Black Tourists on the Motherland


Black Tourists on the Continent
Where  can melanin walk freely,
unburdened by the weight of watching eyes?
Not judged. Not measured. Not scanned.
Just being.
Some may say New York—
but only if they’ve never felt its cold stare
from behind tinted windows
or beneath flashing lights.
But the Motherland…
Africa lets you breathe.
From the Sahel’s dusty whispers
to the southern winds that kiss your skin,
you walk not as a minority, or just part of a community,
but as a rhythm in the drumbeat of the land.
You are not a spectacle.
You are the sky, the soil, the story.
Freedom tastes like mangoes in the morning,
like laughter without translation,
like nature that doesn’t charge admission.
But beware—
freedom is fragile
when you carry Western bonds in your suitcase,
trying to live a borrowed life
on ancestral soil.
Life is beautiful—
until your tongue stumbles.
A taxi driver asks,
and your silence speaks volumes.
Suddenly, you’re “white man,”
“foreigner,”
as if language alone
can bleach your skin
or erase your roots.
I speak the tongues of my mothers,
the dialects of my fathers,
with words untouched by colonial hands.
But even if I didn’t—
even if my voice was foreign to your ear—
I am no less African.
No less Black.
If you charge more for visitors,
say so.
Let the price be honest and upfront,
not hidden behind smiles.
Don’t preach Pan-Africanism
while picking our pockets.
Love us loud.
Love us clear.
Don’t stab us like the colonizer or slave master
and call it tradition.


An AfricanLikeYou…

African Like You Podcast

INTERDEPENDANCE W/ COUMBA-TOURE.

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