ENOUGH of the tourist photos... how do you REALLY feel ?

To talk about my feelings in a direct manner is sort of a taboo in my book. Actually to speak of them at all may as well be haram (Arabic for forbidden). So if you will, please be patient and follow me as I express myself metaphorically... (i'll try not to loose you)

My stay in Egypt thus far is an experience made of fermented emotions from a silent and distraught mind.

I have funneled my frustrations into the narrow necks of oversized hollow bottles for years, simultaneously pouring emotions in and securely fastening contents in with a cork.

Simply put, I bottle my emotions and like fine wine I set them aside and watch them age with time.

I have accumulated and continue to add to my large cellar of bottled emotions but I think its time I pop the cork on my newly distilled sentiments on Egypt and this new culture I have senselessly thrown myself into.

Race prior to my visit to Egypt was an over sensitized issue that plagued the social, political and economic advancement of the West. A term that pitted one nation, the United States, against itself and mocked the fragile unity of Americas fifty so called "united" states.

My views on race have since transformed and morphed into a new demon, now that my temporary place of residence is now in Cairo, Egypt.

I am a Nigerian-American who boarded a flight for Africa and landed in the "Middle East," a Eurocentric term that has stolen Africa's Northern region and simultaneously claimed western Asia its own.

I am a black girl who made the naive mistake of being too melanin rich, too "nappy- headed", too full lipped and flat nosed to be.... in Africa

who would of thought?

I guess it would be silly of me to still wishfully hope that palm oil & water will ever mix