I am the only white child.I am blonde, blue-eyed, pale-skinned.I am an English transplant.I am worshipped, honoured, adored.I am shy and frightened, and alwaysride away on my tricycle as soon as I can.I remember those ebony people,their dark eyes, so shiny they reflect you back to yourself,huge baobab trees, cerulean skies, flies and mosquitos,spectral warmth of sun, their hair, curly and fuzzy, soft,bushy, that I love to touch, their language, its shortfast syllables that I speak better than English,the vivid patterns of their wrap-around clothes, and elegance, carrying huge baskets of fruit on their heads,their sensual movement, the way they speaklike a music of rivers flowing into the Falls,and try to understand why, why not a black child?_Sources for images: Marshall Cavendish, Zimbabwe (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2004), baobab tree, p.13; crowd, p.99. Gregory Scott Kreikemeier, Africa, A Photographic Journey (Racine, Wisconsin: Western Publishing, 1993), women carrying supplies, p.24.

A RE-CREATION , and ILLUSTRATION /////Posted by Lisa C. Jackson