My African Cultural Experience

My most important experience sought me out. It happened to me; I didn't cause it. I call it serendipity, and he maintains that it was fate.

Carolina and I had collected enough signatures to return to our group. She glanced around, and without notice walked to a stranger. “Sir, do you have a moment? We’re conducting a survey” she asked. He gave the question some thought before agreeing, but on condition that we followed him to his workplace. In making answer to this proposition, Carolina did not hesitate a moment. She eagerly followed him and I, of course, had to follow suit. He lead us to a small building tucked between Subway and Margarita’s. The sign above the door read: The Museum of African Culture. After trying several keys, he succeeded in opening the door, and struck a light. I entered, pausing to gape at the plethora of African artifacts. The masks on display seemed more like voodoo to me, unfamiliar faces organized in a long cluster of visual symbols. I had never seen such a collection of African artifacts even back home in Burundi. By the time I had roamed around the whole museum, I realized how disconnected I was to what I claimed to be the most integral part of me, culture. To see something so foreign in such a
The activist archetype, of the bitter and conscious tribe. The irony of it all was fighting blackness as a monolith and then turning around painting myself with the same overused stereotypes. I think I've reached my ah ha moment, that enveloping happiness, that allows me to walk the streets as a carefree Black girl. Oscar has made me evaluate my sense of self, reveling in the drawer of life I hoped no one would look through. Call it serendipity, call it fate, I'm grateful to Oscar for silencing the bigoted voice within myself, telling me I couldn't be anything but the bitter and socially conscious black