MY FELLOW AMERICANS
Politicians put their arm around me and welcome to their televised speech without knowing who I am. But I’m guessing that when they reach out through the television that they imagine that they are embracing someone who looks just like them.
When I came out of the Asheville Art Museum (actually on Saturday not Thursday) and stepped into Pack Plaza I encountered a throng of my fellow Americans and they didn’t look anything like me. Their hair was dyed or wrapped differently, their skin was a different color, their clothes were brighter, the fried Caribean food they were eating from food trucks was spicier, their music was far from the Scotch Irish country music of Shindig on the Green the previous Saturday.
I had no idea what was going on but there were no tourists here and Asheville on weekends is flooded with tourists, there were few white faces. It turned out that this was the three day annual Goombay festival, a celebration of African and Caribbean heritage of food and music. All the vendors were Black and all the performers.
And yet, as I slowly realized, these were not only my fellow Americans, but they were more American than I was. They were all born and raised here in Buncombe County, I was born in India. Their African American culture is now rooted right here. I spent this year escaping my American culture to Greece, Germany (my wife Kathe was German), Paris and London. These people were celebrating their African American right here where they feel completely at home. I’ve always felt I was an outsider, in America, in Buncombe county certainly, even though I have lived here in Buncombe County over fifty years. They were at home and I had the feeling I was visiting an exotic place. They were the real Americans, and I felt like a visitor, accepted, but not fitting in. I did here what I did in Paris, what I will do in Morocco in two weeks, took as many photographs of the natives as I could, more native American than I am, and am showing them to you here.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 