Ever had one of those days

@stevenssimsstuff as always thank you for sharing your life experiences with me (and others), I appreciate your openness and willingness to talk about these sensitive and personal issues. Although I generally favour being politically correct, even more so I favour honesty and I cannot for the life of me understand how we are going to fix anything socially wrong in the world (including racism and reverse racism) if we can't openly discuss our feelings and/or how our experience impacts that (or not).

I am sorry that those childhood events had such a negative impact on you. It was not fair nor kind nor did it make any sense, from my point of view, and as many stories go, it's something that "should never have happened".
 
My "life story" is NOT important or significant, but some people find it interesting, and since you were generous to share some of yours, I will also tell a little about mine. Sometimes people find it hard to believe that there are so many extremes in my family history, so I will also put some pictures.

My father, as you know, is mainly German, and here he is with his parents, and you can see who yourself who the "hero" on the wall is. I am not ashamed nor am I proud about this, it is what it is and it is also part of my heritage whether I like it or not. They are not better nor worse than the other members of my family, there is racism in both, in different ways but definitely there.




So Oma left her husband and youngest son (my father) around that time (apparently an argument about whether the eldest son should go to the U-boot or ship duty, but I think it may also have to do with my Opa's lovers or the fact that my Oma was an aristocratic highbrow who thought that rich and successful as he was, he would never be a Duke like her father), my father never saw her again until after the war, and he stayed with his elderly father (who was a reknown National Socialist artist and interior decorator) in Switzerland, and then from 12 onwards, Opa was imprisoned for war crimes and since no one else in the family wanted to adopt little Manfred, he grew up in an orphanage pretty bitter about how cruel the world had been to him.

This is what my grandparents and their children looked like pre-war when they were a wealthy power couple living in a luxury home in Zürich, where my father was born later.




As soon as he could he got involved in military activity and had to leave Germany in unclear circumstances - he fled to Australia. Similar to your dad, I guess, military aviation and engineering especially called to him and since Germans were not allowed to work in developing military technology so he changed his nationality to Australian. Here he is in one of his typical adventures, preparing a swamp party.




Later on, he wanted more adventures, glory, women and money (not sure in which order) so he started travelling all over the world (including the States, he had to get out of there fast too, he had a fight with an American football player over a woman) and working for quite a few prestigious companies/organizations (NATO, British Telecom, Franco's Guards in Spain, and a lot of United Nations) and had more girlfriends, drunk parties, military activity and technology/engineering experience. He celebrated the US arrest order while in Vietnam. Here he is with his Vietnamese students.







Here is a picture of him in a Cambodian hospital with the nurse who attended him after the emergency landing/crash - he overstayed in Vietnam and had to emergency fly himself out of the country. He knew he had left Vietnam only by looking at the shape of the peasant's hats over the rice fields and didn't have enough petrol to make it very far but he was very proud to have managed to keep the plane in good order though he was pretty messed up - part of this I corroborated with his flight instructor I met a few months ago.





Although he had African girlfriends, African bosses, brought me up in Africa and I had an African nanny, and he also drove me to African schoolfriends' houses, he also prohibited me from watching blacks or Jewish movies or programmes on TV (e.g. Fiddler on the Roof and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - not allowed, even things like Family Ties (had to watch out for names like Goldberg in the producers etc), no Japanese anime either (because he thought that was a Japanese plot to make white kids stupid so no Nippon Animation Heidi or Das Biene Maya or Alice im Wunderland), only Deutscher Puppentheater, German fairytales, Die Schlümpfe, Asterix und Obelix and CERTAIN Disney films of his selection (Lion King and Little Mermaid not allowed, Star Wars was OK but Indiana Jones had bad Germans, so no) and of course no dating black men or Jews. By the way, such control in part was possible because there was no local TV during my childhood in The Gambia and none at all for the first 6 years (the first time I saw a TV I ran away terrified that the horses onscreen were going to run me over, I had never seen a horse either) - but later on he bought a VCR in Dubai and commissioned family members or work colleagues to videotape permissible viewing material.

Despite this, this was the woman who raised me for the first years of my life while my mother was busy working. She was my first Mama, she taught me to read, to pray, to love, to have faith, to be kind.
Yes that's me. She is 100% African, Ghanian in fact and I suffered a lot when she was fired.






My father also told me that although he liked sleeping with Vietnamese women in the Vietnam War he didn't want to wake up every day with a slanty eyed woman beside him. Surprise, surprise, this is the woman he married - my mother, whom he met while both were working for United Nations in West Africa. He was a ITU expert (international communications union) and head security officer, and she was a Filipina volunteer
with a degree in Statistics previously employed by the Filipino dictator Ferdinard Marcos in the International Relations department. 




She's not completely Filipino, she is also part Native American, Scottish and perhaps some Spanish and Chinese blood. But 70% Filipino, let's say. Her mother is half-American, so she was born "with white skin, blondish hair, a delicate European nose" - and therefore, despite my great-grandmother smothering ashes in her children's faces whenever the Japanese were in town to darken their skin tone, they were captured and placed in Japanese concentration camps where the last male in the family, her brother died at 17 when trying to escape with them.

Hence my grandmother was raised as a street child, fatherless and pretty and half white and... well, the end result was that she became very bitter and manipulative (and still beautiful) and beat not only her children but her husband (pretty bad, like split open head bad). My mother "left" me in the Philippines when I was 2 years old for a few months and my grandmother beat me occasionally, but over all she really beat her own mother up, dragged her by the hair and locked her up, ashamed that she was so dark, illiterate and weak. She also beat my grandfather up in front of me and drank heavily and said she was ashamed of his monkey face, dark skin and the ugly children that was his fault. The furniture was part of his wedding present, he had a US Degree in Industrial Engineering and worked extremely hard all his life to save up and buy quality US goods for her.

y the way, obviously although I defend women's rights, I really hate there is no way to support abused men or even acknowledge their suffering, it really makes me angry - even if there is physical violence involved, I have witnessed much evil and psychological torture to men by women and it is NOT OK, it is so f-d up that this is not addressed in society. My grandfather, an extremely brilliant, kind and heroic man who survived the Bataan Death March, helped rebuild the Philippines as an architect and served in the Philippine Navy and died "shamefully" in a coma that to this day some people blame my grandmother for. She was white (ish), beautiful, abusive (surely from having been abused) and 20 years younger - she destroyed him, and she also destroyed her own mother, only the 2nd person in my life to be kind to me.

My great grandmother (below) looks quite dark and looks very hardened by life. She was often not permitted to eat with us and only fed leftovers. Despite that, she was amongst the wisest and kindest people I have ever met. She had already lost her husband, survived the concentration camp, lost her beloved son, worked all her life cleaning and washing and when my grandmother would beat her, she would cry, cry, cry, pack up her little bundle of clothes in a cloth (no money for suitcase) and go with her other daughter - who had 14 children and a husband that beat her, the children, drank, gambled and whored, so it's not like she was better off there. I always remember her when I get new glasses, because my grandmother broke her glasses when she beat her up, and since noone wanted to pay money for new glasses for her, my great grandmother just taped it all back together and that's how it was. When she died, noone even told us, it was less important than even the family dog dying. I have never, ever met someone who has suffered more than this woman, and I owe her my Soul, because she kept it alive with her Love during some really terrible times. There is no doubt in my mind, that if she had been whiter, her fate would have been different.




OK fast-forward.

I am the eldest of three sisters (and of all my Asian cousins), and as per Asian and military hierarchy, I am responsible for those "beneath me". On one as they are not allowed to raise their voices to me, and I have the title of "Ate" (Eldest Sister) for my sisters and younger cousins, it also means I must sacrifice all personal happiness and luxuries (nothing amazing, things like the first "free bedroom" - the five of us slept in the same room for many years, and if we all needed something, like a blanket, I would give it up, I wasn't angry about it, I was trained to believe it normal) for their sake, and I would always have 3 times the beatings they had, because whereas if I disobeyed, only I would be punished, but if any of the other two misbehaved, I would also be held responsible and receive a beating (and harder because I was older and should know better). Also if we were travelling and my father did not want to pay for beds for everyone, the youngest were permitted to sleep on the bed and I got the floor or the armchair (once I got one that was full of bedbugs). I didn't mind, to this day, I am pretty tough like that. The second sister got a rougher deal because she could not perform academically as well as I could and I learned to uh- bullshit my father back with his own words - not often, but I was and am headstrong even then- she still is not well because of things that happened back then.


Also, having inherited the "Asian" stomach and stoicism, I was expected to eat food of a lesser quality if there wasn't enough good food (out of date, or with bugs and worms), or no food at all. No food was also a frequent punishment, so it wasn't really strange that I started hating food and went on hunger strikes after beatings, and was anoxeric at around 18 (I'm fine now, no complaints). My youngest sister, blond with blue eyes, was allowed many things that remained out of bounds or not even offered to me (no hard feelings, I love her like crazy and I think they were actually bad for her). The "funny" thing, is that the racism in a lot of this came much more from my mother than my father so I can't just blame it all on the "crazy German Nazi".

Here I am with my troops in the Philippines. I'm the one with the glasses. The rest are my sisters and cousins that I was in charge of.



Fast-forward again. Like you, 6th grade all change. I moved from my happy multicultural American Embassy school in West Africa to a town in right-wing Spain where I was the only non-European. People spit on me, shoved me, pinned me down to write insults on my face, laughed at me, and when I showed affection to the only person I knew at school (my sister) immediately I was the "lesbian" even though I didn't know what the word was. Although I probably pass for Hispanic, my behaviour and cultural mannerisms were not European at all during that time. It got better when I learnt to blend in, but I never forgot that I was "not white enough" for those folks at least, at that time, and although I have come to really love Spaniards, I also know I will never be even European, much less Spanish.



Also, between the ages of 2 and 12 some things happened to me that should never happen to children (or adults), always with/by white men in the family or close family friends. It didn't really help me feel safe with them. Later on I found out that other children in the family (both mixed and white) had also had the same problem, it was always white men but not the same man, so I guess the women in our family really like men who really like children, which is not really something healthy, let's say. I don't know who had it "worse" but one thing I didn't like was being told by my parents that I was told it was normal and healthy (and to stop crying and never mention the subject again). One of the other children who suffered the same kind of treatment, my cousin, committed suicide on her 40th birthday, that was extremely hard for me, amongst many things I have survivor guilt, for having been able to overcome what so many have not.



The biggest terrorist threat in the Philippines are the Moro Islamic Front, so, although there is some real security concern (and yes, I have lost family members), even so I am still a stalwart supporter of Islam. And yes, the whiter you are there, the better treatment you get (in general) - I was treated better than most, and my sister better than me, although I sometimes got more work offers to be an actress or whatnot for looking more mixed race. 

Fast-forward again. It's come to this. I am already Australian, African, Asian, Native American and European. What do I need next? I married a Jew of course and went on honeymoon back "home" - West Africa. I get a great kick out of asking my practicing Jewish father-in-law if he will come to the christening of his grandchild Adolph Muhammad (no, he won't be named that, but still) but also, I am the only one who loves conversing with him about his time in the Israeli kibbutz, his childhood as a Sephardic Jew in Spanish Morocco and I also speak Haketia with him (his dialect, mixture of Ancient Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew) more often then his own children because I love it and am a stalwart supporter of dying languages. I really really adore my adopted family - that is, my inlaws, so much that my second best friend is probably my mother-in-law (my first being my husband), and my third, my sister-in-law who is like a daughter to me.

So here I am showing my African roots to my Jewish husband, these are the little brothers and sisters of a dear friend of ours.




And I really liked wearing hijab. It made me feel protected, happy, respected and one with God. But there it is completely free choice - for example, these girls' mother and other sisters did NOT wear hijab and the men were perfectly happy about it. 



Does this mean I reject my German heritage? Hell no. Here I am with my sisters celebrating Oktoberfest. And I love going to Germany as you will have seen in previous photos I posted.





But what does this all mean? Nothing. It's all true, but it's just a story. A story that shows that Hate comes in all shapes, sizes, colours, races, religions, but that Love also comes in all those flavours. If I would have to choose Hate everyone who discriminated me or my family, there's nobody who could escape - I would hate the blacks who tried to kill us in the coup d'etat, the Japanese who captured my grandmother, the Germans who tortured the Jewish family members of my husband, the Muslim Filipinos who killed the Christian Filipinos in my family, the Spanish who bullied me, the white Americans who stole the land from my Native American ancestors, the Vietnamese who tried to kill my father in the war, the French Catholics who killed most of my French Hugenot family, the gypsy drug dealers who got my cousin on hard drugs, the Jews who torture and issue death threats to my Arabic Islamic friends. Or I would have to hate all my family members, the half that are abusive and the half that let abuse happen, or maybe all men because there were so many perverts, or all women because they were weak-minded and self-deprecating.



Or shall I say I am nothing like my family and disconnect myself? But my National Socialist grandfather gave me his Weltschmerz, his eccentricism, his artistic talent and his passion for life (and a beaked nose); my henpecked Asian grandfather gave me (besides almond shaped eyes) the ability to be academically brilliant, the nobility of character that never allowed him to speak harshly to his wife even when he was young, strong, powerful and in the right, the willpower and spiritual endurance to endure physical and emotional torture; my father gave me a flair for adventure and travel, a powerful sense of Sehnsucht, invested in my education and he provoked me to be headstrong, resilient and despite his convictions, he actually sometimes proved to enjoy other cultures immensely (we both studied Islam together and considered converting) and got me started on many of my hobbies and passions introducing me to very harsh and thought-provoking material (like giving me material to read on wars or geography or history or other cultures and cross examining me after), my crazy Apache-Scottish-Filipino grandmother gave me supernatural strength when I am angry (when I am not angry it ain't there) and hair that turns red in the sunlight and a burning desire to be nothing like her except for the forces of good, the people in my family who died young, tragically and/or shamefully made me fully aware of the contrasts in this world and how most people are oblivious to them.



I am so lucky, Steven. It's been a good life so far, so full of adventure, so non-boring, both painful and beautiful, and I'm still only in my 30s. I have seen (and/or endured) many "bad" things - abuse, rape, murder, suicide, drugs, child neglect, extreme poverty, wife-beating, husband-beating, war, prostitution, third world injustices, abandoned newborns high on heroin, starvation, mothers who bury child after child - but by far, the Love I have felt and received far outweighs it, so I have been so, so, so lucky. It would take too much time and energy to keep up hate and suspicion - there is already too much of that, both in my family and in the world, it makes me tired and sick to prolong it. So I choose not to. And here I am. And again, it started with my Ghanian mama, the first person who ever loved me.



Do I claim to be better than my family? Absolutely not, just luckier, I received much more Love than most of them. Do I claim to be un-racist? Absolutely not, though I try to be, but only God knows if I am free of prejudice, I probably have some still, but I do try my best to overcome it. So far I'm doing good, never met a race I didn't love in some way or other, never found a religion where God was not present, but I still have a long way to go in this journey.



I'm so sorry this was too long, hope I did not bore you. It's difficult to tell the story without context, and I actually left out so many things - yes more family drama, but I think it's enough for now. Hope you had a GREAT Easter. And I really hope you can find Michael Adams one day and return to the friendship you once had and both deserve, free of prejudice. I believe and pray this is possible.


Liebe und Licht, your very crazy half German Friend and Sparring Partner (I do apologize for any misuse or abuse of the German language, I welcome corrections).