Well, blogging from Germany across the Big Pont now feels somehow comparable, because all of the sudden I am invited to your house (Afrospear) to "make a speech" in the middle of your livingroom (blog), to you (members) and all your guests (readers).
Very exciting indeed, but it also leaves me a bit shaking, especially because of the quality of my English, which is not my native language. So please be patient, it will improve, I hope!
To introduce myself: My name is Etta Jones (in the bloggosphere), I am a longtime radio- and newspaper-journalist, now retired, living in my hometown Berlin, Germanys capitol. After beeing out of my very dear job for some time, I knew I had to find some kind of journalistic work to let me have an output of my thoughts and a stable sense in my days. So I started my first blog: In the beginning I found the subjects more or less by accident, but eventually blogging, newsreading and writing about topics that I personally considered important developed to a dayfilling task.
You know, Germans actually do like Americans and their Way of Life, especially the generation after Worldwar II. We grew up with all these new, so very exciting things that America stood for: freedom, peace, jazz, chewing-gum, cigarettes and most of all that ever so relaxed smile of these American soldiers stationed here in Berlin.
I still remember, that when I was a little girl I watched my mother opening a CARE-parcel from the USA - shortly before a christmas in the 50th. The things that she picked very slowly one by one - hesitating again and again, taking a little smell and caressing each item - were absolutly sensational. Such items I (no, we all together, Mother, Father and my little brother) had never seen before: orange coloured cheese in a silver shining tincan, milk as a powder, bars of chocolate, cookies and much, much more. I can assure you that the wonderful feeling these gifts left were worth much more then the given items themselves, they made it truely an unforgettable Christmas.
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| Deutschland in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren - Westberliner Kind mit einem amerikanischen Care-Lebensmittelpaket. (Aufnahme: Oktober 1948) |
These were the kind of things that made the German-American friendship grow, and over all these years Germany learned (and copied) a lot from the US: movies and TV-series (here syncronized, so that Morgan Freeman for example speaks all in perfect German in the movies!) books, householdgoods, fashion and much more. People over here looked rather across the Atlantic Ocean for inspiration and advise then around Europe or other continents. But there were perspectives that just didn't find very much feedback here, especially BLACK America didn't ocur much. Except of Dr. Martin Luther King jr., Wesley Snipes, Whitney Houston, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and other international celebrities Black America stayed like a white spot on the roadmap of information, and nobody realy seemed to care about it. (Well some did off course, because it mattered to my family, to me and to some of my friends). But there was little to do about it - not before the internet became what it is today: a way to get information on anything you wish, fast, reliable and complete.
As I had a lot of joy (and some severe mindblowings) discovering all the different topics of Black Community-life through the online-publications, I decided to hand some of these informations to the readers of my blogs. I started slowly, mixed German, international, US and African news at first to get people interested at large. I tested and tried many ways of passing my idea to the German audience and I had to give up again some of the colums, because it just needed too much time to keep it up like this on a regular base. Sometimes I do get a little help from my friends (who also have promised to write something now and again!), but most of the time I am taking care of my (non-profit-bloging)- business by myself- and I love it.
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| Berlin 1989 when the wall came down |
You want me to tell you what the reunion has brought for my family and me personaly?
Well, a lot of good in the beginning, because the spirit was so very fascinating, the people were just gleaming of unbelievable joy. They were discovering the other half of their city, most of them for the very first time. For the people from the east it were these shops, fully packed with things they had only seen before when they watched the commercials in West-TV (what was very much forbidden and had brought hardships to many of them before!).
For us from the western side of the wall, from this little island of allied-protected West-Berlin, it was the freedom of being able to leave the city now - anytime without using one of these three open corridors to West-Germany (about 200 miles away!). Berlin was not surrounded by the wall and the communist frontiers any more. That meant trips to the beautiful green countryside nearly every day. We just loved that new freedom, free to drive, to walk and to enjoy the beauty of nature.
But only too soon the atmosphere changed. The job-situations for example became very difficult for many people. In my profession it was horror, because all of a sudden there were thousends of journalists from the east that had no more jobs because their country and political system had broken down completly. And the politicians knew they had to give them jobs, at least to make it look even and progressing in front of the voting people. Many very good journalists from the west were out of jobs soon, all the plans for life and career were suddenly broken - by something that we all had cheered so much. And than the papers reported more and more about hate attacks at foreign looking folks, but especially at Black people. No matter if they were German, African, British or American, man or woman, alone or in groups. We than all became very careful when we went outside, something we had never known before in West-Berlin up to that time. The oposite: American friends visiting Berlin had always loved this city because they felt so free and so secure here - something they didn't have in the big US-cities, they said. And the violence and the hate became more and more, and nowadays we are not traveling around in Berlins surrounding countryside any more. The press is mentioning these attacks only sometimes now, most of the time they write like "Two young men got into a fight, one was stabbed down" or "A man was attacked in the undergroundtrain, the victim is in hospital, the agressor at large". Like many of our Black friends we are staying at home most of the time or in private places, nobody wants to provoke agression - and everybody else seems to be so very relaxed and so happy in our "new" Berlin...
At least 137 people have been killed by right-wing attacks in Germany since the reunion in 1990, 3times as much as the official politicians are admiting. This is the result of the latest research by some liberal German magazines and papers and was published shortly before the reunion-celebrations started this weekend. And besides the people who have died there are still all these countless hate-attacks, physical and verbal - but there is no real awareness about the danger in the society. Even terrible, deadly attacks should rather be forgotten and are supposed to be the victims fault. Read for yourself:
And in another 10 years: We will not forget you, Alberto Adriano!
Attention & Respect: Encounter: A beerbottle, a young African man and little old me
Pictures from a german friend: Would you believe it?! This is colorful Berlin in May
Well, I will also leave some more links to other articles and postings from my blogs (some in English) - to let you know where I am coming from. And I do promise to keep you informed about what's going on over here. If there are any questions, I am willing to check things out and let you know the results as soon as possible.
Hope I didn't bore you all to death. Questions, critics and inspirations are always welcome. Thanks again to the two Waynes (they are both wonderful and their blogs are a true inspiration for me!) and thanks to you all for having me on your blog.
Take care!
Love and peace,
Etta
Fotos: Thank you! Dankeschön!
1. Film-Foto "Out of Rosenheim" von Percy Adlon mit CCH Pounder und Marianne Sägebrecht/Filmverleih der Autoren/www.einhorn-film.at/.../ out_of_rosenheim.htm
2. Care Paket/historische Aufnahme/ www.ooemuseumsverbund.at/ de_museum-des-monats...
3. 1949: Mädchen mit Carepaket/historische Aufnahme/ de.academic.ru/ dic.nsf/dewiki/233538
4. Elvis Presley in the Army (Germany) www.fanpop.com/spots/ elvis-presley/images/6344882
5. Berlin, Brandenburg Gate when the wall came down 1989. 1990,03.Oktober was the reunion of the two Germanys/ www.prolog-berlin.de/ de/berlin-geschichte.htm(Foto)
6. A look over Berlin, today taken from a balloon/Foto: mydailyfoto.blogspot.com/ 2007/09/overview.html
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