Are you an independent person?

 Part 1...

I was born at a time when in this country and your birthday certificate said M… that is part African and part European… you were looked at differently by both groups. Your skin colour said you were ‘black’ but your mother’s skin tone said you were partially ‘white’ as a child, which was quite confusing.

The advantage for me was that my maternal grandmother raised me. I was quite comfortable with her as she was a strong, beautiful black woman. Hardworking, yes! A strict disciplinarian, a subsistence farmer, a pig farmer, she also raised goats and sheep; who refused to work for anyone. She ran her own restaurant business where she made meals from the produce from her farms. I learned so much from her, the biggest being how to be an independent person and make your own money. 

Despite being exposed to those different ways to make money, she emphasized education. She told her grandchildren that she knew the difference between a red tick and a red x.  So you had better bring home no or very few red xs. 

As a youngster she pushed school Monday through Friday, Saturday on the farm with her and Sunday Church, no questions asked that was your weekly guide. In addition to that, I was required to read to certain old people two days per week. I looked forward to this as this gave me time to learn history from the mouths of the elderly. All these shaped my life.

That strict upbringing had me teaching Sunday School at age nine. I love the Bible and the stories are so addictive. If you start with the Creation and then look at the Israelites slavery in Egypt to their release and journey to the Promise Land you can sit for hours and read it over and over. Sunday School teaching led me to young people’s meetings on Wednesday and Friday evenings to Mid Sunday Bible teachings. It was amazing how much you could learn each time you met with other young people.

Fast Forward to transition time from K- 12 to college, what did I want to study? Religion, and Language Arts. My passion, to teach people to read. I love to see how people’s faces light up when they can read. What did I study? Language Arts and Social Sciences [geography, history, religion].

After college I not only wanted to teach the areas I was trained in, I wanted to expose my students to travel. It was my passion, still is. Immediately I formed a travel club, the students who did not have passports, I made sure that they got them and the US visa to travel to the USA as that was the closest country to travel to. That first group of students went to Orlando, Florida to visit Disney World, Busch Gardens, and the Miami Zoo. I was so proud of them and the way they behaved outside of the country and outside of their parents’ influence.

During those first three years, I took a group of students somewhere every year. I was home and wanted to expose my home people.

Then I was transferred to another family island…

To be continued.

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