Immigrant.

Hello me dear fellow travellers passing through, howdy-do?

Everything all good at home? 

Speaking of home, I think more people from Guyana live in other countries than in Guyana. 

Lemme introduce you to a 3rd Guyanese here, Shameeda, via she story. 

The Unwelcome welcome:

For about forty years, I truly forgot that by definition, I was an immigrant - until 2016, when articles on air and online reached my eyes and ears as  talk and text ranted about a wall that was being built in the southern United States to keep out immigrants. 

the word IMMIGRANT filled my head as I browsed and watched  stories flooding platforms in the media  - spilling open the horrors of capture, prison, abuse and murder -  exposing rabid responses against people who left their homes, their countries, to seek home in another place. The children's stories made me weep.

As I listened, read and watched bits, bytes and broadcasts,something began unravelling in my own self.

 My stomach churned and flopped over, in memory of that first unwelcome 'welcome' I encountered at nineteen when I left Guyana, boarded a plane for the first time and went somewhere to some place that I was going to call home - ignorant of geography and climate awaiting me on the north side of the Atlantic.

  

It was July 1, 1975.

Clutching my hand woven native basket filled with treats prepared 'back home',  I suppose I must have appeared as a co-worker later called me "FOB".  

Eyes wide open and staring everywhere, I read the brightly lit signs  "Welcome to Canada"

Smiling to myself and everyone around, I clutched some documents in my hand and followed the queue to be processed for a legal check in. 

The first stop was a man dressed in white shirt with  blue shoulder pads embossed with the words 

Service Canada. 

He took my paperwork, flipped through them, hammered a stamp on the top sheet and said 

" Don't think you can stay forever just because you have these".  Without looking at me, he pointed to the other side. 

Obediently, I walked away blissfully innocent and ignorant of a future yet to be created.

 July 8, 1976. 

It was the world of "Mad Men". 

The advertising world was aggressively advertising on a massive scale never before seen or created in the business of brand marketing. 

I found myself in an in-house agency with a million dollars to spend on buying spots for commercial advertising on television. 

On one fine summer day, two burly men dressed in grey showed up at our agency's reception desk and demanded that I come out to see them. 

Our receptionist ran inside our offices to whisper in hushed scared tones to me that "some guys wanted to see me". 

Believing that they may have been from our liaison agency, I agreed and went out to see them. As I entered the reception room, they whipped out two cards and said they were from "Immigration" and swiftly slipped themselves on either side of my body demanding  that we sit in room 'somewhere'.

Our bewildered frontdesk receptionist ran to a meeting room door and opened it. "Here, you can use this one".  Tracy, our legal secretary came out of her office and demanded to know what was going on. 

They told her they had some questions for me and needed to be in a room to do so. By this time, one was  already in the room and the other holding my elbow, steered me into the space. 

They closed the door, told me to sit. The questions began -  Who was I,  where I lived, where I came from when, how etc. etc.  This went on for about half an hour - until finally, they told me they wanted to see my identification docs.

The heavyset man with long hair,  opened the door and both escorted me back to my office area, to my desk under the amazed and curious eyes of everyone in the office.  When they saw my documents, they thanked me and left the office. 

As they left, my director walked in,her bird bright eyes crinkled " who are those two?"