SUMMER BLOGPOST 2

AUGUST 12TH


I have now reached by 5^th destination which to be honest has shocked me a lot. I’m now in North Carolina, a state in southeastern America. It was a very beautiful state there was no doubt; I had gone to the Blue Ridge Mountains and seen waterfalls and beautiful sights. It has about 17 major rivers which I was grateful to see many of. About two years ago, a tragic event had happen there. A 24 year old black man, whose car had broken down, went to seek help and knocked on a woman’s house who was surprised that he would knock in the middle of the night and therefore feared a home invasion forcing her to dial 911. Three officers had come immediately and as the young man approached the officers for help one officer fired 12 shots, 10 of them actually hit the man and killing him. The officer was charged for murder but the trial had reopened this summer when I was there and had caused massive campaigning which I got to see. 

As I continued travelling around North Carolina I had noticed many southerners hanging a certain flag on their properties like houses and cars. It was a red flag with two blue crosses that have white stars on them (Confederate flag). In short they basically represented people who were against the act of freeing slaves. The people who had them would have written: “Be white be proud!” on their cars. They were proud of their racist mentality but called it “Pride in our Southern heritage.” One day as we drove around, we got lost and decided to stop and ask for directions and had driven up a pathway that looked like a normal small public road way until we heard shouting coming and saw a guy holding a shotgun shouting: “ Get off my f***ing property you f***ing niggers” as he got closer to the car he saw my mum, aunt and little nephew who were the only light skin people and calmed down for a second before he give us another warning to leave immediately. As lost as we were he needed to stop for gas and thought that might be the only safe place to stop for gas as we were now heading towards south Virginia. When we stopped at the gas station some of us went to the toilet, some to get food or drink but all eyes were on us, their gaze followed our every move. We were then approached by three white men who asked us what we were doing and we replied “Getting gas”  to which they replied “ We are hunting” then flashed their guns that were placed in their pockets, looked us up and down and continued: “Hunting for dogs.” This had been by far my WORST EXPERIENCE ever. 

SUMMER BLOG 1

August 2nd

This holiday we had decided to travel to the United States of America. Although I’ve been there before the last time I visited was 8 years ago. This time I went road tripping around the states. When I used to think of the states I thought mainly of food, American football, politics, food, drinking, and food. Yet when I went around different states I realized how they were both culturally and socially so different from each other. They all had their different arts and culture, different ways of communicating with people and never had I imagined America had been so green.it was by far the greenest place I had visited. The nature there was amazing and hadn’t been altered. So my second destination in this trip was Omaha, Nebraska, a state located in the Midwestern States. It consisted mainly of suburbs and mainly Caucasian people who would always do a double look at me whenever I went anywhere as if they hadn’t seen a colored person before which I slowly realized they probably didn’t seeing as their city consisted 99.5% of Caucasian people but they were still nice. Nevertheless Omaha was very beautiful nature wise, it had greens everywhere, hills you wouldn’t imagine, it was beautiful, the land there was hill like so it went up and down a lot so you would have houses in all shapes and sizes standing either really high or low. It was really interesting, unlike Germany and England where they would alter the land and make it flat to keep everything at one level, America actually cared about its nature and didn’t alter anything making it more beautiful. My third destination was the one and only New York, the city that never sleeps. I stayed in a penthouse right in the middle of Times Square where I could se everything. New York was hyper 24/7, lights on all the time and very energetic. The people were so mixed; you could probably find someone from each race, it was very multicultural and busy. It didn’t have to much green land but the skyscrapers and downtown were amazing, so different from where I had been before. This is where I am now and will continue around America and see how different they are,