Wow

It's hard to know how to start writing about this subject. I guess I'll just start from the top.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day with my extended family here in Latvia, celebrating my goddaughter's second birthday. It was mostly a great day- the weather cleared up and the sun came out around noon, which made for a very pleasant ride up to Ainazi. We were a little late getting out of town, but turns out there while we were just late, there was another carload of people that got lost on the way, and were later than we were! Either way, it all worked out in the end- everybody arrived safe and sound, and the festivities began.

We ate, we drank, we smiled and laughed over the little one and her antics. Her favorite thing to do during the meal was to drink (juice) from a wine glass. You could tell it had nothing to do with the juice, and everything to do with the glass. Very cute. After lunch we had cake and more drinks and just hung out talking.

It was sometime during lunch that one could say the unpleasantness began for me though. This was the first time that we had seen any of these people, aside from my cousin I, since we made our choice to move to Angola. When I told my cousin the big news she was surprised like most people have been, but she thought it was cool, and was excited to share the news with the rest of the family. Of course, they are all bummed that I'm not choosing to stay in Latvia. But mostly, they understand that for us, this is a fun and exciting thing to do- and they support our decision.

There was only one family member that was totally against it- my cousin I's grandmother, who just turned 100 two weeks ago. Her hearing is going, and she can't move too fast, but she actually seems to be relatively with it upstairs still. She always remembers me when I see her, and she always asks about my brothers (who she has never met) and my dad and my uncles. She even remembers Joel. Anyway, yesterday, when I went in to talk to her (yell to her, as the case may be), she started in right away on that she heard that I was moving to Africa, and that I should change my mind now, because it was a mistake. She said she would just cry and cry if I left, because she knows that bad things will happen to me there.

While I was talking to her, another birthday party guest came in and joined the conversation. She is also an older woman- I would guess in her 70s. She also started going on about how dangerous black people are, and how you can't even look at them, or understand them. How they don't even look human since some of them have lighter skin, some darker, some have pink insides of their hands, and some dark. I was not going to be meek about this, so I shot back, and do you and I have the same color hair or skin? Do all of us white people look exactly the same?
Then she told me a story about how once when some important black people came to Latvia (I'm assuming during the USSR era), people were expected to shake their hands. People did as they were told, but "of course" wiped their hands on their clothes immediately after (Oh no! Watch out! Get the germs off, or YOU'LL start turning black too!). Because this was "seen as a sign of disrespect" (because my God what else could it have been?) these people were taken to the police (and I'm assuming punished) because of what they did. She went on to proudly tell a story of how she once refused to ride in a taxi that had a black driver, saying that it would have been the end of her life had she accepted, and thank goodness she's smarter than that.

I went ahead and finished that conversation before I punched her or threw up on her. During lunch though, it started again- Joel and I were repeatedly told that we were going to get eaten by cannibals, caught and tortured and beat by the locals, that we would have students in our classes with guns making attempts to kill us.

The old lady with the great stories, went so far as to just say, "You go ahead and leave Latvia, it'll be a cleaner place without the likes of you here. But you'll see- you'll be back after two years eating your words, and then you'll see you made a mistake." She was nice enough to refer to us as foreigners in her goodbye, wishing us God's help.

I would pretty much say that if I never see that woman again it will be too soon.

There were others making comments though. I could list the rest of the things we were told- that people should all just stay in their God-given lands, and not mix- blacks belong in black countries, whites in white countries. According to these people, the dark skinned people of the world are causing all of today's problems- and if they just stayed in their own countries it wouldn't be a problem- because it is THEM moving around the globe that is the big problem- to which I hotly retorted that all through history, there were a lot less problems when the white people took their guns and diseases and when they wanted to move to a new country, they went there and just wiped out the local populations, instead of trying to live with them. That shut at least one person up for the moment.

Joel and I talked about this whole subject a lot on the drive home. Of course, there are a few things to be said for this- these people are old, and have lived very sheltered lives here in Latvia. They have little to no exposure to any people that don't look like themselves, and we all know that ignorance breeds fear.

What gets me though is that while these people have not been world travelers or lived in multi-racial communities, they have seen a lot of bad stuff in their day. These are people that were alive to remember German occupation and Russian occupation. These are people that had friends and family members murdered on the spot, others sent to Siberia, their lives made hell, etc by the occupying forces. These are people that have endured a lot of ugliness in their lives- and it's all been a product of white people! ALL of the cruelty and devastation that they have seen in their lives has been executed by white forces- so where they get off having such horrible opinions of people they have never encountered, much less lived with, is beyond me.

I know that I come from a generation of people that has started to see beyond skin color. I'm not saying that I am without my own prejudices. I am NOT saying that I am perfect by any means- but AT LEAST any negative attitudes I have are based on my own real experiences with people. I will admit that I have had one or two incidences occur in my life, that seemed to be racially motivated- the black girls in middle school ganging up on me, for no reason I could understand, other than that I was white. But, even that happening didn't stop me from having friends and acquaintances throughout the years of any number of skin colors or races. And thank goodness for that!

I know that I approach this whole thing with my own limited perspective of a young white woman. I know that in other places in the world, these issues are much worse and much better. I know that this is something that will hopefully get better as these attitudes die off with this older generation and although they will be passed down, they will be weaker, diluted versions, until hopefully, when I am part of the older generation, our common message will be more like mine, than what it is now. I can only hope.

For now, I have to say that yesterday fuels me with a renewed passion to be a responsible world citizen- to treat all people with respect and dignity because they are human, and for no other reason. I can't wait to go to Angola now and have the amazing experience that I know I will. I know that the opinions of some won't be changed, and to that I have to say, the sooner they take them to the grave the better. Hopefully for others, like my goddaughter, I will bring new perspectives, and maybe, just maybe have a positive impact on the way she will views these same issues when she is my age.