If you were to ask me just 10 days ago what my dream vacation
would be compared to asking that very same question today, the answer would be
vastly different. My ideal vacation would
have been a chockablock of sandy beaches with picturesque backgrounds, tropical
jungles, lush wildlife premiering a canopy of vegetation painting the earth’s
backdrop with an array of colors so crisp and vibrant they’d be unable to be
duplicated and reviewed outside of your own eyes! A dream vacation would have
been laying lazily at the pool drinking local spirits- indulging in a wide
variety of local cuisine until I could no longer fill my belly with the sweet and
savory indigenous delectables before me! My personal goal would be to conquer
all things edible while defying the glucose monitor until I POPPED. Today…today
the idea of a dream vacation seems foreign…obsolete…quite frankly dead. My perfect vacation, my very own paradise
consisted of 3.5 days of falling ill in a foreign land, filled with fear and
anxiety of not knowing if I’d receive the care, I needed to make it back onto
American soil. The perfect vacation for
me was riding in a poorly air-conditioned bus, with Africa’s sun showering its disrespectful
rays upon it- giving absolutely zero fucks. In the ignorant clouds of a utopic
vacation, I can assure you, it NEVER consisted of three and a half days of
purging -trying to figure out how after 3 days of not one ounce of food I was
able to expel so ferociously colors that belonged in the pack of highlighter
markers. As imagine what I thought was a dream vacation just 10 days ago has
become laughable to say the LEAST.
As I sit on my Delta Flight # DL0157, headed sorrowfully
back to the states, I can’t help but to recognize how absurdly my idea of what a
perfect vacation WAS. As I NOW reflect
on the past few weeks, I respectfully toss out the ignorance of what I thought
was, and graciously accept out of pure blessing what I now KNOW is. I plan on
using this platform to document my own spiritual journey. I’ve already received
texts/calls “how was vacation” and I’m not even home- it’s overwhelming! I feel
like a former representative of the girl I was (just 10 days ago)…I don’t want
to tell you about my fucking vacation- I don’t want to tell you if Africans
stink, or wear deodorant….I care not to engage or explain how hot it was- I
don’t want to just tell you how fucked up the slave Dungeons were at Cape
Coast- I don’t care to talk much about the fact that I’m not Ghanaian, yet I
will always refer to Africa (forever) as home. I’ve been thinking a lot on
how’d I’d answer these questions to the eclectic and inquisitive group of friends that I have.
I hope to never come across judgey (but I am a Virgo)…I want only those who
want to know about my trip…about my spiritual journey…about the heartbeat of civilization
to inquire more- I want to talk about how ayahuasca with Chief Nighthawk and
his lovely partner Ana were preparing me 3 years ago for this journey (unbeknownst
to us all), how my dad’s passing almost 10 years ago was subsequently the day I
was reborn to even be able to conceptualize this journey/pilgrimage…I want to
talk about Afoley…I want to talk about how my grandmother came to me at a naming
ceremony…how I met Nikesha Breeze who helped to create a visual graveyard of
what our ancestors looked like on their way to America…I want to talk about Kwako…Masao
Meroe… I want to talk about my Jilly not from Philly who I met within our group
who unknowingly helped heal my spirit.
So, if you’re wondering how my trip was here is the standard short answer. PERFECT. The end- please do not inquire further. Respectfully- but if you want to know what it was like to go home I will start by saying this…. I woke up on the plane and looked at the flight tracking monitor, our plane was shown projected over the Atlantic Ocean. To the left I could see the U.S. in the horizon, to the right, Mother Africa no longer appeared. I felt the souls of my ancestors over 400 years ago- their pain, their fear, their anguish, their loss tugged at me. Home was fading away; my MOTHER was gone. What if I never get to go back home? What if I forget ALL that my MOTHER just gave me- what if I forget her warmth from the sun, how her arms embraced me with such, love, gentleness, kindness, and joy? I look in the mirror, I can see the fire beneath this muddied, tainted- defiled melanin starting to already fade- I have no desire to “vacation” I just want to go home- it will be my life’s mission to go back home for good. The air here is cold and bitter, much like the soul of America. Where are the faces so rich- so drenched in blackness that you can see the not so subtle hue of red burning beneath their perfectly melanated surface?
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