First of all, I would like to address our black women and men in my community. My heart goes out to all of you and it breaks a thousand times to all the injustice, the brutality, the ignorance, and the pain you had to go through. I’m truly sorry! I grew up in Switzerland and still live here. What happens in the US happens everywhere and even if it feels that I live so far removed from all the injustice, I know it is a daily reality here, and everywhere in the world. I’m not sure what I can do, but educate myself and listen to black voices. I’ve started to read books, and listen to podcasts to help me understand more and become a better person. That allows me to be the change, not hope for it on the outside.

Now it’s time to do a lot of things. 2020 is bringing so much to the surface, it’s time we face what went wrong for such a long time. We all have the chance for change, we all must change, we all have to be the change. Issues are brought to the surface that we need to tackle now so we can together move into a better future for everybody. 

We all live on this globe together and none of us can be really and truly at peace and live a mindful life when someone else suffers. It’s time to take a good look at society—but also at ourselves. As Gandhi said, you must: “be the change that you want to see in the world.” 

So, today I want to share a very unique experience I had, as a white European coming to America and ending up in a black church outside Charleston. This experience moved me to the core of my being—and I think reading about it will do the same for you too.

Growing up in a small town in Switzerland, I never saw a black person in my childhood. 

Later in my teens, I moved to London, a city of my taste! Vibrant,loud and modern—plus in every way more diverse. Foods from all over the world, new friends, punks on the street, and sex pistols glaring out of loud stereo boxes in scruffy pubs (it was the early 80’s). 

For the first time in my life I ate Indian food and my tastebuds exploded. Never before did I see people from all over the world with all kinds of different backgrounds, religion, color or upbringing. I was brought up in a country that had at the time 6 million citizens, much smaller than the city I now found myself in. I loved it!

My best male friend was Brian from New York, he was a model, a crazy queen that had a tendency to pitch my miniskirts and wear them himself, a man with a big heart of gold and black skin. He moved to London because he felt not safe in New York. Looking back, he never said much about his race, he told me about how he faced oppression from society because of his sexual preference, but he never mentioned his race.

I made more friends, some of whom were also black—and I never asked them how their upbringing felt, I never asked if they encountered racism. It never came to my mind. I was not aware that my experience was very much different from theirs.

The first time racism hit me in my face was when I was coming to America on my honeymoon with my husband. We traveled to New York, South Carolina, New Orleans, and finally, ended up on a beach. 

Since we lived together already, our wedding presents were not plates and platters or glasses, but travel miles that enabled us to spend time together and see more of the world. 

After touchdown at JFK Airport and a wild ride to Manhattan, we entered the lobby of our hotel and there were two guys at the lift. One man was black, the other white. The black man carried our bags, he opened the lift for us and stood back (basically he did all the heavy lifting and work) while the white man pressed the button to our floor. The black man then carried everything out. That scene was just so unreal to me. I was shocked. It was not just the injustices of the work balance between them. It was the sense of superiority that the white man was feeling that felt so wrong to me.

Later in our beautiful journey, we arrived in Charleston, a city I fell in love with immediately. Pre-internet, we planned our trip with an old fashioned travel guide book. There it said that it was so easy to find a lovely bed & breakfast in Charleston – they seemed to all have been booked out and after a 4 hours journey and a more and more desperate search for a room (and a loo) we ended up at a tourist information center near a university, which was closed, but the cleaning lady opened it for us to help us lost honeymooners. It was Parent’s Day, all parents across the states came to visit their children who studied at the University of Charleston. Ha – that is something we don’t get here in Switzerland since everything is just about 2 to 3 hours apart from each other. Literally you can drive through the whole of Switzerland in 3 hours flat. 

But we had been looked after in such a wonderful way and she placed us in the most beautiful little hotel one hour north of Charleston on what used to be a sugar plantation. The hotel was owned by a male model that lived over 30 years in France and just moved back to his hometown, renovated the house, and turned it into a beautiful hotel. The first time in our travel journey I felt there was acceptance and kindness between all people working there together. It was pure bliss. 

Since it was the weekend, I asked at reception if there would be a church nearby. I told them I would love to visit a church service with gospel. One of the young students working there said he would love to take me to his church and so we agreed that he and his sister would fetch me on Sunday morning. Before I left, the white women at the reception asked me, if I was aware, that there would be only black people at this church. I told her that I would not care and she smiled and wished me a nice service. These next few hours in a black church outside Charleston moved me to the core of my being and it makes me tear up every time I think of it. 

I was invited to sit with a few hundred people in a most beautiful wooden church packed with young and old. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the gospel songs, and by the way, the priest shouted, laughed, and prayed. I was shocked that the congregation shouted between the priest’s words (something I never saw back in Europe – but then I hardly ever went to a church service). I loved the liveliness, the community, and the spirit in that church. I listened carefully when the priest told their younger members of the congregation to work harder, to study more, and to be better than others. It dawned on me that this was what it meant to be black. You had to be so much better than the world often was to you. All the very small children that had to come forward, to my utter astonishment, they read the same children’s book to those small little girls and boys that I read to my lovely daughter. It was written by a Swiss author named Marcus Pfister and I never thought that it had been translated into English. 

It was the story of “The Rainbow Fish.” The little fish looked so different from all the others, he had fancy rainbow-like scales and was the most beautiful in the water. But he felt lonely and the other fish would not play with him. So, in the end, he gave everyone rainbow scales and they all looked the same. 

The service was magnificent, moving and full of life. The gospel songs were sung with the most beautiful voices and it was just a moving experience to be able to share it all together. At the end of the service, the priest came up to me and thanked me for being there. He was such a lovely force of nature. I thanked him for having me and invited my two companions back to have tea with me and my husband at the hotel. But when I started to walk out of the church, they formed a tunnel, much like on my wedding day only a week ago, when my family and friends congratulated my husband and me. Hundreds of strangers stood there, every single one of them shook my hand and thanked me. Thanked me for coming, thanked me for being with them on this Sunday morning. It was surreal, I was the one who was so, so thankful to have been able to join them. An elderly couple told me about their trip to Europe and the cities they visited in Switzerland. Some had tears in their eyes and I was moved and overwhelmed by all the love and kindness that they brought towards me. After shaking hundreds of hands, hugging and tearing up, someone finally told me that I was the first white human who ever come to their church. That was 1996 and I was shaken to my core. 

I was saddened how nobody ever visited them that had the same color as I had, I was deeply shocked that people still separated colors and race. I was moved and overwhelmed and thankful to have been invited into their fold and that they have shown me how to celebrate God. I was thankful for their kindness and open-heartedness and that they accepted me in their holy Church and shared their songs, prayers, and laughter with me. It was the most moving day of my life. 400 years of slavery, suppression, segregation, and racism, but there comes a white woman and they open their arms and hearts and let me in, just like that. I’m forever grateful for that shared Sunday morning near Charleston in a small little wooden church.

Later on our trip we visited New Orleans and took a tour on a plantation there. I found two books that I brought with me and still have on my bookshelf. They moved with me to many places and got read again and again. The books have been edited by Belinda Hurmence and the stories are Oral Histories of former South Carolina Slaves. Now it’s the time to re-read them. I saw that there are still on the market, even on kindle and I can highly recommend them to you:

Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember: Personal Accounts of Slavery in South Carolina – edited by Belinda Hurmence

We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia– edited by Belinda Hurmence

I also listened to the following Goop podcasts to educate myself on anti-racism.

Also watch: Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

My lovely American friend Caitlin has many tips for you on where to find information, where to donate, what to read, and what to listen to – these are her tips.

Thank you so much for being here, keep educating yourself, and be the leading light the world needs and deserves right now.

“Be the change that you want to see in the world” –Mahatma Gandhi

Much love,

Carollyne