Event Review....Autumn Wine Festival 2015

Hello Darlings,

Last weekend, Jameshia and I decided to head to the Autumn Wine Festival in West Deptford, New Jersey. A delightful little event held in the Riverwinds fields featuring 12 delicious local wineries, 5 food trucks and featured 99 the beat radio station playing music for us to dance and sweat out our liquor to.
















For $15 in advance or $20 at the door, we got to sample a tasting for various different flavors of the local wines and got a free wine glass to try them all. Each vendor, had ready and ample bottles varying from sweet to dry for  both tasting and had cases on deck ready for purchase.

After sampling the wines, Jameshia and I had to hit up the food trucks and try something to soak up all the yummy wine. So we headed to Star of the Sea seafood truck and we were not disappointed!

The lobster roll sandwich and the crab balls!!!! YUMMMERS!!!!

Despite it being such a chilly day, we had a great time and would definitely go again with our lawn chairs in tow and dancing shoes on.

Did you go too? What were your thoughts?

Toodles Darlings,

Jacquel

Clemantine Wamariya Interview

In 1994 the Rwandan genocide began, it was a mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority. During the 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed.

Clemantine Wamariya  who was six, and her older sister Claire were barely able to escape when soldiers came to their home. The young girls were separated from their family and lived on the run in refugee camps in seven different countries. Clemantine and Claire lived in eight countries and five different refugee camps since 1994.

By miracle, they were able to escape the killing in Rwanda and found themselves in Burundi. They then moved to The Democratic of Congo for a year to start a new life; but then war began there as well so they fled to Tanzania and lived there for a few months.

In the refugee camps people were starving to death, diseases were taking the lives of people every day, there was no way out for many people. Next they went to Malawi before heading to Mozambique for a few months. They moved to South Africa soon after and stayed for few years. After a few years of peace, they tried to head back to Rwanda but got caught in another war in Congo in 1998.

They ended up in Zambia until the International Organization for Migration (OIM) brought them to Chicago in 2000. At the age of thirteen Clemantine began her formal education and amazingly went on to graduate from Yale University in 2014, with a degree in comparative literature.

What you've gone thru, many Americans cannot even fathom. How do you feel your story should impact those of us that normally feel so removed from such atrocities? 

 We need to examine our humanity and come up with innovative ways to understand each other. I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m here to encourage us to work together. Human beings are capable of a lot more than they believe. There’s beauty in good, even though there’s evil and hate, there’s beauty in all of us.

What are some of your biggest challenges?

 I see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. The main challenge for me now is to decide what I want to do next. First and foremost, I want to make sure that I remember to care for myself even while taking care of others. I am mentoring many students all over Africa and the US right now. Unfortunately, I never have enough time in a day and sometimes energy. I wish I had someone who can help me manage my crazy and wild life! To me nothing is impossible if you allow your imagination to run wild, why not!

What advice can you give to people struggling to overcome adversity?

Taking action is the opposite side of hate. After all, imagination can only take us so far. I do believe in the power of imagination, but I also believe in the power of work and the power of gratitude. If you want to see your circumstances change, take action.

What is one of the greatest life lessons you've learned?

This advice came from my sister Claire, " We must carefully learn all kinds of ways to survive and thrive in our given lives with every resources, tools and people we have around us" 

                     What is the greatest challenge you are facing right now?

My greatest challenge is having other people try to tell me who they think I should be. With all the respect I have for them, it’s hard not to listen. I can see clearly who I want to be and the challenge is to convince these people of that. I feel like a lot of people can probably relate with me on this. I will say I’m tackling the challenge though. I want to be the Clemantine who won’t shut up about poverty, oppression, and wars. I keep choosing that Clemantine and I hope that it will be enough. 

 Where's your happy place? 

Wherever/whenever I am around kind, loving and caring people. People bring me joy. All kinds of people. I am attracted to people who love life. I love hearing people’s stories. Everyone has a unique story and a different way of telling it. You get someone’s story from their hand gestures, their accent, or the emotion in their voice. I could listen to people telling their stories all day.

 What are you most grateful for?   

People and opportunities that enable me to serve people all over the world.

Where will Clemantine be ten years from now? 

I take life one day at a time, focusing on today. Tomorrow is a mystery.

 Lastly, whats your personal motto?  

Ben Okri quote "The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."  Knowing truth in myself and others. 

Clemantine serves as a board member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, based on an appointment by President Obama himself. Recently, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls organization described Clemantine as “a compelling storyteller and fierce advocate for girls worldwide.”

To see Clemantine's reunion with her family on the Oprah show click the link below!

https://youtu.be/atqh0p0Ckl8

Down with the swirl, but is the swirl down with me????

Image from www.beyondblackandwhite.com

With all this controversy around Serena William's appearance, and for the record, if her bodyis equated with looking like a man, I got two questions: where can I sign up and can I use Steve or Tom?

I digress,I digress but I did wanted to talk to you all a little  about relationships and dating. As all single black women who are in their 30's, are reminded if not by themselves, but by any family member with a mouth, that their biological clock is ticking (I keep trying to put mine on snooze, but to no avail I constantly hear the darn thing!) We are met with the myriad of questions regarding our single status and how to make it well for lack of a better term...Make it go away. I've heard the countless questions of  "Well have you asked to be set up?" "I'm sure one of your friends has a friend.Ask them?"  "Have you tried online dating?" And the list goes on and on...... And we  on the other side are bombarded with statics: black women are the least desireable because we are the most obese or black women are the least likely to get married and blah blah blah blah, but before you disregard this as another blog post going on and on about the woe is me black woman, I want to talk about what a lot of black women are "afraid to try" and that is dating outside of their race.

 I started thinking about this topic when my sister and I were having a discussion,about yes, what else.... my dating life and she asked the question, "Are you open to it?" I said with confidence "Sure I am" she hesitated and said, "Are you really?" and I paused and thought about it am I really. Not that I haven't dated outside of my race before but in the 15 years I've been dating I've only dated 1 Hispanic man and 1 one white man and I began to think. Why am I not dating out of my race? Why have I not dated another white guy? I also began to think about how I actively use online dating, yes I am online dating and so are thousands of other people, so it's nothing to be ashamed of anymore. But how despite the large number of white men I see on these sites, there are quite a few who may browse my profile, but very few actually approach me. And the one's who do are looking for what I've gotten from plenty of black brothers, as well, straight objectification, too strong of a come on, and request for them to allow them to do strange things to my anatomy. In any case...  While I think of myself as a catch, I'm college educated, I have a stable job, I smell good, and the list goes on and on.... I can say yes I am open to dating outside of my race, but are they open to dating me??????

 I began to troll research the internet for what white men found attractive and I stumbled on a very interesting message board on www.gamespot.com, nonetheless, on was it a poll and question was is it "Rare for a a white man to be attracted to a black women?" The outright poll was a little less than equal with about 44% stating "Yes it was rare" and 56% stating "No, it's not rare" and a 4% of undecided folk who couldn't make up their minds about whether a white guy could be attracted to a black woman..... While I figured most of the respondents were white, so that left me a bit perplexed, but hey,if you can't figure it out, I sure can't.

Some of the free text responses left me astonished. There were some that were short cut and dry like "absolutely not, as their dark skin looks masculine." or my personal favorite of how one white man told the story of his ghetto neighbor with the banging body with the $50 section 8 rent who "screamed at her kids all day long." and he made her the representative for all black women everywhere. (Gee thanks!) Or my favorite where they posted the  women on the left as their preferance and the woman on the right as less desirable
 vs
Which I found quite amusing because short of a little filtering with my good friend Photoshop, a good push up bra, and a flat iron. They were pretty much very similar in build and looks.
But fear not, there were plenty of men stating that black women were attractive and/or that for every black ugly woman there were White, Asians, or Hispanic ones who were just as ugly. Some even stated how wonderful we are (warms my little soul).

So many of you may wonder what is the recipe stepping out of our black men only comfort zone in terms of dating? I say you have to be comfortable with your choice, as you may get a lot of flack for stepping out of your race from your momma, your cousins, and even with black men (especially the ones who were never interested in you but felt it important that you know his displeasure with you for dating a white man, yea that one). It's an a powerful personal decision as to when the quest for love becomes bigger than the quest to have black love and black love only, or to continue to vindicate that you always saw love as colorblind.
I searched the list serves and found an interesting read for how to attract a white man as a black woman and it gave the following hints:
1. Don't be afraid to approach him, if a white man is attracted to you, he may not know what to say or maybe intimidated.
2. White men may not be as aggressive as a black men if he does approach you  it so often times appears as casual conversation that may actually be flirting.
3. Speak proper (I just gagged in my mouth, why would you not do this with any man your interested in despite the race?!?!?!)
4. Don't hang in a large group of black men, his natural assumption is that one of them maybe your boyfriend or ie scary older brother.....

I generally feel that these tips can be applied to any race of men, as I say if  you want something bad enough you have to put the energy to attract it.  As I always say, at the end of the day closed mouths don't get fed! So heres to being fearless, especially when it comes to love..... no matter what the skin color is.

Toodles Darlings,
Jacquel