Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself

To Whom Do I Owe the Symbols of my Survival?

When some people think of Paris, they think of the romantic City of Lights with the Eiffel tower in the backdrop of their mind. When I think of Paris, I dream of home; a place where a huge African-American expatriate community lives and thrives beyond traditional sites. I think of L’Equateur, La Goutte d’Or, Cite de la Musique and more. These places are my conventions of home; these places were my introduction to Paris and it ignited travel discoveries I didn’t think I would find in this European city; these places marked symbols of my survival.

I remember my first, but not last, time I traveled to Paris as if it was yesterday. In June of 2009, I landed in Charles de Gaulle and was whisked to my apart-hotel in the center of the 13th arrondissement. I was studying abroad and we met with our professor out of the classroom and at Café de Flore, a large cafe sitting on the corner of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. One of the first words our professor uttered was “this isn’t about you!” I swallowed my café au lait and sat confused because I was certain that the $9K grant that got me here was to support MY immersion into the city. But as the program, and my life in Paris went on, I totally understood those four words.

As I spoke to African women in La Goutte d’Or, I familiarized myself with market life and even immigration in a French city, while exchanging anecdotes about my life in America. La Goutte d'Or, Drop of Gold or Little Africa, was packed with food stands, fabric and beauty shops and women loudly interchanging between French and their native language. I spent my days at La Goutte d'Or then migrated to the Jardin du Luxembourg or La Promenade Plantee, taking my face out of my phone and connecting with Parisians around me – soaking in stories of love, food and politics. Those connections, along with the fabric in my hands and Ndole shrimp on my breath, made me know my daily experiences surpassed my own self-discovery.

I journeyed through unconventional parts of Paris (outside of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower) and I was able to understand how much traveling can ignite discoveries in yourself that are necessary to pass on to others.