I could not help but fall in love with the people, people like any other people, wanting what every culture of people wants. To love and be loved, to protect and be protected, to provide and to be provided for. Wanting--validation, dignity, grace and a sense of integrity. The same prescription that soothed all of my aches and pains and boosted my joys and victories.

Whoopi Goldberg
As I was teaching the young children
Wearing my hair in a multitude of long braids
A teenaged boy staring at me
Leaned his torso
Through the glassless window
Sabotaging my concentration.
None of my students seemed bothered.
All of the windows were full of faces
Perched in the openings like night owls
Watching my every move
They had only seen white missionaries from America
I was their first African American female
And later I learned their first ever African American.
“You know Whoopi Goldberg?”
The lad leaning in the window boldly shouted.
I wanted to say yes
Because it seemed like the boy
Really needed me to know her
But that would have been a lie
And missionaries don't lie
It seemed that his point of reference
For African American women
Was based on a cinema he once saw
Of Whoopi Goldberg
In Port-au-Prince.
A city with electricity.
I walked over to the window.
I told the inquisitive lad
“No, I don't know Whoopi Goldberg,
But I love her movies.”
And it was just as I thought.
He looked disappointed in me
Without knowing Whoopi
I had no clout, I remembered the adage “It's all in who you know”
He turned from the window
And stalked away
I turned from the window and
Continued to teach.
I am confounded that one of the perceived stereo types in a remote mountain village in
Haiti of a black woman from America is Whoopi Goldberg.
I must meet Whoopi and tell her
This is something worth her knowing.


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