She kept peering over her shoulders, staring straight at us; a confused look on her face. I could tell that that the guys she was with were not comfortable either. Ankara (nickname, can't remember how he got it.) shifted uneasily in his seat beside me; "homeboy, relax. No weeere!" I said to him. We were there to have fun like the rest of them. Damn, we had every right to be there. These people, blacks like us were actually staring us down like we were from outer space; plus, I could smell their fear. I knew who was drawing all the attention to us, and I couldn't care less.
Ankara is 6'3, heavily built and always wears a hat and flies the collars of his shirts constantly; he only wears natives when he is around people he is comfortable with. Shy, kinda reserved, walks with a swagger and has a nasty temperament. Scars run from the top of Ankara's head, down his neck and to his back. He is one of the many people I know that are always ready to fight (for one misplaced cause or the other); the scars were just testaments to the struggle. One of the only few people that I know would die for a friend and for family.
Werunthings.com takes us to many places, and while processing some images and audio content from one of our appointments, he walked in and started pushing the mouse connected to my Apple Mac around; sneer, sneer…one side comment after another and I was already getting irritated; "Wetin dey worry you, Ankara? You dey mad? Which one be all these noise, ehn?". The dude just laughed and said "You want me to crush you abi?"…laughter from everyone in the room, some of them were actually nervous and we all grew up together (just imagine). So, that's how we started arguing about random stuff, in Ankara's opinion, we (the werunthings.com crew) could mix with the celebs that we interviewed 'cos we were educated and had steady jobs.
The argument moved from opinion to opinion, got heated up, paused and continued. I promised to take him on one of our 'observation' trips (just to change his point of view) and there we were, at a show we paid for and we were getting the treatment. I was so pissed; they were using their eyes to harass the dude, staring intently at his scars whispering to each other. Now, I think I can imagine how people living with HIV/AIDS feel when they are stigmatized. You should have seen how all of them trooped out together in a mad hurry after the show, probably scared that they would all get robbed by one man.
Classism is the new stupidity.
Sigh*
