In 2000, I sold all of my possessions, packed a few bags and left America, probably for good. In spite of my many efforts, I could not find a part of America where I felt at home. In Black churches or white advocacy organizations, regardless of what I did or didn't do, accomplished or failed to accomplish, I always felt hopelessly self-conscious of my own gnawing alienation. I was trying to feel at home in an alien land, wherever I was.
When I lived in the United States, I sang in three choirs at church. I stood before the congregation on Sunday morning and sang that Jesus had saved me when what I really felt was a growing conviction that Jesus and God could not and would not save me from what was consuming me, whatever it was. Many people loved and cared for me, but no one understood me, least of all myself.
Finally, I had the good fortune to become utterly desperate and so I became willing to try something entirely new. That's when I decided, for want of a better idea, to move France and learn French.
Politically, France was a better fit for me than was the United States. France was a country refusing to go to war with Iraq while the US was consumed with going to war. France was a country with an eloquent and purposeful president when the US was represented embarrassingly by an utter dolt. France was a country that valued its universal health care and safety net while the US still cannot decide as a country whether everyone should be treated for illnesses that are fatal without treatment.
Although politically France made more sense to me, in retrospect there was nothing about French culture that resonated with me, except chocolate croissants. Although the French have many immigrants within their borders, there is considerable racism and it remains permissible to say things to blacks and women which in the United States would be considered "incorrect".
At the University of Nice, Graduate School for the International Law of Peace and Development, I was drawn primarily to immigrants, young people from Gambia, Cameroon, Morocco and Tunisia, and China . . . All of my university friends wanted to work for non-governmental agencies after graduation, and all agreed that Bush and the country that had elected him were quite insane. The war in Iraq only confirmed that estimation. None of my friends grieved over September 11th, because all of them agreed that America had it coming. (If that seems controversial, it is only because most Americans do not begin to appreciate the level of hurt and resentment that our nation's actions and attitudes engender beyond our borders.)
I understood myself well enough when I went to France that I chose a city on the French Mediterranean, where I could swim, kayak and bicycle much of the year. My most intense relationship in France was with the ocean. I often swam for three hours at a time, swimming out so far and long that my friends had no idea where I had gone. I daily explored the beaches of Monaco, Cannes, St. Jean Cap Ferrat, and Cannes Sur Mer, stealing aboard France's excellent coastal trains when my money ran low. Sometimes, it seemed that all I needed was a beach, two chocolate croissants and a liter of orange juice to be perfectly happy.
When the weather turned cold, I bought a wetsuit and continued kayaking, even in January and February. Here, my few French friends supported me even as my activities seemed increasingly insane. I lived on the third floor of an apartment building with the obligatory balconies. I bought two four-yard long kayaks, one orange and one red. In this, my French friends supported me even as my activities increasingly seemed insane. Rejecting friends' suggestions that I house my two kayaks at the kayak club on the beach, I instead built a rack for them over my bed, so that the kayaks swayed back and forth whenever I made love.
When the winter came, I bought a full-body black neoprene wetsuit, which engendered some worry among onlookers particularly since the Nice airport runway is so close to the beach where I put my canoes in the water. Whenever I wanted to go kayaking, I invited friends over to help me lower the ungainly kayaks down to the busy street by pullies, which attracted a considerable amount of mostly negative attention. When the landlord forbade this practice, it started a crisis for me that culminated in my hospitalization. The winter was bad enough, but without the ability to kayak, I felt severed from the only part of my soul that I still recognized.
In the hospital, I finally let loose my long-pent up rage for some reason, utterly destroying an isolation room. This led to a five week confinement in a maximum section of a state hospital, which is something deeply unpleasant that I came to thoroughly regret. Even in a hospital, one is not free to do as one pleases.
But, bad experiences led to new plans. While confined, I began to plan to leave France entirely. As soon as I was released, I began searching the Internet for a country in which my meager savings would go as far as possible. I actually rented an apartment in Poland, only deciding afterward on a lark to forego my deposit and come to Brazil instead.
I am not a person I know. I am a land that I continually discover. I have discovered that I would rather fail at something new and challenging than succeed at something familiar.
Last week, I traveled to a coastal village on a peninsula which can only be accessed by riding three hours on dirt roads by bus and then being ferried by wooden canoe across a broad river. There are no cars, motorcycles or trucks in this village - no motorized traffic or roads at all. The "streets" are broad and straight pathways "paved" only with deep beach sand.
There is running water, but no telephone lines. There are very few white people; all are black, except the tourists. At the ocean, the fine sand beaches and palm trees stretch for as far as the eye can see in either direction, with no visible pollution of any kind. Without cars, the crashing waves can be heard hundreds of yards from the beach, and the stars are brilliant at night, when all of the generators are turned off, and the only light is that which comes from the moon and the stars.
I initially stayed in a very American-like bed and breakfast there, with hot shower, a mosquito net over the bed, and fresh and hot whole fried fish with rice, beans and salad for lunch, all of which cost $15.00 USD per day. I am going back there tomorrow, bringing a new computer to start a computer school for the locals. The school will not depend on me. I'm just going to show them how to use this computer to generate income for themselves, and then my job will be done.