King Yellow
When I was a little boy some of my older cousins used to call me the Yellowman or King Yellow. This is also the stage name of a popular Jamaican musician whose real name is Winston Foster, and just like him, I was and still am an albino. My cousins meant it as a joke, but I was not amused. Life was tough enough being one of the youngest in the family. The last thing I needed was to be the punchline of some cruel joke. It felt like the more I tried to fight back against this name, the more pleasure they found in it. In our home, any nicknames from my siblings always reflect the best of what they saw in me.
It was often the sound of someone shouting “King Yellow!” that let me know that at least one of these cousins had come to our house for a visit. Their loudness and excitement sent a chill to my heart and I would run out of the house in search of a safe place to hide. Often I ended up somewhere out in the backstreets playing football with friends or out in the maize fields behind where I found much needed peace and quiet.
Out in the streets with my friends you could always find me running fast , laughing out loudly, and playing wildly without fear. Just like the other kids, I was often covered in dust from head to toe, had scratches all over my legs and a missing toe nail or two from kicking the hard-paved roads where we played street football. Then, out of nowhere, a loud voice would cut through the dust clouds screaming “Yellowman!” as if all lives were in eminent danger and the entire ghetto needed to run for cover. The kids would stop playing and look at me and I could see the gears spinning in their dust covered heads. All eyeballs were staring at me as if the yellow-man creature in me was about to pounce on one of them and possibly end his life. It was always a relief when my playmates allowed the moment to pass and turned their attention back to the football game instead of piling on with the name calling.
In these moments, I Knew that I was not black or brown like the other kids, but simply just a blindingly yellow boy. Yellow brighter than the sun, more yellow than the marigold flowers that grew wildly in my mother’s tiny flower garden planted against the side of our two-bedroom house. I was more yellow than all the petals of all the sunflowers in all the world crushed together; in my view, the most stupid of all yellow flowers, always looking up at the sun all the day long without blinking. I hated everything yellow because it reminded me of how different I was.
The nickname Yellowman was probably not said out of bad intentions, but it wounded my pride just the same. I knew that I was not the only albino boy in the world. There were others out there in the streets. I had met one or two albino boys at school, there was at least one albino girl at our church, and there were two or three other albinos in my own family. My little sister was and is albino! Still, it hurt so much to be picked on endlessly. As a general rule, all albinos were picked on and called names by other young kids and even by some adults – the so-called normal ones. Even as a young boy, all I could think was what a terrible contract to have with society, to be despised and often cast down. This level of cruelty always felt personal and and yet very unnecessary.
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Fast forward to today. I am now forty-three years old and I am listening to music by the legendary Jamaican musician known worldwide as Yellowman. There is a song titled “Thank you” on one of his albums and I listen to it often while I do my chores around the house. In this song Yellowman expresses his thankfulness to his “beautiful people” (family and friends) and his wonderful fans for their loyalty, for supporting him through the years, for all the love they brought into his life, for all the blessings they showed him and for not leaving his side throughout all of life’s good and bad times. The message in this song echoes deeply within me. I am happily married to Stephanie, the true love of my life, and we have five very beautiful children. We live modestly in a place where the children play loudly in the backyard while disturbing only the birds in the trees and the neighborhood squirrels. We have a family dog that loves to play tag with the neighbor’s dog at the back fence while pretending to hunt the squirrels as they sit on the powerline. I believe that the squirrels know that they are untouchable, so they just sit on the line, crack pecan shells, make squirrel noises, and throw the shells down at the dogs below. The silly dogs believe that one of these days these arrogant creatures will slip up, fall down, and then it will be time to show the squirrels the real bosses of the backyard fence line; but this is a story for another day.
Out in the front yard, we have a sidewalk where the children take their roller blades, skateboards and bikes and practice crashing and falling hard on the hard concrete. It is their version of street soccer with friends. Somehow, they also come back home with dust on their feet and faces, as well as scratches on their knees, legs and ankles. There must be a gene for playing hard in our family. Again, this is also a story for another day.
At forty-three I am a lot different from the boy that I was at four years old. The name-calling and public humiliation that I used to fear and even despise has not altogether disappeared. Other people still see me as different from the outside and that is not going to change. I admire Yellowman for embracing just how different he was from the other musicians and artists and for not waiting for others to define who he was. To me he became a champion, someone who defied the odds from his childhood and fought for his own survival. Throughout his life, he has conquered much more than albinism, but that is his story to tell.
We do not always know the ending from the beginning. Sometimes that which is rejected turns out to be of chief importance. While it is easy to reject people and ideas that are different from what is familiar to us, it never feels great to be the one who is rejected. As a young man my outward appearance was observed and scrutinized the same way by close relatives and strangers. This attention was largely negative. It often came with ugly looks, finger-pointing, jeering, spit, kicks, and even blows to my face and my body. Simply existing as someone with albinism and having the audacity to walk on this earth with my head held high was a high crime. I learned to fight strangers for survival more than I learned to depend on the kindness of strangers for civility and compassion.
Still, there were those outliers, the few strangers who, along the way, somehow found a place in their hearts to like and even love what they saw in someone like myself. My mother has often told me the story about a Swedish couple who once offered to buy me and my sister Tapiwa from my mother while she waited for a bus at a local bus terminus. She was taken aback by their boldness but was wise enough not to show her disbelief. Thinking quickly, she politely told them that this was a very wonderful opportunity, but first she wanted to check with her husband and she would get back to them. When the next bus came along, she immediately got onboard, not caring which destination the bus would take her so long it carried her far away from the kindness of these strange white people. Suffice to say she never intended to make good on her promise to give up her children. For that I will always be grateful.
My mother also told me the story of one woman who, after being married for many years, had trouble getting pregnant. The woman came to see my mother one day and confessed to her that she would give anything to have a child of her own, a baby to grow in her own womb and to hold in her arms. Even if that child turned out to be an albino. She was so desperate to be a mother so much that she even wanted a child whom most people would despise. My mother prayed with this woman and soon after she became pregnant and afterwards, the Lord indeed blessed her with an albino son of her own. So, as you see, it is not always bad to be a little different on the outside. Still, it is almost impossible to see what is beautiful about you if the rest of the world treats you like trash.
These stories have helped me to be kinder and more gentle with the feelings of others. As a young boy I was often troubled by the knowledge that I was unavoidably different. As a grown man I am simply grateful for life. Sometimes we do not like what we are likened unto. For me it was Yellowman. In our own hearts we might wish that the world saw us as someone extraordinary and important but also as someone who fits in with the crowd. We might also wish that others would see us as someone who matches perfectly with the picture of the ideal world whereby all people are beautiful just the way they are, but this is seldom the case. While I know that I was not born destined to be despised, I also know that not everyone I meet is going to fall madly in love with who or what I am. Still, if I can do a remarkable job of embracing who I am, I will make a difference in this world by making it easier for someone else to love who they are; the way God made them.
Putting these thoughts on paper has been part of my journey towards embracing who I believe God meant for me to be. Sharing it freely with you will hopefully inspire you to strengthen yourself and build up your neighbor and not cast down and destroy.