So, about the name of this blog. . .

I lived in Santiago, Chile for six years. They have a lot of really wonderful things in Santiago. It is a modern, bustling city with great nightlife, skiing in the Andes and sunning next to the Pacific Ocean only a few hours away. And nooooooooo black folks. I mean none. When I first got there, I could go months and months without seeing another person of color. How crazy was it? People openly gawked at me on the street, walked up to me in restaurants and asked to touch my hair, my skin (when they bothered to ask) because touching a black person was supposed to bring good luck. My favorite was the time a child standing behind me in line at the movies stared at me and pointed and asked his mother what had happened to me and how I had gotten such a bad sunburn.

Most of the time, amazingly, I didn't mind. Well, maybe didn't mind is not the right way to phrase it. It's never easy when someone pushes up on you in the street and touches you all out of the blue, but for my first six months living there I had a blonde, blue eyed roommate and she got her fair share of odd looks, too. (And the two of us on the street together? Forget about it!) Before I moved to Chile, I knew I'd have some culture clash moments, but I didn't anticipate how much I would miss that sense of knowing that I could go to [insert name here] and find a place that does a good press and curl, somewhere to buy that noxious pink hair oil, get a shower cap or a sleep cap. I didn't know how to ask for the aisle where the baby oil could be found at the pharmacy. I couldn't find that little jar of cocoa butter that is the staple of any good black family's medicine cabinet. I couldn't find the cornbread mix in the supermarket, let alone the nasty box of instant grits that is to this day the only kind I know how to make (gotta get the real stuff when I go home for the holidays). I couldn't flip through the Essence magazine on the way to the checkout counter (even though I knew I wouldn't buy it).

Now, my white roommate could've gone to any one of the many beauty salons in Santiago. She could buy her shampoo. She could get most of what she needed to make "comfort" food. She could go to the English language bookstore and buy her magazines (for an exorbitant amount of money, but there you go). She even had a lot of nifty little books to tell her where to go for those things. All those guides, right? Lonely Planet. Frommer's. Let's Go. They all had little tips, tricks, hints for the weary traveler . . . places to go to find a little piece of home in a far away place. Want to visit the Italian section of town? Look it up in your handy, dandy Lonely Planet. Where's a good "American" style restaurant? Bet Let's Go can tell you. How I longed in those days for one of those little books for me . . . a Black Girl' Guide. Need to get your hair pressed? Go here to the one corner of the city where black folks can be found . . . There's one lone Ecuadorean man with a straightening comb in his bottom drawer and he will, if you sweet talk him just right, take it out and press your hair. (There was one, too! It just took me almost 4 years to find him.) Here's what you can buy from the supermarket that will allow you to make a reasonable facsimile of cornbread. Hey, here's where you can buy a shower cap. It would've been phenomenal, unbelieveable to have.

As I began to travel more, I realized how often, as a woman of African descent, my culture shock came in two waves. One the typical shock of being an American in a foreign country. And then came the double schock of being a black person in a foreign country. Chile. Argentina. Paraguay. Later on Europe, Venice and Rome, Barcelona. Always the same. Even when I traveled to places where I knew darn well they had black folks, Brazil, Peru, later on Paris or London. They were out there, but damned if I could find them with my handy AAA map.

Anyway, the Black Girl's Guide became an obssession with me. It still is, I suppose. It would be fun to research and a hoot to write. Imagine getting paid to travel around and write a series of Black Girl's Guides. The Black Girl's Guide to Living Abroad: Chile. The Black Girls Guide to Living Abroad: Milan. The Black Girl's Guide to Living Abroad: Constantinople. If I weren't a fundamentally lazy person, I'd have done it rather than dreamed about it. Now the vestiges live on in this here blog. Hence, the name.

I also might not have gone almost four years without getting my hair pressed, but that's a whole nother story.

Getting the hell out of Nogales

So I loved the very first season of Road Rules. Before MTV trashed everything that was good about it, that show rocked my socks. And on that first season, one of the hamsters on the RV hooked up with the baby-faced Mayor of Nogales. In the harsh light of morning, she uttered the classic (at least to me) phrase, "I have got to get the HELL out of Nogales." My good friend and roommate at the time and I named every awkward, dear God make it stop moment from then on a "Nogales moment".

We no longer speak to each other and I have had soooooo many Nogales moments since then. And always at the fight or flight moment, my instincts yell "Flight! Get the hell out of Nogales!"

A Nogales moment led me to move all the way to Santiago, Chile . . . a stupid hook-up that turned into me caring about someone who wound up breaking my heart. And so I started out on my own personal Road Rules. I wanted adventures. I wanted to complete tasks and win fabulous prizes. I wanted to make fake life-long friends. And I did all of that and more.

But along the way, I realized that you never really get out of Nogales. Until you deal with your own shit, you take Nogales with you to the next spot, and on to the next spot, on to the next spot, on to the next. (Bonus points for picking up the song!) I still have Nogales inside of me, but I'm flat busted and too tired to run. And too overworked to complete tasks. And too cynical to believe in fake life-long friends anymore. But I'm working on getting Nogales out of me. I'm gonna replace it with somewhere calm and sane. Not too trendy, nothing flashy. Somewhere I can lay me down and set a spell. And I will be my own fabulous prize to win. I'm gonna put a little piece of somewhere comfy in my soul. Now who would want to get the hell out of that?