Visual from http://www.worldatlas.com

Maps fascinate me.

The coming together of people on a land mass.

It’s common sense that we all come from some place and that doesn’t take much thought to understand.

We all want to call somewhere our own.

Like the Caribbean

No wait South America

Maybe the South Pacific

Or Africa

How about Europe?

The Mediterranean

Even Asia

The North Pole

The South Pole

The Equator

Those are broad regions

As you spin the globe, you can put your finger on a place of your choice.

Then you take a closer look.

My eyes are focused on the Caribbean.

More specifically, Haiti, my birthplace.

From the vantage point of living in the United States of America.

Why has this migration, this journey, come about?

Knowing full well that many others were made before as many are being made now.

As I go about my current neighborhood, there are Haitians like myself.

Displaced

Interfaced

Disconnected

Reconnected

Calling a new home as a new people.

A nation of immigrants

A part of a whole

in Peace

in Harmony

Willing to transform themselves

In order to have a better life and to thrive

Coming to an understanding that this land is our land, as the song goes, is hard.

Where do you live?

Where are you from?

One answer negates the other.

The movement of peoples

The obvious not so obvious

Yet, we go about striving to be a people on a land not of our origin.

Settled yet unsettled

Who can know where we will end up next?

Why must things be as they are now?

These are the thoughts of an immigrant trying to make sense of it all.

The coming to a new place to live other than their birthplace of many generations.

Patiently and silently waiting for an answer

Wanting so desperately to belong

To stay and not have to leave again.

On taking claim of being from somewhere when asked the simple question, “Where are you from?”

As a native would ask a visitor.