Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
An Anthropologist’s Search for Home Abroad
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For anthropologist Dr Gertrude Fraser, leave-taking (Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Jamaica, England, United States) has been a part of family history. It's a common phenomenon in the Caribbean. So where will she find home? Join us for an incredibly informative and moving conversation rich with new insights as she searches for a place to retire abroad.
Stephanie Perry: Year-Round International House Sitter
Living While Black, in Japan
Jamaicans to the World
Saidiya Hartmann: Literary Scholar and Cultural Historian
Afro Millenial Momma
Jamaica-Sephardic Jewish Genealogy
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey and hey Les, what's cooking? Hey, you were supposed to say what's cooking good luck. I know, but you're getting a fat head, so I have to stop that. I'm gonna I'm gonna just sprinkle that when I think it's deserved or when you know, but it it won't be all the time. It won't be all the time because in that TV that you set up, that your head is expanding. And so I noticed that. And so I'm gonna like stop that. Um we have another guest, lads.
SPEAKER_02We're doing this. Yes, we're doing this, and welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Best D's from Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_05Brooklyn.
SPEAKER_01Why do I do that? Okay, all right. Who's our guest? Well, our guest today is Dr. Gertrude Jacinta Fraser, who happens to be my sister. My sister too. Okay. Um, my sister first. Okay, that's um her middle name is Jacinta, so we fondly call her Jess or Jesse. Um, but you have to be in the club to call her that. She's Gertrude, she's not Gertie, none of that. She's Gertrude or Jess, okay? Um so we invited her here.
SPEAKER_02Or doctor to her studies.
SPEAKER_01Doctor. That's right. That too. You know, mommy, remember Jess? Mommy would always have people call you doctor and Dr. Fraser. Hell yeah, why not? Hell yeah, you've earned that. Um, am I the only doctor, the only person who's not a doctor in the building?
SPEAKER_02I think so. Well, and they want on a podcast. And look. And I'm a doctor on TV right now.
SPEAKER_01I was reminding Leslie Jazz how in our house that TV had a vice grip, a small vice grip on it. We were fancy. Every house. We didn't, yeah, but we every house had pliers. We had a vice grip. That was a little elevated, I think.
SPEAKER_02I guess so.
SPEAKER_01We had a vice grip, so we didn't ever lose it. It was all it lived there. Um, anyway. Can you give us Dr. Jazz's bio? Oh my gosh. Do I have a bio? Where do you begin? I where do I begin? We we need, listen, we're gonna do a bio and we're gonna insert it in here because it's really, really um critical for you all to know who this person, who I'm blessed to call sister, is. Um, she used to be someone who I um I uh I hope I don't cry at any point during this podcast, but she used to be someone that I um I idolized when I was growing up. She was um just an amazing um example of um kindness and um she loves me fiercely and always has, and um brilliant. I was the I was the slow one in the family. Um brilliant and um I just felt like she knew everything. Uh she probably felt like that too. No, not all the time, not all the time. Um, but now I've I've grown to really admire her um and see her as um just this brilliant light in in the world and for her students. Um she's a professor at um uh she has been a professor at many at several institutions. Um but now am I allowed to say where you're your professor, Jess? Yeah, sure. Um she is a medical anthropologist and a professor at the University of Virginia. And um so we invited her to come for many reasons. We might meander, just expect that, but the primary reason is as we've been um focusing on living bolder in our older years. Um Jazz has been doing um has been investigating the possibility of retiring abroad. And we thought that it would be really um informative and inspiring for you all to hear what her experiences have been. And so we invited her to share that with you today. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So and before I even uh look how long we've been talking before Jess has been even able to get a word in advice. But that's the boomer way.
SPEAKER_00That's the boomer way, it's our boomer way. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02It's our boomer way, but what I wanted to say about Jess in the way that I've known her for almost 50 years is I looked at you, Jess, as this like wise sage, even when we were teenagers, and and you know, obviously you weren't a whole lot older than we are, but I just looked at you almost as this like an untouchable, older, smart person that was you were never in our league, right? You know, and then you started taking up courses of study that were just so foreign to us, it wasn't science per se, it wasn't pure social science in a way, it was women's studies and anthropology. And how many black anthropologists do I know? One, you know, but I've never I've never even considered that discipline before speaking to you, yeah, you know. So wow, thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_04Oh, thanks for inviting me. Well, actually, no, I'm not thank you for inviting me. I really didn't want to do this. Yeah, I well, I'll even go into that backstory. And then the phone rang, and I saw it was from Leslie, and I was like, somebody must have died. I picked it up. I picked it up. I'm like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_02But it's so funny because you've you've been telling Ange no for quite a while now. And I what I said is then she never said no.
SPEAKER_01No, she never said no. She said, let me think about it. She said, let me think about it.
SPEAKER_04But then it's like and then Angela said, Well, yes, but you're gonna say yes. And I resented that, so I didn't get back to her.
SPEAKER_02Well, the thing is though, and I says no, and you couldn't say no to me. Thank you, sis, for that. That's a good one. And and and this is an honest question. What I said to Ange was that, but Jazz speaks all around the world.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Actually, what you said, what you said is what uh does Jazz, do we have to go to Germany for her to want to talk to us? Do we have to go abroad for her to um?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because you just she presents internationally. Yeah. And as a college professor, she speaks in front of students and talks to them regularly. And I was just saying, I just didn't understand the apprehension that you had, you know, coming on our little podcast like this. After all, it's just us.
SPEAKER_04Well, I it's not the apprehension. I think I um in some ways you've talked a bit about me, but I you and Angela sort of have your thing, and it's a dynamic that's your own, you know. And so there's a way in which I I hesitated because it's your dynamic, it's not mine. And I was like, I understand. Do I want to step into it or not? Into the vortex function. It was like um uh let's say that um you've already described how you perceive me, which is um not necessarily how I perceive myself, and as the sort of older, steadier, smarter, or if not smarter, um sort of different in some ways. Yes. And and so it's not exactly who I am, but it's kind of through your lens. And I didn't know if I wanted to be here through your lens, if you know what I mean. So that was I get it. Um yeah. But I I think it picked a great topic and I've been thinking about it a lot. So I'm happy to share what I am thinking about because there are probably a lot of folks uh my age and younger, even I think more and more African-American women at younger and younger ages are considering stepping away into some other world and um trying to do it as early as possible and trying to come up with strategies to do it as early as possible. So in a way, I feel like I'm late to the game. And uh I can talk a little bit about, I will talk about that, but I feel like I'm I feel almost like it's too late sometimes um to make a change like what I'm contemplating. So it'll be it'll be fun to think, think it out loud with you with you too.
SPEAKER_02So I'd like to know like where did this stirring about perhaps um being an expatriate, where did that come from? What were the origins?
SPEAKER_04So the the expat, and I'll put that in in quotation marks, because I think that's something we can talk about, because expatriate often typically represented mostly whites from the West going to live in other parts of the world and almost living an elevated life by virtue of being expats, and opposite that of that would be natives, right, and of having a lot of the privileges of being white in some other place. So it had a kind of it does have a kind of colonizing vibe to it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that reminds me of um uh Indian Summer, Indian Summers. I don't know if you that um BBC program where they go to India and treat Indians like shit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. So so there is some conversation about well, what do people, African Americans from the US or from the UK or Canada, call themselves when they go to other parts of the world, particularly when they go to Africa, you know. Some people call them diasporans, and you know, people are uh trying to figure out different ways of of returnees. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's a kind of unstable category right now, even though there's a long, long, long, long history of African-Americans going to Africa and to Europe, as you know, you know, um James Baldwin for one, but Richard Wright, Laura Neil Hurston. I can't remember if she traveled, she traveled to the Caribbean, but um uh with Josephine Baker. Josephine Baker, yeah, that's right. Because in some way there was a space, uh, more spaces for freedom sometimes in Europe or in other parts of the world for African Americans, not always. So there is this long history of African even African women travelers, but there is this stereotype that African Americans don't travel, and it's it's kind of important to kind of excavate the history of the long history of African-American travel, particularly of single woman traveling, African women traveling. Um so yeah, so the reason that I've been thinking about it um is because uh yeah, I grew up in Jamaica, and um even in Jamaica, we we didn't necessarily have a uh a settled life. We moved from parish to parish. Like my father got a job in one parish and we moved there. And then when I was ready to go to school, my mom was working in the countryside and she sent me up to my grandmother to live. Well, Angela and my brother Mark stayed with her, and then we moved to my aunt's house. So my childhood is really, when I think about it, has been pretty a lot of uh, let's call it residential instability and kind of moving around a lot. And so there was a part of that that I did enjoy, kind of learning about different places and seeing different things. But part of it was kind of scary because there wasn't anything that I was controlling. It was um adults making decisions for reasons having to do with what they needed, and um and so I would say that the moment we started to move, me being the oldest, and then Mark, my brother, and Angela, the moment we started to move, I had to take on the role of um a kind of protector, um, kind of shielding my siblings from the more disruptive part of moving. And so moving had a kind of complicated thing for me because it was the excitement of being in a new place, and um I can remember um when we moved to Highgate, I could walk into the town in and go to the movies, and so it was exciting, but it was also scary because adults were not necessarily um reliable in terms of helping us, you know, we just did what we were told, you know. Right, right. Um so but but it did spark my interest in in moving, but also the different kinds of people that you can meet when you move. Um so once when we moved, uh that's the first time I saw Americans, black Americans, they came to do Peace Corps um up in the part of Jamaica that we were. And so it was just fascinating to me. I think it's the first time I saw white people. So I was it was just it was exciting, you know. And if I had if we had stayed in the western part where we were, I would never have had that opportunity. Um, so that's kind of I think what started. Then of course, the huge move was moving from Jamaica to the to the US and all the excitement. I remember the night before we left, I was looking out my grandparents' house and seeing all the banana trees and thinking, oh, tomorrow I won't be seeing these, you know, but not knowing what I was going to, but just having the sense that that the landscape was going to be just altered in some way that I couldn't imagine.
SPEAKER_03So how old were you when you came here, Jess? I was 12, and the child was eight. Eight, yeah, I was eight.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And my brother was 10.
SPEAKER_01I don't even and our eldest brother had already um here first.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he had already, yeah, he had come. He had come before even my mom, a mom did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So all of this early moving, did it give you somewhat of a fearlessness about the unknown and new places or foreign places?
SPEAKER_04I think it made me curious about the differences, but it also um because we had heard stories when I like on my father's side, we'd heard stories about my grandfather's sister who went to Panama and never came back, and my grandfather going to Kingston for the first time to get her luggage, get her things so she might have died in Panama. So there were always these stories of people leaving and despairing often. Um, or in my mom's case, um, they were they she grew up in Cuba until she was about eight, eight or nine. And so the stories of leave-taking from Cuba to Jamaica was such a part of our just family history. So there was this tradition of all kinds of people, and that's true, I think, in the Caribbean. So of movement. Yeah, so it was a part, uh not that I would have said at 12 years old, oh, this is part of our history and of the way our family responds to opportunity and stress and and um kind of making making sense of the world that didn't necessarily give you everything that you needed. So, but but so yeah, so it was I felt like it was a part of the family history. My uncles had left maybe a couple of years before us. So I don't think people from the Caribbean have ever just stayed in one place, and I don't think you know I'm any different. Yeah, just a lot of movement back and forth, you know, the deep history of it sometimes forced, like with the slave trade. So one of the things that why I'm thinking about where would I retire is there are many reasons, but one of them is that the first one is the there to me, anyway, and and everybody's gonna have a different take on this, but I really don't feel like I have a place to return to in Jamaica. Do you know what I mean? I've lived most of my life here. I don't feel necessarily that this is home either. So it's almost like I have to a different kind of home. Um, it's not, I don't can't return to the one that I left, the one that I'm in for um what, 30 plus years isn't exactly doesn't feel like it speaks to me in a deep kind of way. And so that's the question. Well, where would you know where what would speak to me?
SPEAKER_02And and how would you construct a place that's home? Yeah in in a place that you've never been.
SPEAKER_04And is that a possibility? You know, that's the scary part about it. Is it a possibility? So I I so to answer your question, I think I've always craved travel and novelty, and I've always but on the other hand, I've also deeply needed stability, you know. And so I spent most of my career in one university, which I I would never have imagined that would happen. I've been thinking about that and I realized and I had I've had opportunities to leave and I haven't left. And I'm often wondering why would I stay in this small college town in in Virginia? And I think in part is because there's some part of me that kind of needed that stability. Um but some of the regret is that I didn't explore more. I traveled a lot, but I always came back. Um so this is a moment where I can make new decisions, and that's what I'm thinking about.
SPEAKER_01Wow. And you've taken your uh research, um uh your your researcher um skills into this area of um what you wanna what you wanna check out in terms of where you where you're gonna retire. I know you've been thinking about it for a while. And um Les, I don't know if you know this, but Jess is a real um like a YouTube, like she gets into people's lives on YouTube and um and so there I always get the sense that she sees how other people are living full lives um uh in Japan, or I don't even know all the places. It's just when we get together, you're squirreled away in your room watching your your YouTube um couples or like yeah, black in Japan, right?
SPEAKER_04Black in Korea.
SPEAKER_02I didn't even know things like that existed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Y LF Ghana.
SPEAKER_01Y L F Ghana, then pops up sound. And I always click on those. I know it's just clickbait, but I always click on those.
SPEAKER_04On the move, yeah, on the move. And particularly women. Um, there's one woman I follow who um plans and and lives for you know three months at a time, sometimes, sometimes less, house sitting. And she had a YouTube channel, Stephanie Perry, where she tells people about how they can house it, you know, so that they she says, don't wait, don't wait till you have all your ducks in a row until you saved all the money. Um, find practical ways that you can try something out. And yeah, yeah, house sitting one way. And she that's how she started her YouTube channel, which has grown to toward, you know, doing other things is to she had like a house sitting school how to get good, you know, and she had house house sat and pets at all over the world. So I mean, and these. People are yo are younger than me and just deciding to step into the void. And um I learn a lot from them. And there are others that focus on finances and others that focus on, you know, how do you get your permanent residency in here in Mexico? Or so I learn a lot from people on YouTube because they're independent content creators and they're living their lives at the same time. And many of them are very authentic. They they don't they don't code over things and get to see what it might actually feel like without necessarily doing yourself initially.
SPEAKER_01And they've they're video from those places, right?
SPEAKER_04They've video from those places, and and some of them now they have yearly networking conferences where you can go and meet people. I think the power of collaboration, a kind of cooperative effort is one of the things that fuels the movement. Because, you know, particularly as a single African woman, you need to have a sense of a of a community and of people you can trust. And these women have created that virtually and also in real life. Um, so it's amazing to follow them and to Wow, I didn't even know this world exists.
SPEAKER_02Oh while you're speaking about your uh YouTube um interest, what reminded me about you, Jess, is that you were the very first person I knew that was interested in reality television. Yes, Big Brother, Real World, those early shows, and I had never heard of them. And Ange told me this is so many years ago, that you were interested in it because your anthropological mind wanted to see how different groups interacted. And and you know, other people are looking for looking at it for like who's sexually attractive or that type of thing, but you were looking at it or or drama. Well, Jesse was looking at it for drama too. Oh, yeah, it brought it up. But in a different, but in a different way, you know, because it wasn't didn't seem to me at all an intellectual endeavor until I heard about your interest.
SPEAKER_04It was really a deep immersion in other people's lives, you know, and that's what draws me to anthropology. And that's that's what draws me to travel, you know. And um, so very same thing on YouTube because it's it's it's such a kind of diverse field in terms of what you can find. And once you once I, for example, found out about Stephanie Perry, then I found out about other people that she uh referenced, and all of a sudden you see, you know, some of these are people in their 20s who are who are kind of digital nomads you know, and then there are people who are in their 60s, and uh one woman has her or teenage daughter, and then one couple that they've traveled all over Africa, their daughter, who is um I think 16, has traveled with them now for almost five years. Wow, and they yeah, so it's really amazing.
SPEAKER_02So I know that Portugal is something uh that you did a lot of investigation about and thought about.
SPEAKER_04So talk about how that came up and well, let's see, how did Portugal come up? That's kind of big. It it I I initially visited it because I was going to a conference, and um it turns out that at the time, this was 2018, I think, it was one of the cheapest places to do Airbnb in Europe. Wow. That's changed because everybody has discovered it, but it used to be this quiet secret, and Lisbon is this amazing city that's basically built on these hills overlooking the ocean, and it's like a hopskick, skip, and jump to West Africa, and also it has this long history of Moors. I mean, they moved all the way into Europe via Portugal, and the and the architecture, you know, reflects this African influence. So it's just a fascinating place for me, and also they were some of the first um Europeans to connect the Atlantic world because they began to um, they were sailors, explorers. So they went to Africa, they found, I think they found the Cape Verde Islands, they started beginning to um uh to get involved with sure cane agriculture, and in some way they're the first to begin to enslave Africans. So it's this fascinating place of these um these men, primarily men, who built these ships and just started sailing, stepping into the unknown. I mean, they were nefarious in many ways, but just sort of, you know, kind of fascinating history of that small place. And I think in part because there was always this infusion of new people coming into Portugal. Um so I was really interested in it, and I when I went, I um one of the places that I went was uh in front of a Catholic church, and it was the place where hundreds of Jews were burned because they're if they they either refused or were perceived as refusing to convert to Christianity, and they bought it, they were just burned right there. Wow. So also very, oh my gosh, uh anti, not only anti-Semitic, just uh a particular form of of Catholicism that was brutal during the Inquisition. And um a lot of those Jews, when they could escape Portuguese Jews, um they often were unable to find a place of of refuge in Europe, and they got on these ships and went to the Caribbean. And that's what I I found out that on one side of the family, uh some of the family members were uh descended from um Portuguese Jews who had come to the Caribbean and settled, and you know, some of them either married or had children with the African um either free or enslaved people than Jamaica. And so a lot of the names that sound Spanish are actually Portuguese names, and there was a Portuguese synagogue. There are two synagogues in Jamaica that were part of the the diaspora of Portuguese Jews. So um so I found out about the family history, and that's why I got even more interested in Portugal. And at the time I I didn't at the time, I think they began, I don't know if it's changed, but they were offering uh citizenship in Portugal if you could prove that you're descended from uh Portuguese Jews who had been uh persecuted during this period, during the I think during the Inquisition, that they was it was almost like a right of return.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So is that something that you would be interested in doing?
SPEAKER_04Well, I thought about it a lot. In fact, another thing I there's this there's this youtuber who has um has a YouTube where it says, you know, everywhere in the world you can find a Jamaican, and he interviews Jamaicans in Saudi Arabia, in uh Curaçao, in um all over the world. And he interviewed this woman who was living in Portugal, and she was a descendant from Portuguese Jews and um had gotten citizenship, and he was talking to her, and I was like, oh, wait a minute. And and then, you know, so I I that's what got me hooked on Ancestry.com. And that's when my niece, who done a lot of the research, helped me to begin to identify the our connection to the with Henikis, which was my grandmother's maternal grandmother's side of the family. And Angela remembers that because we always were told that part of our family were Jewish. You remember that, right, Ann?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I remember. I remember. I'm I'm in such a um uh whenever I listen to you, uh it's such a it's such a mixture of um uh of family, but then there's this scholarly um black woman that uh you know. I'm thinking that as well. You know, it's like it's I I get flooded with um with uh just uh um I get very emotional whenever um I hear you um just uh I I don't know. I don't want to put you on the spot because but I just I I just think of you as being um uh uh someone who is constantly learning and constantly kind of opening up. I think I was telling you, Les, maybe it was someone else that um Jesse's figuring all this stuff out about our connection because we knew mama's family were Enriquez, right? We we knew that. But what you have uncovered, you know, um, and I know the work that Colleen um had done. Natalie had done too. And Natalie, yeah. Like, I'm like, I'm just gonna hook on her shirt her um coattails because Jesse's got all the heavy lifting. I mean, it's just amazing. It's amazing, and here I am being afraid of getting on ancestry because I don't want them to have my DNA.
SPEAKER_04I mean, listen, first of all, that's a that's a legitimate fear, and and that's a that to me, that's a complexity of all of this because so I I actually reached out and had a couple conversations with this woman who is now Portuguese, has Portuguese citizenship, who is from Jamaica.
SPEAKER_01The one that you the one that you heard about from the interview, you reached out to her?
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is what I'm talking about, Liz.
SPEAKER_04And she had bought this farm in a camera part of Portugal, which at the time, I mean, getting abandoned farms were so inexpensive, and then you'd have to, you know, there are structures there, some of them in ruins, some of them in not bad shape, and you'd have to have the money to invest in it, and so on. Right. But the the kind of fascinating thing for me is um, and it comes back always to there's this um American African-American historian acular family of Skurosao. Her name is Sadia Hartman, and she says, you know, there is she she writes about going back to Africa to kind of rediscover the slave trade from the perspective of of the Africans and and the people who left and the people who remained, trying to understand it from a kind of contemporary and perspective. And it's really it's it's a hard thing because um so I started doing the research, and and my niece uh Natalie had done some, and I reached out to this woman, and she said, Well, you know, send me what you have, and then we can go from there. And so we we had a long list of the names of my great-great-grandfather Henriquez and his children and the connections and so on. But and there's also a Facebook page that talks that's about Jamaican Jewish Sephardic ancestry. But the weird thing is that just made me it's just it's always so difficult. Is that they they basically kind of began to say, well, how do you know that that this great great grandfather whose father was Henriquez, how do you know he was not a slave or an ex-slave who took the name of the Henrique? You know, it's it's it's like they can never get away from these narratives of subordination, you know, and of something uh the idea of kind of real marriage or where you're outside, and it's sort of embedded in all of the anthrax stuff, but it's also embedded in this thing about um returning to uh Portugal, because I think to the extent that you have like um information that your family was indeed Jewish because you you're registered in these synagogues, you know, if you look in the record, sometimes it will say something like colored or free man, but then they might say, I think they might even say bastard or mulatto I've seen on mine. Yeah, so these contemporary people who can prove that they their parents were married have more of a purchase. And I think what that's just it's just infuriating, you know, because they're using the same categories to say who has more access to the right of return and who doesn't, right? You know, and so um it it it just um I reached a point where they I was basically told that they couldn't find the names of my ancestors in any of the a lot of the synagogue records were burnt, so some of them are just not available, but you know, they couldn't find um a record, so maybe it's unlikely that or it would be really expensive to prove that we're actually related to these people, even though we have this long deep family history. So it's complicated, I think, for black people in that land in the in the in the west, you know.
SPEAKER_02Um now I know that you were recently um speaking to someone in Senegal, a family that yeah. Um did you ever have that conversation?
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, that's what uh this so so then I was like, okay, maybe uh Portugal is still a place I want I'm planning to go to and I'm planning to pursue, trying to understand more about our Jewish heritage. In some ways, it's probably more reachable in spite of the difficulties of the archives, than to understand and find out who our Nigerian ancestors were or Ghanaian ones, even though we know we have deep ancestries in Nigeria and Ghana. So it's still worth pursuing for me. I think it's important. Um, but I began to think well, do I want to live in Portugal as a black woman from the US? You know, there are a lot of um Portuguese Africans who who've lived in Portugal for centuries, and also ones who have recently migrated from the because the Portuguese were all over Africa, so Mozambique and so on. Um but even then I think they're struck, they struggle for recognition, you know. Uh so anyway, I just wonder that a place I love everything about the architecture and the the just the the richness of the cultural history. But I'm thinking, would I be really comfortable there? And there are lots of some African Americans who are who are oh my goodness, there's one couple that they're retired in their 40s. They they invested their money wisely and they retired to Portugal, bought a huge farm, and you know, so that's amazing to me. But anyway, so then I thought I think, well, what part of where would I go in Africa? And they're this couple, her name is Afro-Millennial Mama. She met her husband, she went on a student exchange, and he's Senegalese, and they got married, they moved to the US together at some point, and then they returned. And their little girl is seven, so they're young, and they built this amazing house. Wow. Yeah, and um, she does consultations, and that's why I reach out to her, I haven't talked to her yet, about doing a consult on whether or not Senegal would be a good place.
SPEAKER_03Have you been?
SPEAKER_04I've never been. I've been to Kenya, been to South Africa, but I've never been uh to Senegal. But it's one of the most, it's French, and so I do speak some French. Um but it also has, I was just looking at the GDP and the level of participation of women in the political and social life. And it seems like it has those are kind of there things that I find very positive about it as a result of that. It has infrastructure, good roads, um there's ocean, it's right on the ocean. It just seems like a place, a lot of art artists. Angela, you interviewed somebody from there. Yeah, yeah. There's an sounds like a road trip. So I will I my plan is that's why I I reach out to these folks because I'm gonna try to go there this summer just to test it out.
SPEAKER_01I the water, I know you love the water, right? Um, the French. French, the French, and um, I know that it's important for of course safety. Safety, exactly. That's a big thing. Outside of you know, being um a woman necessarily, it's just just uh to feel safe that when you need the police that you know uh or something that they'll show up. Um, so that's that's where I'm rooting for. I'm rooting for Senegal. Yeah, or another place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, and maybe it'll give me a nice place to visit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it'll be an amaz whenever I think about it, I do think about having a place that folks will come to and visit, you know. Yeah, yeah, like a compound. Yeah, that's what mom and envision when she moved back to Jamaica. And I that's true. And I find like I'm just sort of walking in those similar kinds of um similar kind of ideas of creating a place that family and friends will want to come to. Right. And Senegal might be it, yeah.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_02Wow, I can sit and talk to you forever, Jazz. We're coming up at the end of the show, though.
SPEAKER_05Oh no.
SPEAKER_01We have to um I always seem to be the one to put the uh you know the lid on the party. Because you you're the timekeeper. I'm not good with that. I am not good with that. We have to play to our strengths. Yeah. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02I want to hear more adventures. But but that you have so you have so many more adventures to talk about. Yeah. And you see that we were not too silly for you, you know. Worked out. It worked out. So I'd love to have you back talking about some of your other scholarly activities. Um, because obviously me being in medicine and your work in the medical field on the other side of it is just amazing. Amazing. Um, and one of the things that I love about you that your sister has picked up, I wouldn't say use the word a contrarian. What I would say is that through you, Ange has helped me to see things in another way. Yeah. And not just to accept the obvious. Yeah. As I call it, um, dig the layer or two down.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_02You know, Ange will say, Well, I wouldn't look at it that way. And you even said this to me a few days ago. Well, one thing that Jazz told me about, you know, or it could be the phrase black girl magic, or it could be this or that, or yeah, uh intersectionality or whatever. And I'm telling you, man, I'm getting like so much of an education. I'm telling you, it's like it's like you have to.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so this idea of black girl excellence. We don't have to be excellent, you know, we can step away. Yeah, yeah, it's tiring.
SPEAKER_02Which is a whole other maybe that's gonna be that could be our next podcast.
SPEAKER_01Um, I would love that. And I mean, all of the things, all of the things that we wanna, we wanna peel, peel, peel, peel away.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that would be like the onion episode. Jazz, we can be we can become tankarous together. All right, all right. Well, thank you, ladies. This was another great, inspiring, awesome episode of Black Boomer Beskies from Brooklyn. Thank you, Jazz. Thank you, Ange.
SPEAKER_01Love you guys. Thank you for the yes. Love you, love you, bye. Bye bye.
