hey there 😀

I need to get rid of some anger tonight. I’ll start by going back a few years. In school the most important date in 8 years I had to remember was 1492 – the “great” Cristobal Colón “found” America. bullshit. there had been people living there for thousands of years, just like in Europe. peoples who were just as civilised, but often living in greater harmony with nature. if being civilised in the European mind means, giving a shit about nature, and mistreating it more than taking care of it, I don’t want to be civilised. Mali for example even had a conduct of nature introduced; some points stated:

• don’t kill or steal (from) anyone
• have equal representation of women and men in politics
• before you chop a tree, reflect if this is really necessary

At the time of Columbus’ “discovery”, the trade triangle had already started. Europe was shipping arms and textiles to the western coast of Africa and trading it for enslaved humans. inevitable to mention is, that these people weren’t slaves. this is a term, that we use nowadays to describe people that the “oh so civilised” europeans invented to dehumanise other human beings. they were enslaved humans not slaves. these humans were shipped under horrendous conditions (hundreds of thousands cramped together in boat bellies) to the Americas. another important word to mention are dread locks. please do not use this term to describe rasta locks. dread is a word that the colonialists used to describe the “terrifying” people from Africa. it’s being translated to angst, fear and instead of not using the word dread locks, we stopped using dread to describe fear. great way of once again ignoring colonialism. in the carribean the people from African countries had to work, under again horrible conditions on plantations to create what we nowadays call capitalism – exploiting nature and working hands to generate more wealth for the rich. the creole people, nowadays living on the carribean islands, have a powerful history. they were brought to these places as enslaved people, fought hard for their independence and developed their own mix of languages. children on the plantations (and there were loads of them, I feel like we tend to forget, that children are everywhere, they always have and always will be) they weren’t allowed to go to school, so they listened to what the colonialists talked about and mixed the bits and pieces they understood with their mother tongue. their whole culture is reflected in their music (a big part of it being reggae), especially because music was often the one thing that kept the enslaved people alive. together and in secret, they sang songs on the plantations and at night, to keep their spirits high, despite everything that was going on. often these songs also contained escape plans.

my dear readers, it’s immensely important, that we acknowledge the European colonialist history!!! it still resonates with us today and has had such a large impact on racist acts today. the colonialist history of this continent is far worse than described in any history book in school. we cannot longer ignore our history. fear and prejudice that result in racism are directly linked to colonialism and I hope you try and make the world a better place by actively informing yourself and meeting people from whatever background with the respect all of us deserve. we all have the privilege to have been born onto this wonderful planet and there are far worse problems that we should take care of nowadays (CLIMATE CHANGE cough, cough) than seguiendo killing each other for the differences we see from the outside. inside we are all the same, we are built from the same blood and tissue and transformed into the same Homo sapiens from types of monkeys.

thank you.