I am not intending to write a serious blog about being black in a brown country, I might do that later on.
Today I had a very cute experience with our neighbor Loka (4 years old) , she was trying to convince me that I am black because I drink too much Pepsi and I eat chocolate and she is white, as a good child she drinks too much milk.
This is not the first time that kids inquire about my color, before I was called fahma ( coal) which is black by the niece (3 years) of my best friend, she pronounced my name fatma wrongly as fahma, but it was funny comment to compare me to the black coal. And I was stupid enough to tell my classmates this story, so fahma was one of my nicknames in Malta and still popular up till now.
Also Emma (5 years old ) the sister of my dear Nadia, asked me in a very cute way to remove my makeup and she gave me a tissue to remove my weird black makeup, and she was disappointed that we did not manage to remove it .
Honestly, I used to have huge issues with my color when I was young, and some disputes' are still there up till now and I still feel uncomfortable when somebody refers to it , however, I cannot deny that those cute inquiries about my color gave me very remarkable memories that I cherish, although I was never able to explain why I am black in a simple way to the kids, I do not agree with the typical so called religious explanation that Allah created black from black clay and white from a different , white clay.
May be I should do my best to explain the melanin thing to kids I hope they will get it, but even if failed in explaining it, still their cuteness and innocence is treasured.
2 comments:
I generally prefer explaining that almost every living being on earth comes in different shapes and colors and that's a normal situation. I go on showing cats and chickpeas as examples :) Usually it's enough for most kids. And has the advantage of redefining the normality for them : difference is normal.
solid argument, i was science freak at school and i still love knowing the answer of how and why question, but i do agree with that if the kids are brought to accept differences, many catastrophes will be avoided
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