Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Inching Closer to Choosing Life Abroad
What if redefining your life could be as simple as relocating to a new country?
Besties Leslie and Angella provide an update on the motivations and experiences that have led them to consider moving abroad. Leslie recalls her eye-opening trip to Costa Rica, offering insights into the expat lifestyle and the profound differences between being a tourist and a resident. They consider critical aspects like healthcare, community structure, and government priorities, contrasted by the particular challenges of being Black in America.
Angella dives into the conversation with an update on a North Carolina chapter of the ExodUS Summit group, underscoring their collective longing for a better quality of life outside of the United States. She reflects on their African origins and the idea of exploring countries like Liberia, which holds a rich historical significance for people of African descent. Personal anecdotes from their travels to Ghana and Mexico City serve to challenge and shatter common misconceptions about African and Latin American nations.
Join them for a conversation that promises to inspire and provoke thoughtful consideration of a life beyond familiar borders.
As promised, real size of Africa:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/finally-a-world-map-that-doesnt-lie
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Hey, Ang, she's so silly hey.
Angella:Les how are?
Leslie:you, I'm doing well.
Angella:I'm doing well Good. Hey guys, we are Leslie and Angela, two 60-something-year-old Black women who grew up in Brooklyn, and we get together to have conversations that invite you to think deeply and to act boldly. Welcome to our podcast. What are we talking about today?
Leslie:So a couple things going on in the news. First of all, let's just say you and I are IRL, we are, we are Like what does that mean? If you know us, if you've subscribed to our channel and I hope you do? We are typically recording remotely because Angela is in another state than I am and right now I got my bestie shoulder to shoulder with me, so it's like let's get on and let's record. So it's a little unusual. We got both our headpieces what do we call these? Earphones Headphones OK and one microphone, and the setup is a little bit different, but the joy and the bestieship is the same. We've been having fun, we've been having fun working.
Angella:But you know we are also very. We see what's happening in the world, we care about it, we talk about it, and there's so much that's been going on in our country, the United States. That's been going on in our country, the United States, and, as you know, leslie and I have been are thinking about moving to another country. We've been a part of a community called the Exodus Summit and I've been getting together with some of the ladies who are in the group in my area in North Carolina, and Leslie recently took a trip to Costa Rica that I'd like to call a reconnaissance. It was a recon trip, I'll say, and so we thought we would talk a little bit about what has happened since her trip, since I've been meeting with the Exodus Summit group in my area of North Carolina, and just share with you how things have progressed since a few months ago, I guess.
Leslie:Yeah, it's been a little bit more than a month since I've come back.
Angella:Thing that I'd like to bring into it is how you feel about what's going on in our country, and whether that is either making you really feel like, okay, it's time to go, or no, I'm staying, I'm digging my heels in. This is my country too. Exactly, and for Black folks, you know blood, sweat and tears, especially those of descendants of enslaved people in America whether you feel like, ok, this is your time, you're not being kicked out of your country, those types of things. So this is not going to be that long, because somebody's got to go do some doctoring and but we're going to jump in. So how was Costa Rica?
Leslie:Costa Rica was just amazing, and what a different experience for me. What I did want to say before I forget, is just to put a little umbrella around our thoughts about what started us thinking about moving abroad and living a different reality, because here we've been in America for, you know, years and years and decades all my life and most of yours, yes. But what we realized when we started actually considering the possibility is that there is a different way of living, that people of color can live in the world without the term that I call weathering of being a black person in America, and I notice it whenever I travel and as I've gotten older, I've realized that I can consider living a different way not just vacationing and experiencing a different way.
Angella:So how was that? How did that show up in Costa Rica?
Leslie:how did that show up in Costa Rica? So in Costa Rica I used the eye of not just a tourist, but I tried to examine how it would be if I were to live here. So I, more closely, did not go to only the tourist areas, I looked at where more of the people live. I did my best and I did very well, abusing the language and speaking Spanish most of the time. She turned it up, I turned it up and even when the natives would speak to me in English I don't look American, do I they? I would respond to them back in Spanish. So you know, but again, I really did use an eye of being more of a native or an expat and what that would be like.
Leslie:So I went to areas that are not so touristy and things like that. It was really eye opening. It was my first stop of many. I plan to visit some other countries and see what they might have to offer and how I feel in my heart about that. But I certainly have embraced the idea of leaving America, especially in the climate of the politicization, the things that are going on here now. It's I'm not going to say that I'm afraid to be here, but I don't think that this is going to be a country that I would feel comfortable and free to live in in the years to come, with what I see is going on.
Angella:Right, and I think a part of. We weren't able to travel together this time because my son was graduating college and I had to help him to get settled in his new state on the West Coast, so, but so we're hoping that at least a few of our reconnaissance trips will be together, and I think when you do this kind of travel, it becomes less and less of a I'm running away from something and more of a I'm moving towards some things, because you, you get to really know what those things are, know what those things are. We've learned a lot from being in the group, but also because we've been exploring, looking at YouTube, talking to other people and so on, and so we have a sense that some things like the healthcare system and just how community is structured, how the government considers their citizens, whether it's just the tax base, or whether they care about education and care about things that support healthy families and healthy people, and those more of the things that would pull us there versus things that would cause us to run from here. So, a member of the Exodus Summit group here I'm not, I'm not here, I'm here, I'm not there. Um, where I live. Um, we had we met a few weeks ago and then we started a whatsapp group. So we've been in touch, I think, almost daily.
Angella:Um, people, the people involved, are on different phases of their exit. Some people know that they're leaving in September. Some people are just thinking about what it could look like. Haven't started saving, haven't started kind of doing any of the detail, planning, yeah, and everything in between. And one of the ladies is um, a world traveler. Um, she and her partner travel all over the world. I think his work takes him everywhere and she travels with him. But she's kind of that, um, that kind of spirit of liking to explore.
Leslie:Different places and things.
Angella:yeah, Correct, and she is from Liberia and, as we talked about, perhaps going to Portugal, or one woman is considering going to Ecuador. She mentioned oh why don't I hear any African countries in that, which, you know, is definitely something to have noted is the only place on the planet that was created, formed and created. Formed and created for formerly enslaved people in America is where it started, but I believe it's a place that Marcus Garvey talks about when he said back to Africa, I'm not sure chronologically which came first, the formation of Liberia or not, but as someone who is from Jamaica, I think of West Africa.
Leslie:As my mother, you know the place of my ancestry, because the majority of enslaved people in America and the Caribbean and South America came from the West Came from West Africa.
Angella:African area Right right, and so we can't really think of it in terms of countries, because you know, with colonialism they cut up slice and dice. But wait, Africa is not a country. It is not. Yeah, yeah.
Leslie:Note to self Africa is not a country. It is not. Yeah, yeah, it is a huge Note to self Africa is not a country.
Angella:It is a huge ass continent, yeah, and it's bigger than how it's depicted in our on the globes, you know. So our maps that show the continents know that the continent they're not to scale, they're not to they're not to the scale, they're not accurately depicted. Because why would they want to show this dark continent of unsubstitialized people being larger than it is being depicted in any way to be on par with?
Leslie:the other places in the world. Well, as Karen Hunter says, the global majority, the global majority exactly.
Angella:I'm going to find the stats on that, because that is, I just stated a fact, but I'm going to find the actual numbers that state the actual size.
Leslie:In land mass, yes, compared to others. We'll bring you that. We'll put it on our episode notes.
Angella:Right. So what she suggested is that she get us all together and take a trip to Liberia in six months or so to go and explore that country. It is on the Atlantic coast, just like any place else. We on the outside are seeing just a slither and usually it's a negative slither when it comes to countries on the African continent about how what safety looks like and what stability looks like, and infrastructure is like and you know it's yeah, well, it also depends on the gaze and from whose lens you are measuring.
Leslie:for sure, and because they're measuring perhaps from the American, quote-unquote American standard, not necessarily our standard, right?
Angella:um, I've certainly experienced something like that because I've been to Ghana several times, and so completely different than what one would think of as a West African country, you know and when I went to Mexico City decades ago now, I was shocked, absolutely shocked, at how cosmopolitan a city, a lot of the things that we were just starting to have in the US, you know, across the board, like cell phones they had everybody and their dog had a cell phone. Just the quality of life. Cell phone just the quality of life, the infrastructure, the museums, how family oriented and what that actually looked like. You know people, just the culture, supporting people, leaving work at lunchtime so they can have lunch with their extended family for an hour or two and then going back to work and working later. I loved seeing that.
Leslie:So there's a respect of that social and familial hierarchy and position, exactly.
Angella:And so the idea of our way, the US way, being not only a way that's great, but the best way to live life, is what we are rejecting Honestly. We love America. We want America to be its best version of itself, but we also know that other places have beautiful ways of living also, and so the idea that America is is the best is what we're saying. It depends.
Leslie:It depends on what your standard is, what you're looking for Exactly.
Angella:What life has been like here for you, because it's not the same for everybody, as we know for sure, and so, um, so we're excited about exploring that. Um, I am, god willing, going to be taking this trip with her, with with the group. Hopefully leslie can come to.
Leslie:I put the bug in her ear yeah, liberia, you know that where the name liberia came from. I mean, yeah, liberation, yeah, go ahead, liberation and liberty. It was created, it was like, okay, we're going to have our own, we're going to have our own, and what a nice chunk of land.
Angella:And perhaps it was more of a kicking out than us leaving, like Marcus Garvey would have wanted. Point is that yet again and I and I mentioned this because we met as a group on zoom um yesterday or days ago that again we started from nothing, just as um, after emancipation, during reconstruction, in the years um, even though a quarter of a million formerly enslaved people died of starvation and disease in the United States. That fact is not one that you hear often, but it is a fact. Yet we built thriving communities, many of which were not allowed to continue thriving because they were burnt down.
Angella:Eradicated in some other way, exactly, but I was just thinking that again leaving, taken from the continent, brought to these places across the world as enslaved people, and then coming back to Liberia and creating a country and a government and a social system and a civic system We'd like to point out.
Angella:you know, there was a civil war in Liberia. There was a civil war in the United States. Did we forget that? Did we forget that, as a young country, the United States was in the throes of violence and war and so on? You mean like today? Yeah, you know what I mean. So this idea that, oh my God, there was a civil war there, so that we had one here.
Leslie:Why do we think?
Angella:that other countries don't, that we don't have the same issues, the same conflicts that we see in other countries, just probably with a lot less guns than we have here.
Leslie:But in any case, we are're landing and all of those things, some of the challenges, you know. Yeah, and there's bugs in Costa Rica.
Angella:You have to listen to that episode. We have a whole episode. Leslie talked about her trip to Costa Rica and the cicadas that she became friendly with there.
Leslie:I need some kind of counsel. Do I have anything in my teeth? No, I have something. Yeah, but my eye is also distracting me. This dye I have on my eyelid is painful and I just keep seeing it. I'm trying to hide it with my glasses.
Angella:I don't really see it. Unless you mention it, we're also going to be talking about how the political climate in the United States is moving us to either expedite or to stay.
Leslie:Or just influencing this decision Absolutely.
Angella:You know to leave. Yeah, or to stay yeah, or to stay, because we may decide.
Leslie:You know we're going to stick it out for another whatever period of time and and fight because and we're going to do what was said on um tv and and shown all around the country and fight fight, fight. Can you believe?
Angella:you believe the close fist Come on.
Leslie:If someone I'm just telling you, if someone attempts to take my life, yes, I'm not going to stand up and yell fight. I'm going to stand up, yelling. Save me, you know, lord, thank you.
Angella:Right, and let me stay safe and not um throw my yeah that's not the time for retaliation in my world anyway, this is a quick one, but thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. We are expecting to have an amazing guest next for our next episode, or maybe anyway, coming up this season. We're now in season nine. We've been doing this now since october of 2023, so we're almost at now years, can you?
Leslie:believe it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes, 23 this. Will you're saying that october will be a year? No, october will be two years. So we started in 22. No, I know, I just looked the same age. We did, we did, we started.
Angella:The youngins, they don't know october 2022, october 18, I believe yes, with our first podcast episode.
Leslie:Oh my God. But more about that later.
Angella:Yes, so we are going on two years of this, so meet us back here. We post every week on Tuesdays, so that's it. We'll see you next time.
Leslie:This has been another brief episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.
