Y’all. I’m sitting in a restaurant w 2 mentors who were just blessing my soul. A Black couple walks past the table & the brotha stops to say he likes my blazer & that he was “reading it throughout their whole dinner.” We look at him like wha..? This is the blazer (by @AnnaTeiko)
He then says he’s from Ghana & speaks Twi & said that each panel of material was a part of a proverb or parable. The sista w him (Black American) kinda looks sheepish b/c they (nicely) interrupted our convo. She says “he’s been talking about this all thru dinner...”
Then one mentor says, well what do they say? And he interprets a few, explains that the designs are like an alphabet. Now. OF COURSE I’m having #Wakandan heart palpitations. Because this is a Pan African moment and well. #Wakanda.
So we start building about how this is the type of exchange Black Africans & Black Americans need to foster, how we need to heal and lawd knows I could’ve shaved my head at that moment to follow #Okoye (don’t @ me - I know it’s fiction. Let a sista live).
I’m finna contact the designer to get the whole thing interpreted. AND I’m struck at how I just loved this designer and her items. But now I’m grappling w the fact that I’m literally wearing something w far more meaning and I’m bugged out & mad I can’t read it. But damn y’all.
Just this casual interaction made me want so much more for Pan Africans to seek each other out, love Us harder than we were taught to hate Us & be the social architects we need in order to create institutionalized self perpetuating freedom.