First Impressions Count

 

Who were we? So bold and so brave, mere children unaccustomed to a life here in the UK, yet braced ourselves to face it, our faces set like flint.  Here we re-met those that had departed and yet now they seemed so strange since our parting.

Ingand, we here in Ingland, so cold and so grey so seemingly unattractive, fantasies dashed and in their place were tangible hardships.  I didn’t know I was poor and ungainly until I landed here; the jeers from my friends at home, at my shoes that were laughing seemed like friendly banter now that I was caught up in midst of this urban territorial crossfire.  Enemy lines were clearly defined, as my hue and my accent made me a pre-requisite for primal taunts and target practice.

Names such as blackie, wog, monkey, you smell echoed daily in my ear. I stood up to one and then there was another, fighting and swearing became a daily occurrence, especially as my teachers did no hear the voices of my tormentors.  What was it with these folks that they said the same things in earnest? The daily repetition of such nonsensical claims, as though they were truths I had refused to believe. I could read and I could write, I spoke the same tongue, me a wog? How could that be?

Boy these people dunce for true, even the big people joined in the chants and excluded me.

My siblings and me, we dressed in the second hand clothes made for the cold, frosty morns. Dark, ugly, itchy, armour that posed no protection from the wounding words and physical harm we encountered as we traversed paths laden with missiles.

We walked clumsily in the shoes that were built for snowy climes marching to school hastily avoiding any wayward tracks.  I knew I would never be one of these and would have pitied their ignorance if it were not so threatening and dangerous. Screwed up faces, oozing venom that was void of any rationality.

It wasn’t just we the children who came, our parents too had to combat the stormy weather. Regardless of their efforts and attempts to settle, they were made to feel angry by the voices that screeched ‘you are not wanted’.

‘Go back to where you came from’ was daubed indelibly in my sub conscious. I asked myself ‘What have we done, to make us so unwanted’?   I found escape in my extravagant dreams of a staged homecoming, a celebratory welcome to mark my time in purgatory.  Here I held a captive audience and recounted grand  tales to my  friends that had stayed behind. I would paint an exuberant picture of England the place they wanted desperately to be and tell of the splendour that fairy tales were made of. There was no way I would ever admit that my time here was all in vain and the streets were not painted with the gold we were told.

First impressions do count and this was my introduction to England.  A place where I was foe, no friendly good morning greeted me. Initial suspicion gave way to tolerance at the purpose I served and a sufficient amount of familiarity.

I questioned me in light of this new response, being the hated other knowing that I was not of this kind and desperate to find a way to survive.  I withdrew and retreated to an environment that was safe and found those like me that had acquired the strategies to survive.

Time is a great healer the 60s and 70s behind us, transatlantic slavery a very distant memory, Wind rush, segregation, civil rights movements giving rise to race and employment laws that give us rights as citizens.   Thanks to my heroes, sisters and brothers that fought a good fight, never giving up when the way seemed so tight.

The pioneers of the past are now weary and tired, eagerly, seeking those to pass on the baton.  Where are the brave young men and women, the ancestors of those that came? They remain in our midst blighted by the shadow of those who like Esau have sold their birthright to the loan shark institution of entitlement.

What happened, where did it go wrong? Whose feet were our young and impressionable allowed to sit at? The questions ring out, the answers a jumble, but the time has come to claim what is ours. How do we build on the legacy that our enslaved established and gain the knowledge and understanding to achieve progress, justice and freedom.

The answers are here, the opportunities available, they reside in the mindset that holds true to aspiration and ambition. This is a dignified journey of sweat and endurance to finish the race and achieve recognition with legacies that enrich each generation.