The Power of being Black and Proud

Black is good, black is powerful - sample this: I got a VIP ticket to attend this historic event, a photo exhibition dubbed "The vanishing tribes of Burma" at the Inya Lake Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar. I stood out from the crowd because of my complexion, height and yeah, the smile (the best thing to do when u r in a place where u don't know people)

My one minute of ultimate fame across Myanmar and perhaps globally came when the internationally renowned Nobel laureate and pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi came directly to where I was standing among other invited guests and a battery of local + international journalists and this is how our conversation went: "Where are you from?" she asked, as she shook my hand with a firm grip and a lovely smile on her face. "I'm from Kenya" I answered, giving her my most charming smile in return, as the camera-men clicked away, the flash from their cameras almost blinding me. "You are the first Kenyan I've met in Myanmar!" she said, maintaining the grip. "I'm greatly honoured and privileged" I answered, looking into her eyes.

"I know a lot about Kenya but meanwhile, enjoy your stay in Myanmar" she said. "Thank you madam" I responded as her security detail shielded her from the surging press.

For those who don't know much about Aung San Suu Kyi, she is the winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and leader of her country's pro-democracy movement. She had been under house arrest for most of the past twenty years. She was first placed under house arrest in July 1989 and, though freed six years later, she was again imprisoned in 2000. Two years later, Suu Kyi was released, but yet again jailed for the third time under house arrest after the infamous Depayin Massacre in 2003. She was released after her fourteenth year in confinement to her dilapidated home in Yangon, in which she served another eighteen months imprisonment, convicted by a Burmese regional court in August 2009 after an American swam across Inya Lake to her house. All of her periods under house arrest have been declared arbitrary by the United Nations. She was eventually released on the 13th November 2010.

I want to believe I was also the first Kenyan to shake her hand and chat with her, just like I was the first Kenyan she ever saw in Myanmar. Fellow Kenyans, Saturday 28th September 2013 was indeed a great day for me! If I wasn't black and proud she would have just walked past me like she did to other people.

Black is good, black is noticeable. Black is powerful.