Racism

I realise I haven't blogged for a while since starting my final year of Medicine, had so much going on with foundation year applications, finals, deadlines that it was all I could to hold onto my hat! 

During the months leading up to and during South Africa, £53.61 ($88.08) was raised from 30% of my sales on your behalf for the British Red Cross Tsunami Appeal, which I was really happy about. Thank you so much.

I'd like to talk about something else though today, this was what made me blog again after my relatively long hiatus.

Let me share something with you reading this now. On my first day on the school bus in year four, the kids told me to go back to my own country and pretty much acted like this woman - I was nine then. In secondary school, older kids would pelt me with ripe fruit on the way home and the whole bus would laugh. That kid on her lap is likely to grow up like that - I see where it comes from now and it's sad. 

One of the girls said whilst we were in South Africa that she had never felt so racially-aware in all her life. I felt differently myself, no one there pelted me with anything, they just wanted to know where I came from. The kids in the orphanage liked to play with my hair and touch my skin that was very different from their own. True, people did point at me from outside the window, presumably as they had never seen someone who was neither white or black, but the kindness we encountered on those cramped minibuses where strangers would make sure you knew where you were getting off, give you half of their maize snack, and ring hostels on our behalf... I never felt so happy on public transport before. 

The way I see it, we are all ONE race. The human race. Sure we have different languages and cultures, we eat different foods, our skin burns under the sun in varying degrees and some of us don't like wearing skirts, but fundamentally to me, there is no such thing as different races among humans.

On a more cheerful note, here's one of my favourite listings. She's named  'Beatrice' after a lovely lady I met whilst visiting the Children's Feeding Programme in Guyana, where I first saw live hummingbirds.

Here's to celebrating diversity and understanding! More Etsy listings coming soon. If you haven't seen this already, I think Disney Pixar - 'Day and Night' sums it up pretty well. Good day to you all.