Carol Che
Where were you born?
What is your nationality or nationalities? Is there another
nationality you have had and lost?
Do you feel some sort of attachment to where you were born?
Why do you think
that is/ is not?
Where else have you lived?
Out of all those places in which place have you felt most at
home?
Why is that?
Can you think of a situation in which you felt very un-comfortable
or unwelcome
(describe)? What about a place?
Do you have a story you would like to share that sticks out
and has come from
any of those places you have lived?
What is your name? (optional)
I was born in Paramaribo, SURINAME, in South America.
I have the French nationality
and British nationality. I’ve been “naturalized” French
back in 1997 and I lost my Surinamese (I don’t know if we say it this
way) nationality.
I feel some sort of attachment
to where I was born because it’s my native
land after all. The memories that I have from there are unique. It’s
a poor country, with corruption and everything, but I lived there like anyone,
ate the local food, had some classmates from different ethnic backgrounds,
etc.
I also lived in Cayenne, FRENCH-GUIANA.
I feel the most at home in French-Guiana
The reason is because it’s
where I really grew up and also where I spent the longest time.
People in French Guiana
are mainly Créole people, descendants of Africans
from slavery. In grade 1, I remember being victim of racism. I was at school
playing with my little friends. This little guy from Haiti (not even from Guiana),
came up to me and told me to go back to my country. By saying “your country”,
he meant China. Back then, I was only 6 and I had no idea what racism was. I
was shocked but I realized that people do differentiate you from them and that
they judge you. I felt really bad and sad because I considered myself like them
and them like me. My friends told me not to listen to him and that they liked
me. It was comforting, but today, I still don’t understand why he had
so much hatred towards the Chinese people.
There is a story about
the King Vaval in French-Guiana. When the period of Carnaval comes, the King
Vaval will rise from Hell and reign during the whole
Carnaval
period. It goes from “Epiphanie” (another tradition period where
we eat “la galette des Rois” (King Cake), but this one is a French
tradition.) starting January 6th to sometime late February or middle of March.
Every Sundays, people will dress up, dance and play music on the streets. There
is also an important Brazilian community over there, and you can enjoy their
music and their traditional costumes for Carnaval. (I never really got to learn
to dance like them, and I somehow regret it.) When comes the end of the Carnaval,
the King Vaval will be brought to death and people would burn him. We would
then be sad, but excited in the same time because the next year, everything
will go
over again.
If you have a chance to go over there, the Carnaval period is really the best
and at that time of the year, the weather is really nice.
My name is Carol Ché.