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On Tuesday last week, somebody asked me for my ID number, the reasons for which will remain with the Traffic Department, thank you very much! I rattled off the 13 digits without pausing for breath, nor thought.
On Wednesday, somebody else (not the JMPD!) asked me, “Who are you?”.
Without hesitation, I replied “My name is Traci, I’m a trainer, I’m a single mother with a small child and I live in Johannesburg.” “That’s not what I asked,” responded the non-Traffic Police person. Confused, I said, “Wait a minute…. I have just told you my name, my occupation, my domestic status and the location of my home – what more do you want? A sample of my DNA?”
With an encouraging nod, she then said, “No – I don’t need a sample of your DNA. What you have told me is WHAT your name is, WHAT you do for a living, WHAT your parental status is and in WHAT suburb you live. You haven’t told me a single thing about WHO you are, HOW you are or WHY you are.”
(I was extremely relieved that she did not add “….or WHEN you are…..” – I might have started frantically searching for the time machine or some guy wearing dark glasses and black trenchcoat.)
Insert pause for thought. Here. Now. I have 2 minutes to answer the question.
“Well, I, erm, ah……I think I am,….um….ja, I guess I’m, well…….I suppose I’m, well…….OH MY GREATNESS!! Can I move to the next question, please, because I don’t actually know the answer to this one!”
A short while later, the song “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley was playing on the radio. I love this song so I was singing along and doing a little “rasta boogie” in the kitchen (much to the amusement of my partner and the dismay of my son!), and then I sang along:
“If you know your history
Then you would know where you coming from”
The rest of the song turned into elevator music – a kind of white noise. The answer to the question “Who are you?” was now starting to make sense!
Enthused, energised, I erased my entire shopping list from the kitchen whiteboard and confidently wrote “Manchester”. In capital letters. Then I added Boston, Blantyre, Baltimore, Vereeniging, Jakarta, Delhi, Pietermaritzburg, Venuato, Bahrain, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Trivandrum, and then stopped. (The oven timer beeped).
Later, I went back to my whiteboard. I wiped off all of the WHERE’s. I drew an atlas that my geography teacher would have cried in agony over. This was my WHO atlas, not my WHERE atlas.
WHO I am has been shaped by the experiences I have gained in the WHERE and, WHEN! By mapping what I have experienced and adding a timeline, I am better able to start putting together a picture of who I am. Self-exploration. It’s powerful stuff. Just like a Buffalo Soldier, it requires strength and tenacity to really get to know where you come from before you can answer the question, “Who the ‘eck do I think I am?”
Happy birthday, Bob, wherever you are.
Reference: The Buffalo Soldiers were a segregated regiment of black cavalry fighters during the American campaign to rid the West of "Indians" so that "civilised" white people could gain the lands used by Native Americans. Ironically, many of the soldiers were slaves taken from Africa. They were given their name by the Native Americans because their short & curly hair was like the hair on the back of a buffalo's neck. Their duties were settling railroad disputes, building telegraph lines, repairing and building forts, helping settlers find a place to live and protecting the settlers from Indian attacks.