chapman lane.

I see seas of Caribbeans. I never knew or even met anyone from Belize until a group on girls got on the train and asked me if I was going to the parade all by myself. Even though I was not Belizean (and could barely understand their Kriol in Yankee accents), we were one. All different tones, with all different types of hair, coming from the same place. Children of the Diaspora, yearning to be a part of countries that scoff at us because we’ve never had to iron pleats into uniforms or see a chicken beheaded in the smoothest of motions with the kitchen’s cutlass. The only thing that separated me from them, was that I didn’t have any glitter on me yet.

This is where I see my people. My people, who left warm countries with unstable pasts and uncertain futures, for colder countries with promises of more money. At parades and festivals held in small booths set up with picnic tables, legs hidden by flags yanked down from being curtains, this is where I see my people. I meet them on the road, at work, and at events that slump us together under heightened supervision. These fleeting moments of laughter, dance, remembrance, and learning are short and far in-between. In school, we are bombarded by justified conquest and colonizations, with no respect for the peoples and traditions lost. Everything I have learned, which is all so little, of my country and the ones it is associated with, I have learned at the feet of my grandparents and parents, patiently waiting for whatever morsels they will remember. Research is not always easy to come by, the stories they recant to me are rarely in my neighbourhood’s library.

I live in a country that doesn’t accept me as a true citizen, yearning for a country that sees me as its bastard. As both doors close against me, I can only find myself in the few on the corner who are like me. There is no where else I easily find my story.

— “The Moon Looks Different in Barbados: Essays on Accepting the Hyphen.” rough drafts, still in production. leslie nikole. january 2014.