24847: Vedrine (pub) "Talking About My Generation" (by Nekita Lamour)

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>

[The following appeared in the April 2005 issue of the Boston Haitian 
Reporter under:

TALKING ABOUT MY GENERATION
April 2005
By Nekita Lamour

Friends of those born sometimes between Christmas and New Year's are not 
always certain of what card to send to them. To solve this problem, I 
usually get a blank card for my brother wishing him a Happy Birthday, a 
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

But those of us born around Easter - like me- are delighted to have their 
birthday around the holiest Christian season. Or, in early spring, if one is 
not religious but somehow in awe of the burgeoning bulbs, the longer days, 
or other signs of spring. This is one of the rare years that I didn't have a 
birthday around Easter. Since my birthday is in April, I am going to reflect 
on what those four and half decades of birthdays have meant for me and 
especially those of my generation.

I have been trying to define and give a name to my generation since the turn 
of the millennium, but I have not come to one yet. Expressions such as 
"Generation X" have become common since the early 1990's as a shorthand 
designation  for people born around 1980. Those born around WWII or after 
are referred to as "Baby Boomers." Somehow I don't sense where people like 
me who were born in the late 50's or early 60's belong in terms of 
generation. Many around my age are probably wondering the same thing.

The “Baby Boomers� are now in their mid-fifties to early sixties.  I am 
not 50 yet. Though I am concerned about President Bush's social security 
reform, I feel distant from it because of my age. Furthermore, expressions 
such as "Gen X," "Baby Boomer" seem to be largely a media creation. I never 
heard my son born in the early 1980's utter, "Wow! I belong to Generation 
X," although he does have characteristics often attributed to that 
demographic group. A very mobile young adult, he demonstrates impressive 
entrepreneurial and investment skills as well. When he was in the 8th grade 
I warned him he would be in trouble
if the teachers knew he was selling gum sticks for a dime each on school 
premises. In high school, he gravitated toward money management in the 
manyclubs he was involved with. I had to drive him to BJ' s to get candy 
bars at wholesale so club members could sell them individually for 
fund-raising projects.

On his graduation day, I  laughed when he said, "Gee! I should have had The 
class of '99 t-shirts made and sold them during graduation." He got to make 
100% Haitian T shirts in college.

Haitians born in Haiti usually use the president that was in power as their 
frame of reference. I remember in 1980's, those of us born under Papa Doc 
(the late François Duvalier) used to refer to ourselves as "timoun" 
(children) when talking with those born under Magloire or Estimé. Having 
been born under Papa Doc, I guess that makes me and my generation the 
fillings in the sandwich between the “Boomers�and the “Xers.�

Should I define myself based on the events that occurred in the 1960s? No, I 
was too young to participate in significant events of the civil rights era, 
although I marched in anti-apartheid rallies as a teen-ager in the 1970s. I 
do have a vivid memory of Martin Luther King's assassination, which happened 
on my aunty Therese's birthday, but was too young to remember the whole 
movement. I can only recall that my small coastal town, Petit Gôave (of 
3,000 then) looked emptier than usual. The day Dr. King died the world and 
my hometown were quiet and serene.

As for technology and scientific discoveries, I remember vividly listening 
on a transistor radio when Neil Armstrong first landed on the moon in 1969. 
I did not see television until I was 13. I listened to Tino Rossi, Mireille 
Matthieu, Sicot, Nemours and other Spanish or French music on a 
battery-operated turntable my father owned. I regret that I never asked him 
before he passed away where he got that old phonograph. I have never seen an 
appliance like it since. I wish I had it in my antique collection of 8-track 
tapes, vinyl records, and the one-piece stereo set that my brothers and I 
bought with our paychecks
from our first summer  jobs.

My children, of course, smile every time they see these ancient relics. They 
can't imagine that when my brothers and I first migrated here as teenagers, 
that one piece 8 track and turn table stereo provided music to the ten or so 
families who lived in Cambridge in the early 1970's when they gathered in 
the basement of the now defunct Our Lady of Pity.

Despite my children's scorn, I don't yet own a CD player, and see no 
pressing reason to have a cellular phone. I never bought a walkman or a VCR 
and don't intend to purchase a DVD either. I do, however use the computer to 
write, and find e-mail indispensable for communicating with family, friends 
and colleagues around the world. When he attended Georgia Tech, my son told 
me once a fellow student exclaimed, "Wow! Your mom uses e-mail!" (phenomenon 
not expected from a Black woman of the "in between" generation).

The events of the 1940's such as WWII or the civil rights of 1960's may seem 
more memorable to many than those of the women's movement of the 1970's or 
the busing era for Bostonians. The genesis of the technology epoch of the 
1980's to its continuous growth in the 2000's is also a remarkable 
development.

The "Gen Xers" may be more technologically inclined than I am. The "Baby 
Boomers" are still reminiscing the good old 60's. I have lived the Gulf War. 
As a jubilee volunteer, I got to be close to one of history's most famous 
Pope on Easter week 2000 at St. Peter's square and the colesseum. However, I 
feel the "Baby Boomers" had more fun rallying for the Vietnam war than I did 
rallying against apartheid or removing Haitians as AIDS carriers. When I 
think of my aunt
and those around her age, I feel they had more fun dancing Shleu Shleu than 
I did dancing Skah Shah.

I would like to call society's attention to my generation. We are not the 
youth that they have to develop programs for or worry about their future. We 
are not middle age folks they have to concern for their senior care, social 
security benefits, or retirement facilities. Somehow those in their forties 
now don't seem to be society's focus.

Regardless of which generation gets attention now or more recognition, I 
feel I have participated and contributed to many developments on this planet 
as a member of the forty age group. I have not remained idle and silent on 
issues of democracy, women's rights, educational equity, anti-semitism, or 
other human rights causes. What is important to me is that I am a 
contributing member of society and it does not matter whether the media 
gives me a label or not, for I have a lot to share with the "Baby Boomers," 
my two children, their "Generation Xers," and the world.

Nekita Lamour is an essayist, an educator, and a regular contributor to the 
Reporter.]