In so many ways, I have experienced racism to the extent that I begin to see racism as part of the norms and culture of the land, in the sense that people see you differently when they see you. I think they think of somebody from the bush, somebody from the Sahara Desert, where nothing works, and they just see you as a different human being. Over the years in my living in UK, I’ve experienced so many. Actually, the one that was very intense was one that happened 2020. It actually went to court and I stood for myself without a lawyer and to God be the glory, I won the case.
Racism is something I wouldn’t wish for my enemy, because it makes you feel very inferior. It makes you feel wherever you go, you’ll be like, who knows what next. It makes you feel unwanted, it makes you feel degraded. It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish on my enemy.
Black Lives Matter is something that matters so much to me. It feels like a wakeup call. It feels like an avenue where I’ve been craving all my life because racism has been happening so many places, so many times. We have been complaining on media, people have been talking about it but to God be the glory someone’s life paid for it and it boosted it which made it come to light. Thou, there have been a try to divert Black Life Matter saying, all life matters. Yes, all life matters but we are talking of a particular set of people here, a particular group of people that seems to be facing a very intense injustice, and hence the Black Life Matters, making people understand that our own life matters too.
It’s painful. There’s an adage in our place, in my own language or in my country, that says “when they carry a corpse of someone else, it feels like they are carrying a plank, a wood or a tree”. You don’t know how it feels when someone is crying for a lost relative or son or whatever, until you feel it. Watching how that man died painfully, how he cried out for justice, how he shed tears, something that will make a grown man shout out loud, crying out for it was a mark of desperation. He had nothing else to say or nothing else to cry out than to cry out to the mother that brought him into this painful and unfortunate world we live in. So, it was very heart-breaking thinking of it, remembering it now. I’m just trying to fight to hold back the tears, because it was a very heart-breaking thing to see, experience.
To hear the judge in America declare victory and jail Derek Chauvin was just like lifting a World Cup. It was a big relief knowing that the judge in American soil could declare that he was guilty. It was something I never thought would happen because so many of such incidents had been swept under the carpet before then. But that one was like, yes, this is the beginning of justice.
It was an inspiration that if you really cry out loud, people will hear you.
I would love to say to our present and future generation, never be bullied into silence. Don’t be a coward even if you’re standing alone shouting and people are not listening, keep shouting for what you believe in. Stand for your rights.
No justice No peace.
