Casa

i watch you while you are sitting there and telling everyone

what is home

i see you thinking about it

not the first time in your life

but the first time in your life compared to others’ ideas

your mouth is open and shut

i dont understand all the words but i understand the

message

“why is there a need of home“ you ask and i freeze

“there’s no need for home you can just move“

and i see the excitement in the faces of the other students

white faces creating new ideas

that are so much older than everything they know

“there is no need for home you can just move“

and while i’m sitting there my blood is under 0°C – frozen

inside my black body

i’m begging for

being home

i’m begging

for movement

“there’s no need for home you can just move“

My father built a house

a house of diaspora i would call it

a home, that’s what he would name it

a castle, a casa

that casa he built with the money he made in germany

that casa he built together with his third wife

that casa – i never understood it

there where always dreams of going back

he just came here for his daughter

he stayed here to make money for my siblings

he found home

he found home in a new place

7630,7 kilometers away from that place where he rests his head to sleep

“there will be place for the three of you and when i die everyone of you will get one third of it“

i felt strange

i felt guilt

i felt excitement and being loved

for years my white mom explained to me why this is

a sign of pressure

a sign of not belonging

a sign of…

thank u mommy, i do understand now

it was a sign of resistance, a piece of belonging in an identity that will

never

be

part

of

yours

something you can’t colonize something you can’t steal

one piece of me one piece of my dad one piece of my blackness

one sign of connection

that you can’t change

That house, built over years, stone by stone piece by piece

it’s a sign of coming back

it’s a momentum a Monument

it’s a sign of moving and staying belonging and being

unsplit

These days i talk and read

learn and study

a lot about being in diaspora

and for most people it’s about being

between the chairs

it’s about not belonging

it’s about

being split

One day i told this to my father and his answer was so much more on point than all this academic knowledge

The answer of a black man out of the fawella

The words of a man that taught himself writing and reading, not because he loved being an autodidact

But because he had to work from the age of six

His words just moved me

“It’s the dumbest form of envy. German dishes are just served piece by piece, they just hate to have options. While they are eating a soup and my plate is filled up with seven different dishes, they just can’t say »im jealous that you have so many and i have just one« they are more likely to be pitiful. Because that poor Black men has to decide what to eat first. You are not split, you are not in between. You have both, you have more than them. They hate it and they will never tell you“

And he is right

I’m not split between anything

My identiy needs home and that’s fine

I’m not split between anything

I belong in two countries – into two countries

That piece of a house is replacing my piece of nationality I’m losing these days

That piece of that house that stands in Santo Domingo is my manifestation of belonging

Everytime we talk he tells me that casa is waiting,

your brother is living there, it’s warm,

the smell of beans, garlic and rice is wandering arround the rooms

waiting to catch your nose

I’m whole in my belonging, I’m whole in my not being part of

I’m not any longer part of a nation that hates black people

2015 is the year the goverment decided to steal this piece of my heart

this piece of my family’s ten-times-diasporian identity

I was never part of the german identity that is creating differences between me and THE germans

based on my blackness

or more based on a racist system

based on my unwillingness to celebrate a colonialist country

but I do belong

my food, my hair, my taste, my culture

is as authentic and as whole as it could be

trust me everyone who is sharing my identity is

just

like

me

black eastfriesan dominican plattdütsch afrocarribeans Dominicans are all the same

there are just not that many of us

My casa is built underneath the warm sun of the carribean, my home is that Altbau-building in Bremen, two flats on my name

my home was built by two people who are from the lowest classes

fought themselves up into that position

where they could gift their daughter two houses

my home, my belonging is in that privilege to not move but travel

between two places I do belong, proven by deed of ownerships

“why is there any need of home“ you ask and I do understand

“being in diaspora means to be in between” the black brown and white scholars and professors are repeating over and over again and i do understand

“home means…”

and i do understand

It’s a question of history

“being home means to be part of the culture and the nations”

and i do understand what my ancestors did for me

“being afro carribean is about-” and i press my hands flat on my ears

unwilling to hear

what you are thinking

The red marker of your correction is crossing my thoughts

I wrote down “slavery destroyed the heritage cultures of black people who are now in the carribean, compared to the transfered and saved cultures of the Indo-carribean”

the red marker

ended with a question mark, before that “is it so?”

I freezed

and I remember how tears run down my chest, fell on that paper

and how I wrote yes yes and yes down

it is so

“why is there any need to build a home” you ask

and I can just tell you, because naming a place home

with my black body

is resistance

for centurys

“why does ‘cooking’ mean so much to you? You carribeans act crazy about food – that’s so over the point” a brother told me

and it is so

My dad built a casa, a place I never have been to but I see it when the garlic is burning dark in my oil filled pan

My dad built a casa

as my black ancestors did

they built it in their hearts

they recreated it

everyday

with garlic and rice

in the kitchen

on the gas-fire in front of their houses built with corrugaded sheets

In the backyards of the spanish colonial masters

in the kitchens of white feminists who prove their freedom on the backs of black bodys

My dad built a casa

it’s not moving, it’s staying stable on that little piece of land in DR

it’s traveling unsplit in my diasporian body

it’s traveling unsplit in my kitchen

that he taught me

My dad built a casa

My mum bought a home

I’m refusing to be in between

I’m reading

all these texts I’m

hearing

every explanation

why I should

be

Why I should see

that there is no

home

or

house

or

casa

just two chairs

where I should sit

in

between

the

Wholeness

Of my identity