The Mother Land

Hopped into a taxi the other day at Logan airport and the taxi driver wasted no time in asking where I was from.

"Jamaica" I said proudly, and he was shocked because the driver of the taxi behind him (who had seen me approach and enter this cab) had sworn that I was Ethiopian or Somalian.

Now I had never thought I was an odd looking black woman until I went to Ghana - where my people (and most Jamaican people) are actually from. There, a Ghanaian man looked at me dispairingly and said I couldn't pass. Then while I was at Oxford, back when I frequented a Lebanese store, the owner was one day shocked to discover that I couldn't speak Arabic. Apparently I have the look of some mysterious arabic-speaking people. Then I began to think... one grandad was a whitish jew, the other was a dark skinned black Cuban of unknown decent and unusual features. One grandma had the Ghanaian roots - with some Scottish (?) mixed in - and as for the other... no one really knows! I do, however, know that my brother has no cheekbones and epicantic folds in his eyelids and that my own Ghanaian people would disown me if all they had to go on was looks. Which country would open up it's arms to me? Where can I go and blend in? Everyone should have a mother land - it would be a comfort to know that while I stick out among all these Bostonians, there is somewhere where I can go and be called one of "us".

So I was thrilled when this taxi driver finally named a country for me. I have no idea what Ethiopian or Somali women look like... but perhaps they look like me :).