  My true friends know how to find a phone conversation and me on the other end.  I’m only but a few keystrokes away.  So what would I miss, really?  To say a food dish is trivial.  Perhaps music, but I’ll have Itunes and Internet.  What is it on American soil that I would cherish so much that I might curl up in bed at night and wept for what I couldn’t touch?  I left that night pondering that question, but in honesty never knowing if I could reach an answer unless I was actually on Liberian land.

It was when I receiving my treatment as an immunization junkie that I had my first encounter with the love that I might lose. It was in a small packet describing the impact of Malaria, the sickness that kills so many overseas.  The antidote was a pill call Lariam, a pill that is taken only once a week to ward off mosquitoes and their pesky little stingers.  Reading about my new little friend I discovered that it wasn’t the shakes and the shivers that had me question my new friend but…“Mefloquine may have severe and permanent adverse side-effects. It is known to cause severe depression, anxiety, paranoia, aggression, nightmares, insomnia, seizures, peripheral motor-sensory neuropathy, vestibular (balance) damage and central nervous system problems.”
WHAT THE MESS??  I have lived 30 years drug free, depressant free, and barely touching alcohol, nervous to get hook on coffee so never sip the stuff to become psychologically damaged because I’m trying to keep a gnat from biting my tail!  Hold up, there has to be something wrong with this picture.  Looking further into my research, I have learned that it can cause VIVID NIGHTMARES.  I have to pause for a moment.  VIVID…VIVID….I mean I can have a vivid dream with Common, LL Cool J, and Kanye doing backup and not have a problem with that scenario.  A vivid dream isn’t nothing but a wish come true, but nightmares….like I’m going to see purple bunnies and killer squirrels chasing my thickness in the middle of the night and I’m in the middle of Africa??? Can I positively say, “No thank you?”  I mean, I don’t even have nightmarish visions to have nightmares, I have dedicated a lifetime to avoiding and protesting horror flicks so my mind can stay clean and pure, full of fluffy clouds and rainbows on a Sunday afternoon.  This Lariam is what is causing the panic in my stomach.

I can pitch a test, sleep on a hard ground, piss in a dumpster, and live on a generator.  I am not afraid of a world I haven’t seen, of the rumors, and there is not a reason for me to jump on the plane, clicking my heels for home, unless…these Lariam pills take me on a Robert Downing Jr. ride.  That, I cannot handle. I pride myself on my brain, my wits, my knowledge, my communication, and my education…. I love my mental state and when it’s unstable I am smart enough to know why.

So when I am now confronted with the question, “What will I miss the most?”  I miss not having to take a drug that will keep me from dying, but will possibly (1 in 8 chance) cause me to go crazy.  I will be doing everything in my power not to receive a mosquito bite.  I am creating net clothing, a new brand of perfume OFF, wearing gloves on exposed hands, purchasing Skin so Soft lotion and hair moisturizer, but taking the pills is an important necessity.  I’ve settled on the bootleg brand called Doxcy which is a pill I have to take everyday (whoa responsibility) but the side effect is only nausea, cramps, and heartburn. That is a roulette game I am willing to play.