That is not Beanie Sigel

It's a dismal rainy Tuesday. This is usually the day I work from home but I opted to come into work, huge mistake. I began to open my La Yogurt Lemon Raspberry and pull back the infamous tight seal when a heard a slight hiccup releasing the vacuum seal and of course my yogurt burped on my black shirt. Great, my yogurt ejaculated on me leaving me with a dry whitish crust stain right on my chesticles; looking like Nayrok in the Flaming Lips video.

Since I am in a sour mood, I guess I should continue down that path so let me tell you about Odunde. You never heard of Odunde (pronounced Oh-doon-dey), well let me share it with you. Odunde is an African and African descendants festival that is held annually on the first or second Sunday in Philadelphia.

Here is the problem(s), apparently African descendants are either Jamaican or African (What is African anyway???). Everything was African art, jewelry, or attire; or it was Jamaican attire, jewelry, or music. Oh and one more thing, everyone who is of African descendant does not have dreadlocks. There was tons of stuff for dreadlocks, "the lock sock", lock butter, lock cream, lock-ness monster...kidding.

Did you know Africa is a continent? Apparently many do not, but it is a continent and not a country. I cannot stress this enough; so explain to me how one can perform an African dance or ask me to buy African jewelry when the entire continent consists of 56 countries, a population over a billion (which were actually counted), while encompassing thousands of tribes. Are the people of Africa one monolithic group, definitely not! The languages, their appearance, their mannerisms are all very different. But I guess because they are all "Dark" then it's all the same...I got you. Everyone wants to rant and rave about white people being racist towards black people but this is how blacks are racist towards themselves, but I digress.

Everything was fried and sweet. Am I to believe that African descendants only eat fried chicken, fried fish, fried Oreos, fried potatoes (French fries people), and of course macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, and collard greens. There were also Jamaican staples; curry chicken, beans and rice, and jerk chicken. The entire festival smelled like hot oil or if you ever worked at a fast food restaurant, you are familiar with that classic fryer scent. All the beverages being served were sweet teas, sweet lemonades (cherry, mango, strawberry, raspberry). The only way you could get a bottle of water was to stop one of those people who had a cooler and were selling them for one dollar. The black nation is in a health crisis; 4 out of 5 black women are obese, not overweight but obese. We are predisposed to hypertension (high blood pressure, folks) and diabetes. Feeding black people on a 95 degree day fried chicken and sugary lemonade is not conducive to the black lifestyle, or is it? Where were all the natural people who tell you not to chemically treat your hair and try to sell you natural soaps, why weren't you selling food? I could have used a vegetable or tofu kabob, heck I would even take a grilled piece of chicken.

We walked to the very end of the festival, which made us stumble upon private residences; and it was there we finally found someone selling books. Steez (9-2-5chronicles@blogspot.com) picked up “Black Wall Street” and we decided to leave the festival before purchasing two Gatorade's for a dollar a piece from a woman selling them in a cooler in front of her residence. While pressing on through the droves of people, we crossed paths with “The New Black Panthers.” In order to sell their newspapers, they thought it was a bright idea to berate people and bully them into buying a paper, it did not work. To the New Black Panthers, telling someone they shouldn’t be afraid of the truth is not a great marketing tactic. We are not children and do not fold under peer pressure; calling someone a “chicken” will exhibit two outcomes; avoidance or assault.