When I think about skin problems, I can’t help hearing an old saying from my town:

“Tú no has visto llaga; tú lo que has visto es maldita’ y roncha’” (roughly translated: you have not seen ulcers; all you’ve seen is rashes).

We heard this every time we told someone about what we thought was a big problem. That someone usually had more experience and offered that pearl of wisdom. If you stayed long enough, you would also get the full set of ulcerated stories.

In our culture, which boasts to be racism-free, our skin may be a problem. We actually have lots of identity problems. When I was born, I was called straight-hair black (I inherited my grandmother’s Indian Native-Venezuelan hair and my great grandmother’s skin). When I was in High School I traveled to Caracas for the first time. Every time I asked about something that I did not know, I was called Indio (which actually is the politically correct term for that; any other word is way worse). When I was in college and visited a girl friend’s house I was treated as a Guyana black, never mind my straight hair. When I went to graduate school in the States I was Latino, but some people mistook me for Arabic or Muslim.

I had always been punctual and that made me feel great in the States, where people value and practice punctuality. In one occasion, an American professor told me he could not believe I was Latino. I must be something else.

Then, I came back home and most folks did not like that I was punctual (a quality I already had before I left) and demanded punctuality, that I expected students to make appointments, or that I used Cardinal Directions or points whenever I wanted to clarify a location in town or set up a meeting place. They called me gringo. That’s the whitest I’ve ever felt in my life.

So, do we have skin problems? Nah! We may have eye or ear problems. That would explain our stubbornness and inability to see what our real problems are and what we must do to solve them.

Thanks for stopping by

This was my entry to @mariannewest and @latino.romano’s 5 Minute Freewrite: Friday Prompt: skin problems. You can see the details here.

Make sure you visit the Freewrite House!!!