I have yet to see Tyler Perry’s movie, “For Colored Girls” based on Ntozake Shange’s Book, so I have neither a positive or negative critique of the movie. I’m sure that in the coming days there will be a multitude of opinions offered by countless critics about the content, relevancy, and implications of this movie.  That is not the intention of this blog entry.  I am writing this piece as evidence that, YES, many ”colored” girls have really considered suicide as a viable option to life.

Like so many other “colored” girls, I’ve never made any attempts at taking my life but growing up, the thought had crossed my mind one too many times. As a child, I felt suffocated and captive to the secrets of the childhood sexual abuse I kept hidden. I had determined as early as 5 years old, that my silence would protect me from being labeled “bad “and from the humiliation and condemnation that would surely follow, if I ever spoke of it to anyone.

Sometimes, when I walk down the street, I will see a 5-year old girl, with multi-colored barrettes in her hair clutching her mother’s hand and I’ll wonder, “Has she already “learned the art” of keeping secrets to “protect” the adults around her”? Or has she already been taught that keeping silent about an unwelcome touch is equal to being a “good little girl”?

As black women we are taught to expect that we must accept “martyrdom” as a way of life. In an attempt to protect those closest to us, we practice this form of socially sanctioned, self-mutilation, without ever having to point a razor blade to our wrist. Too often survival trumps cultivating the love within.

I believe that the dream that I had at 15 was so powerful for me because the LOVE I felt was not separate from me – I experienced the LOVE as me. I was clear that the Creator’s LOVE had woken me up in every sense of the word. In order to experience an inkling of this LOVE in my waking hours I instinctively knew I had to start the journey within.

Five years, from the date of that life-altering dream, I intentionally started that journey. I opened up about my childhood abuse by talking with a close college friend who had also experienced abuse of her own as a child. Shortly afterwards, I sought out counseling to expose the “skeletons in my closet” that had kept me a prisoner in my life.

More than 15 years later the adventure within continues. I’m learning that choosing the LOVE within is an everyday practice.  My hope is that we create a new conversation for little black girls to be born into – one that affirms their voice, existence and is based on cultivating LOVE FROM THE INSIDE OUT! From one “Colored Girl” to another, the rainbow is enough and so are we!

But, I wasn’t always a Badu fan, when she first came out, I thought, “she’s so cliché”. As a Brooklyn girl, I saw a million sisters everyday rocking “headwraps” and celebrating an afrocentric aesthetic in their dress, on the streets of New York, way before “Baduizm” was a fad. But, somewhere between “Worldwide Underground and Mama’s Gun, she became Erykah to me – a girlfriend I could turn on, “to get me through”. Mama’s Gun, converted me, as I instantly identified with Erykah’s quest to define her own path and reality as a Black woman in this universe. The ethereal melodies and frequent transitions characteristic of her songs, also was a form of communication that gave me the space and a platform to reflect on the varying dimensions of my experience. The last time I saw Erykah perform was last summer on my birthday and I was mesmerized as usual, as she has the gift of being able to transplant the audience  “in her spaceship” to her “solar system”, all the while enjoying the journey.

I finally pulled up Erykah’s, “Window Seat” video up on YouTube today, and instantly began nodding my head to Erykah’s raspy voice and the entrancing melody. As she took each step (in the video) on the Dallas streets, I felt like I was right beside her – a bit anxious , anticipating her next step but also concerned about the implications of her “full reveal”. Knowing that she would be naked by the end of the video, I began thinking about the historical exploitation of black women’s sexuality and how “accessible”, “marketable” and reliable the images of black women’s body parts were masqueraded in so many Hollywood movies, in hip-hop videos, on liquor store ads and pasted on subway walls. I thought about how growing up as a girl and teenager I was given the message that my body was “dirty” meant to be covered so “it” wouldn’t bring “danger” or “provoke” a man to act on his “natural” urges and that somehow I was responsible for making sure I wasn’t violated. I thought about how ashamed I’d feel walking down the street at 13 or 14 years old, while grown men hollered obscene comments about parts of my body. I thought about the hundreds of thousands of women who are being raped everyday in the Congo, as a tool of war and how the world’s silence and agreement had condoned this reality.

My hope is that in some small way Erykah’s bold move would be the beginning of a new moment in history where black women define black womanhood and sexuality for themselves, free from history’s grip on their backside.

Within the last minute of the “Window Seat” video my eyes met the words evolving tattooed on Erykah’s back and all I could think was, “thank you”. Thank you, Erykah for shedding: the pain felt by black women worldwide: the pain of the auction block, the raping of black women during slavery, the sexual and other types of abuse that too many black girls, endure as a “rite of passage”, the shame and anger of being sexualized earlier that you can understand by Hollywood, the media or even by your own family members, the fear felt by black women walking down the street late at night, the pain felt by the women of the Congo as the world profits from their suffering.

I say thanks Erykah, from all the little black girls and all the grown black women around the world. Thank you for your courage, thank you for shedding all that is a barrier to the expression of life – pain, shame and fear. Thank you for the celebration and honoring of black womanhood – the first mothers of this planet. In our natural state we are beautiful to be honored, respected and valued just because we are here! We are with you in your declaration honoring all womanhood, all humanity and all life, no exceptions! Thank you for your act of liberation! Thank you for giving me the question: What else do I need to shed?

Makeda Crane

Independent Journalist

Read entire article on the Baltimore Sun commentary page by clicking on Justice for Haiti: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.haiti25,0,6005298.story

Greetings,

Like many of you, I was crushed to hear news about the earthquake in Haiti. I was born in Haiti, spent the first 5 years of my life there and have sustained a connection to family and homeland. For 4 days, we went without news of my grandmother and other family members. The wealth of thoughts and prayers throughout this time helped buoy spirits during the hard process of waiting for word. When we finally got news of my 80-year old grandmother and one close cousin, we expected her to support our wishes to come to Miami immediately. She instead decided to stay and support others. She said her house was still standing, and opened it to homeless friends, feeding them what she could. I was brought to tears hearing this, but unlike the many tears I’ve shed watching footage, or listening to stories, these were tears of an immensely open heart in awe of the strength and beauty of Haitian people.  Lespoua fe viv : Hope makes life.

I want to recommend some organizations that have a history of grassroots work in Haiti, empowering Haitians to change their lives:

http://www.shelterbox.org/ sends aid boxes with water purifiers, tents, blankets, some food, and other emergency materials, even including a small child friendly package.

http://yele.org/ is Wyclef Jean’s organization, one of the most trusted by Haitians, rooted in culturally rich community empowerment.

http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Haiti-message-from-the.html is an organization with a history of work in Haiti rooted in having Haitians direct their education and development.

http://www.standwithhaiti.org Haiti Partners in Health is Paul Farmer’s organization with 20 years experience providing healthcare to Haitians.

http://bassinzim-edf.org/ is a seed-saving organization helping to empower local farmers in rural Haiti to feed themselves.  Chin-k grangou pas joue : A hungry dog doesn’t play. These are just 5 among many NGOs working in Haiti.

As you try to select the best destination for your contribution to recovery efforts, I want to offer two short videos and their critical look at Haiti’s past, and the current militarization of aid efforts. It is sad to see that, just as with Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, there is slowness to react with open hearts to help hurt people, and a rush to protect property and aid organizations.

My prayers are now asking that out of the great destruction from the earthquake, Haitians will be able to create lives of freedom and beauty, unhindered by imperialism.

I thank you all,

Jean-Jacques

Click here to sign petition and support Congolese voices

As I awoke on this Christmas morning from my dream in which I was in Eastern Congo again, I realized that too often I suppress what it was like to experience the energy of war, for the first time when I visited Congo earlier this year. In my dream I felt the intensity of these feelings again. The part of the dream I recalled began with an officer stopping me in the streets of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, asking to see my papers. I questioned the officer’s request, but while in the D.R.C. this year when asked for my passport, I contained my righteous indignation. The surge of anxiety I walked with, in the dream and in my recent visit was emotionally paralyzing, as I was starkly aware that there was no real safe harbor anywhere in my sight. Everywhere in my dream just as in my visit, armed soldiers lined up against store walls as if they owned the air that the Congolese people breathed and it was hard for me to differentiate between the varied armed groups I passed on the street. The UN forces, foreign troops from the neighboring countries of Rwanda & Uganda and the Congolese army all seemed to have one thing in common – their presence was elusive at best and deadly at worst. These young soldiers were now reduced to mere mercenaries for US and foreign corporate interests and governments such as Rwanda and the small percentage of Congolese élite – hired hands in a global resource game in which Congo loses while the rest of the world wins.

As I continued walking down the streets of Congo in my dream, a woman in her early 60′s, held her breath as she briskly walked ahead of me, passing a group of soldiers. She seemed to have mastered the stealth of a samurai warrior – deliberately disengaged with the sights and sounds in her line of vision, possessing the ability to stay almost undetected by the human eye. Within seconds, I saw a soldier raise his machine gun as if he was lifting an amulet to the sky to receive God’s blessing and fire into a crowd of people. I attempted to slide under a table when a soldier grabbed my ankle  flinging me against a wall to be used as cannon fodder.  A slew of soldiers were already firing in my direction and seemed eager  to find the “right landing” for their bullets to pierce. Lucky for me, I was in a dream and was able to escape from the onslaught of machine gunfire, possessing the power to defy gravity and my likely fate.

I woke up in my warm bed relieved and thankful that this dream wasn’t my life. I thought about how I stood out as a foreigner in the refugee camps of the Congo months earlier during my “real” visit – how the eyes of the displaced men and women seemed to meet mine with fury and envy and say,  “You get to go home.” The intense guilt I felt was palpable, as I knew that I had personally benefited from the Coltan and Cobalt in their soil and yet did not have to live their nightmare.  I could go back home, in my nice warm bed and forget their faces if I chose to and on this Christmas morning I could even pretend that they don’t exist.



Almost a year ago, I was compelled to contact, Friends of the Congo, a DC-based advocacy organization, after viewing the, Nov. 13, 2008 interview,   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b07P7T-_Ano on the Democracy Now program.  I was attempting to understand why there was a “veil of silence “, around the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in Western media – a country which the UN  reports  as the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world since World War II, in which nearly 6 million people have died, and hundreds of thousands of women have been systematically raped as a tool of war.  Friends of the Congo, Executive Director, Maurice Carney explained how the conflict in the Congo is a resource war and not an ethnic conflict.  The Congo happens to be one of the richest stretches of real estate in the world, endowed with an abundance of vast mineral deposits, such as coltan and cobalt, which are key to the functioning of modern-day society.

During this time (Winter 2008), my father Ernest Crane had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a few months earlier and I was grappling with the imminence of his death. I questioned  whether my inquiry into the Congo should be postponed for a less intense time, but I couldn’t ignore the yearning to do something. This compulsion moved me to join the delegation of independent journalists going to the Democratic Republic of Congo, organized by Friends of the Congo. I would go to the Congo in tribute to my father and raised funds on facebook with the assistance of my friends and family to cover my expenses for this trip.  Ultimately, it was my father’s ideals of freedom that  would give me the courage to go to Congo on January 5, 2009  two days after he died.

While in Congo I was given the opportunity to speak to Congolese face-to face and extract the truth directly from their mouths. I pledged  to the Congolese who courageously spoke about their realities, that I would let U.S. citizens and the world know about why we should care about what’s happening in the Congo and how we are directly connected to the conflict in the Congo.

Since I returned, I have written about my experience in the Congo and have spoken in a variety of venues, advocating for diplomatic and political solutions to ending the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo; as opposed to the current military solutions being backed by the US government.  Upon returning from the Congo in January 2009, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at: Loyola College, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Coppin State University, Morgan State University, the University of Toronto, CUPE labor union in Toronto, Canada, Columbia University’s IMPACT program, the Congo in Harlem Film Festival and have conducted multiple radio interviews on this issue.

I would like to thank all of my friends, families and strangers who trusted me enough to offer their support in the form of prayers, well wishes and monetary contributions. Your contributions were valuable  and honored – know that you have made a difference in the global movement to end the conflict in the Congo. This is just the beginning, as I will continue to stand for a free and liberated Congo. Family, I encourage you to learn more about the Congo from Congolese and tell someone else about the Congo. We must open our ears and our mouths and remove the veil of silence around the Congo. Lets’ do this in solidarity with the people of the Congo. To a peace-filled Congo, and a peace-filled world. Let justice and peace shake hands! Happy 2010! Join the global movement!

To follow your heart, take a leap: A father’s commitment to Africa lives on in his daughter’s work for justice

(This article originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun in the Maryland closeup section, Sun, February 22, 2009)

On the weekend after Thanksgiving, I went home to Brooklyn, N.Y., to visit my father – the man whose height and stature always felt like a wall of protection between me and the world. As I sat beside his hospital bed in these last few months of his life, I had watched the body of this once robust, 6-foot-2, 240-pound man slowly transform into a wilted flower.

Now he was down to about 130 pounds. I whispered in his ear, “Daddy, do you remember me telling you that I’m going to the Congo”? He nodded back, but I wasn’t sure if it was a mere nod of recognition or true comprehension.

My personal connection to the Congo had been forged by my father, Ernest Crane. Born and raised in Harlem, he would often say, “I feel like a walking history book,” as he recalled the important moments he participated in and lived through: Jim Crow, the March on Washington, Vietnam, Watergate. He often credited “Mama Lilla,” his grandmother, with giving him a love of history. She would tell him bedtime stories of her parent’s lives as slaves – this was the root of his interest in his African ancestors.

It is no wonder that he was a lifelong student of liberation movements in America and abroad, and an avid reader of African history. Later, as a professor of psychology and African-American history, he taught students to value, study and honor their collective history.

I had never been to the Congo but had been transplanted there by my father’s accounts of its history. He spoke of the Congo as a beautiful, lush country that had been sought after, first by Portugal and Belgium, then by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. I recall him saying, “The Congo is one of the most underreported massacres in history, how can 6 million people die and the world stands by, in silence?” He spoke of the courage of Patrice Lumumba, a personal hero of his, who stood up against Belgian colonial rule.

I got closer to the Congo after watching a news program on which a guest spoke about the plight of the Congolese people. Later, flipping through the channels on my TV, I accidentally turned to a program about the systematic rape of women in Eastern Congo. I found myself drawn to stories about the area, and even though these were coincidences, there were too many for me to ignore the call.

I felt compelled to act and battled with myself about how – and if – I could make a difference from thousands of miles away. It was increasingly difficult to continue living the awful cliche of the sympathizing American who talks about the world’s suffering over a chai latte, but goes home and does nothing.

Instinctively, I realized the hidden message in my father’s words: “Makeda, always follow your heart.” It was his love of freedom and dignity that compelled me to ask 150 people for $33 so I could go to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, as an independent journalist through Friends of the Congo [2], a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization.

My father passed away on Jan. 3, and two days later, I left for the Congo. As I crossed the border into Goma and met the eyes of an armed soldier, I felt my stomach drop, as if I were on a roller coaster that had just made a sharp plunge. The nearly 6 million people who had died in the 12 years of conflict seemed to loom over the dusty streets of Goma and its people.

At Goma’s main hospital, I looked into the pupils of a woman who represented the hundreds of thousands of women who had been systematically raped by foreign troops and Congolese militiamen; I sought evidence that she still had breath in her body. I felt a bond with her that surpassed sympathy; I knew her struggle was my own.

I listened like an empty vessel to a Congolese trader of coltan (a mineral vital to cell phones and other electronics) say, “The voice of a poor man doesn’t have any importance.” He spoke of U.S., Britain, Rwandan and Ugandan companies profiting from the unregulated mining and selling of Congo’s vast mineral deposits, and I wondered: How many Congolese lives had been sacrificed to produce the coltan in my cell phone?

At refugee camps, I witnessed the inadequate food rations dispensed to the refugees, while in the distance were vast green forests. When I asked children whose villages had been destroyed in the conflict how long they had been in the camps, many couldn’t recall living anywhere else.

As I walked through the last refugee camp on the line of conflict between Rwandan troops and Congolese rebels, I again felt the uneasiness that had accompanied my first steps onto Congo soil. I pulled out my father’s picture and looked at his smile, which assured me that I was protected.

Someone once told me: “People rarely take risks because they want to, but they take a leap of faith because of the persistent yearning that can only be resolved through action.” I knew this trip was the start of an intimate relationship with the Congo.

Paying the highest tribute to my father, I vowed that when I returned home I would talk and write about the Congo in as many public forums as possible. To advocate for the Congolese, I must teach friends, family and others that the deaths of millions is a global issue that cannot be ignored. And people must be told that the root cause of the conflict is not ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, but control of the Congo’s natural resources.

I will continue to act on behalf of those who have been silenced, grabbing the torch that was given to me, and keeping my father’s legacy in front of me as a guide in creating my own.

You May Contact Me At:

makedacrane1@gmail.com

calledbythecongo@gmail.com

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