Greetings Baba;

My apologies if I offended you. I specifically refrain from commenting on the notion of repatriation because I recognize it is a sensitive issue. I recall in your post "Responding to Roy Augier" you suggested speaking the truth. The truth is I merely highlighted a comment in the article Rasi presented; as all too often as humans we tend to gloss over parts that our ego blinds us to.

Some years ago in New York, a co-worker came to me excitedly re-telling his encounter with another Trinidadian, and requesting that I agree to meet his new found friend; ofcourse I agreed. it turns out that I knew the father of this person and had never really accepted him as a Trini, but here was his son, accent thicker than mine, presenting himself as Trinidadian to me, and the world. I'm not sure if the accent was modified for my benefit, but I was startled by an incongruity between the speaker and the words. The speaker as you might have guessed was White and hails from one of those families that, most likely, was among the targets for US evacuation/intervention during the, failed, coup d'état of 1990.

I maintain a friendship with two women from Nigeria (Yoruba) who have been trying to convince me to move with them to Nigeria ever since the US economy began to take a turn for the worse. Both professional women, they've been travelling back and forth from the US to Nigeria on a regular basis trying, in my humble estimation, to remake their future environment to suit the one they have grown accustom to in the United States. I must admit that I'm sometimes tempted, when I hear how successful a business such as mine could be in Nigeria, but then I'm confronted with notions of exploitation and I'm quickly sobered. I do harbor plans to return to Trinidad, but they don't include modifying my environment, a position antithetical to my Scandinavian relatives, who compare and complain after every Carnival trip.

Here's my truth and I value your comments: I have no problems being part of the "6th Region" of an African Union, that makes a lot of sense to me; I'm also sold on the idea of reparations, which would make a "6th region" much more viable; I'm less sold on the notion of repatriation, until it can be proven that such transitions/transactions can occur without the displacement of another indigenous culture/society. Maybe it's my peon/Cainite DNA, that resents the idea of an Abelite/Gypsy existence.