Thread by @crazypastor

I went to live in Namibia (not Nambia as the current racist fuck in the White House says). I was 20.

A lot of things changed then. One of the major ones was borne from reading a shit-ton of books.

Pre-social media, with an old Dell to send emails...yea, books were where it’s at.

A Peoples’ History of the United States and Mandela’s biography were the first two.

That year was a fucking EDUCATION, y’all.

Then I ran out of books in this little house library.

So I started asking the mentors and leaders in our study abroad program for more recommendations. More often than not, many of them gave of their time and energy to continue my education.

I went to Namibia as a moderate. I called myself a “liberal” but had very little idea of what that meant.

I made a lot of mistakes. I said things that had to be corrected. I was called out. I was humbled.

(I’m vv fucking relieved that I couldn’t tweet in 2003, let us be perfectly clear.)

I have come a long way since then.

I have progressed. I have learned. And there’s still so much more I need to learn.

But Namibia changed my life. More accurately, Namibians changed my life.

It is tricky AF to talk about sub-Saharan Africa as a white person.

Too many of us treat those countries as a condescending balm on our white supremacist consciousness. “We’re the good white people! See? Here are photos of us with Africans!”

Vomit.

So. All of that to say: I want to tell more of my story, and i also want to name how fucking problematic white people are (in general) but ESPECIALLY when it comes to the birthplace of humanity.