On my first full day, with 9 hours of walking, I visited and (re)acquainted myself with New Orleans' French Quarter and Jackson Square. My feet have never been so happy.
The only times I have ever visited the Southern part of this country, it has always been by force. Its been as a visitor of southern airports with no choice but to land and, in a few hours, catch my connecting flight to my final destination across the country. So, in that sense, I've been to the South.
But I've never been to the South.
I'll just say that I've reached bliss of a different kind to have had my introduction to the south via New Orleans.
I think I've always had a special place in my heart for New Orleans even though, previously, I have never been. This world, the New Orleans world, is so different and unique from anything I've ever seen or been to in America. In many ways, it reminds me of home. The colours of the homes and stores in the French Quarter and most of New Orleans is so very Afro-Caribbean. In Old San Juan, the streets are cobbled and stores and residents' apartments are painted in bold hues like red, yellow, and orange. The style and carpentry one sees in true, Creole homes, I learned, comes from a mixture of African, Carribean, and French influence. As many of you know, I am, in part, African and Carribean and my closest friends know me as loving most things French.
To have learned all that I did these past four days solidified my respect and love for this city and its history in this country.
I've missed seeing the colours of the earth. You don't usually see bold painted homes in the Pacific Northwest. You don't see those colours as a part of one's life here. You see it as a decoration, perhaps, inside a hip shop in urban Seattle. Oftentimes however, you don't see it because of one's own history or culture.
Many of you know that I'm not from America. I'm from a very small island in the Caribbean where I spent the majority of my life; it is a place I call home and recognize as comfort. I've not been back home for a number of years and I don't go back often enough. Having spent time in New Orleans, from the very first day, I realized this is the closest I will find to my home without being there. There are moments during this trip I will cherish and remember for the rest of my life. Simple things one would never think could have an impact.
But they did.
As soon as I saw banana trees lining Jackson Square (which housed one of the most beautiful and oldest cathedrals I've ever seen in America), I was tearing. I softly wept because it immediately took me back to the banana trees in my father's garden where I used to spend time as a child after school. I missed the smell of them and the sap that stuck to your fingers as you tried to harvest them. I missed seeing, with my very own eyes, the shape and feel of banana leaves, used to make pasteles on the island - an important food for many of us. My father and I were devastated to have almost our entire crop of lemon trees, avocado trees, mangos, pumpkins, bananas, and potato plants destroyed during 1989's bastard Hurricane Hugo.
Today being the last full day of my trip here, I went to visit Laura Plantation, which is an important part of Southern Louisiana's history. You must understand Louisiana's Creole culture to truly appreciate how important this location and its people are to Louisiana. Built in the early 1800s, this place didn't even speak English until the 20th century. The home there was built in the true Creole tradition, bright colours, doorways facing the water for breeze, 9 foot deep brick columns implanted into the earth to prevent sinkage. And one cannot begin to think about its history as complete without looking deep into slavery.
It was disturbing and a mouth-opening experience to see these old slave cabins still there around the main plantation home. Right down to the communal outdoor kitchen. Everything was there. Even after slavery was abolished, descendants of the slaves who had been there still lived in these cabins. They lived in this 16x16 shacks (the size required by law) as late into the 20th century as 1977. (Photos of these cabins I took can be found at
my flickr site.)
It is...truly an indescribable experience to see these. I must say that it is difficult to trace my family line because I am, due to my father's age, one generation off from most people my age. That is to say, if you are in your late 20s and early 30s as I am, it is likely that your grandfather and my father are the same age. In some cases, my father might actually be older. Many of the people I would normally ask for my family's history are dead. One thing is certain however: somewhere in my family's history, there were slaves. Possibly as near to me as my great grandparents. I thought for a while that my grandparents were slaves but I haven't been able to confirm that they were nor that they weren't.
I don't know what my family's experience with slavery was but I know its how my father's side ended up in the Carribean. Its why my father's side of the family is filled with African influences in food, culture, and even religion (some are devout Roman Catholics while others are of the vodoun tradition).
It is amazing to me to bring that analogy that I mentioned earlier in this post - that I had been forced to visit the Southern part of this country via flights that happened to land there. But that's absolutely nothing. I was never forced to be there. But my ancestors were. A lot of people, I would say, make an informed decision or choice to live there. To be there. But many in the past that ended up there, did not. They were forced and spread all over this globe without a choice. Forced to be in a new land in bondage for centuries. And that history, that past, is still the present and we see the consequence of that everyday and everywhere we go.
I went to this place as part of photojournalism work that is an ongoing project for me. But this place gave me so much more than what I had previously thought it could ever do for me. It changed me and my life. Not many places I have visited in this continent or beyond, I can say, have ever done that to me. Its hard to describe and now I'm not so sure that I actually picked this place.
I think it picked me. And for a darn good (albeit somewhat freaky) reason. I am indebted to this place for what it has done for me and what it continues to do for me even now when I'm back "home".