At work, I don’t exist. I am a badge with arms and legs that gets called here and there. Sometimes the customer ventures into my personal bubble:
“Who are you?”
“Where are you from?”
so I wear my business smile and answers business like the land that birthed me and whether they are satisfied or not, I move on with the next task while their minds try to wrap themselves around the concept that just left them. Some remain puzzled and can’t reconcile “Africa” (yes, sometimes that’s all they need/want to know and yes sometimes that’s all I want/need them to know) with the person standing in front of them and every time I service them, their faces have questions their mouths don’t dare to ask.
“Who are you?”
“Where are you from?”
my job requires that I violate their personal spaces every time so in exchange, I disclose with open heart a few things about me. I know that I am not a number, a statistic, an image, a name because I don’t know where I start or end even if every second of my life could be recorded from birth to death.
I don’t like and like my job. The protocol and the surface have allowed me to observe literally at close hand race relations and the lies and truths of the human body and how much we just don’t know and that’s okay too.
At work, I exist because I choose to perform every gesture and leave it open to be accepted or rejected.
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