The only black in the village

The only black in the village. It’s a play on ‘the only gay in the village’ from the famous Little Britain skits. My old boss used to joke that he’d be the only gay in my village if he moved there. But he wouldn’t be. I may very well be the only black woman in mine though. I’m not sure, I’ve certainly not seen another in the three years I’ve been living here. It’s not that I spend every trip to the corner shop trying to seek black women out, it’s just something you tend to notice when you’re in the minority in any situation. In the same way that I can size up a room at an event and acknowledge that I’m the shortest person there or the only ethnic minority that was invited. It just is what it is. I don’t see anyone who looks like me when I walk around the area that I live.

Why move out of London?

London is my cultural home, it’s where I spent most of my formative years. We’d lived in Bedfordshire for the first few years of primary school, but the ever increasing commuting costs and the fact that we ended up coming back to London for most weekends anyway, meant my parents were very keen to move back to London. Add to that, my Grandparents moving back home to Dominica and selling their house, it was the perfect opportunity to buy it and have a base in London.

So as I said, most of my life was spent in London. I loved everything from being able to drive five minutes down the road and have everything from plantains to fufu, mangoes to sour sop there for me to purchase. I loved the buses that turned up every 4 minutes. The sound of helicopters over head. My daughter’s school which reflected every country you could name and how she came home telling me words she’d learnt in different languages from her friends.

The museums. London Zoo. Restaurants. Late night kebabs, early morning raves. London is immense. It is a magnetic force which will forever pull me to it. It’s a place everyone can be themselves in.  But for us London is also the deep rooted fear of my unborn black son being stabbed or shot simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is a disproportionately high level of stop and searches. London is traffic police flexing their weight at our expense. London is explaining to my daughter why yet again, there are flowers left at the kerbside or outside someones home.

As you probably know all too well, London is also rental prices that are so high that two people working full time still find it hard to afford a family home they can be proud of. One where the landlord cares enough to rip out the avocado bathroom set and floral carpet that has seen better days. But why would they? Supply and demand meant that if we weren’t willing to take it in the poor conditions it was advertised in, someone else would. So we moved.

I left my home city and moved somewhere I could afford and that would give my children the childhood I wanted them to have.

What’s village life like as a black person?

Probably much the same as it is for a white person. Or one of any other colour. Because, thankfully, most of our everyday life isn’t to do with our race. We go to work, we take our children to school, go to book clubs, visit the park and all the rest of the everyday jazz of life. Though you may have to deal with the odd double take from passers by every now and then. Or ignorant comment from the older generation.

Is racism an issue?

Take this week for example, an amiable enough old man was out for a morning walk the same time that I was with my baby. It was only 9:30am but already blazing hot. He pointed to me and said “I bet you’re enjoying all of this (sun) right?” I smiled and said, yup I was but it was getting a bit too hot. To which he looked genuinely surprised and responded with “what even for you people, my goodness!” I laughed internally and bookmarked it in my mind to tell the other half when I got home as the look on the old man’s face was too much. I’ve lived my life in the UK, I’m just as sensitive to the seasons as the rest of us mate.

I’ve not had any outright racism. If anything everyone goes out of their way if they don’t know us well, to not mention our skin colour or ‘anything different.’  I can laugh and joke about just about anything with my friends in the village though, we’re far from politically correct.

Community

Living in a village has given me the sense of community that I feel online, amongst fellow bloggers and creatives. I get to live it in real life now too. I know some people are lucky enough to live in close knit communities in London but I wasn’t one of them. Now, we not only know all of our immediate neighbours by name, but we know loads of the people through the village too. It reminds me of living in the Caribbean, how when I used to spend summer’s in Dominica and people knew who you were and ‘who you’re of’ before you opened your mouth to wish them a good day. My neighbours are lovely. When Bob was born, Princess actually spent the day and night with our next door neighbours whilst I was in the hospital. I didn’t have that bond in London.

What about the children?

I think the experience is different for the kids. My daughter has been met with every reaction from giggles, to pointing to admiration when she first wore her hair in an afro or in hair extensions. She’s had people tell her they can’t understand her due to her ‘Jamaican accent’…my girl was born and raised in North London. . . She’s comfortable in her own skin. She doesn’t take it to heart and I make sure she sees enough positive diverse female role models to know that she is beautiful and that black is beautiful too, even if it’s not reflected in her playground or much around her daily. Thank you Youtube and our Beyonce-Ciara-India Arie playlists!

What do you want to know?

One of the questions I get asked a lot, nearly straight off the bat, 90% of the time by other black people is “are there any black people where you live?” It’s normally said in a way that makes me feel I should have written that in italics. It’s said with a slant, with a pre-made bias to it. To me, it roughly translates to “how can you be living somewhere that doesn’t have loads of black people?” Like I can’t be pro black if I don’t live in London anymore. Or it is a way of saying I’m not black enough? What makes me black? I think most people will see the colour of my skin and not debate whether my postcode negates it. Maybe this is all in my head and nobody thinks this about me, by experience would tell me otherwise.

I still cook an ethnically diverse range of food. Stew is a favourite in our house, as is ackee and saltfish. We also do pizzas and order fish and chips. Moving hasn’t changed the way we cook, the films we watch or the way in which we socialise. Some things just take a little bit more planning these days (you run out of plantains, there’s no corner shop to run to for it anymore). As I mentioned in the post about Yomi Sode’s play, my heritage and culture is important to me, it is me and isn’t all of me, all at the same confusing time.

Being the only black woman in the village isn’t an issue for me. I’m still going to be Tinuke.