Johannesburg, South Africa, Day 3

6:00am

When Teba calls my hotel room to say he is downstairs in the lobby, this time, I am ready. I have a TV appearance on a talk show, Morning Live, South Africa's equivalent of Good Morning America. Back to the SABC building I have grown to know so well. Back in the make up chair I go.

I tell the make up artist that I've worn more makeup in the past two days than I have in the past two years. This is not an exaggeration. I have these permanent dark circles around my eyes; i've had them since I was a child. I have grown to understand them as mine and here to stay. She blotted them out, penciled and smeared makeup heavy around the eyes, poked my eyeballs with her brush. Then she says (as if reading my mind) said, "you're a poet, so we must accentuate your eyes."

I am to perform a poem on the show, follow it up with an interview with one of the anchors, and close out the show with another poem. I try to trick my mind into forgetting that the show is live, that i have plenty takes if my tongue stumbles over the cracked sidewalk of a poem. After makeup I find a glass wall that I use as a mirror to perform in front of. I run the poems over and over again. This is something I never do: perform in front of mirrors. Ever. This time, it is all I have. At performances people focus on your words. TV cameras are all about the face.

It is time. First I am asked to perform my first piece. I have chosen "To a West Indian Woman with a Blade." I perform for the camera (and the camera crew) as if I am performing for a crowd of people. When the camera people clap, and I realize it is over.

I am then to be interviewed by Sherwin Bryce-Pease one of the anchors of Morning Live. He is sunny, like Florida and very sweet. I stare into his freckles; they somehow comfort me. I think of my parents back in Florida, and wished they could share this moment with me. Their youngest child is so far away from home, experiencing all of this on her own. It makes me feel strong and lonely at once.

Before the camera rolls, Sherwin mentions that he visited my website and read my blog. He gives me some constructive criticism on an aspect of my website, and I appreciate how effortless it comes out. I adore his openness. I like to know people's true experience when they visit anything that represents me: from a poem to a website. Constructive criticism is rare. This is a quality that I've adored about South Africans in general. It is a quality that reminds me of Trinidadian people as well. If you ask a South African how she is doing, she will not say she is fine when she is not. It doesn't mean she's going to then tell you all her business, but she won't lie either. If something you're doing isn't up to par, they will let you know. And all I can say to that is: Give it to me, Daddy!

The interview begins. Sherwin asks me about my perceptions of South Africa and I realize that though I've been here for 65 hours now, I haven't been able to see much of Johannesburg. Since I've been here, it's been back and forth between the hotel, tv station, radio station and the market theatre, where I performed. I haven't yet walked the streets, or talked to kids, or haggled at the market, or drive through the inner city. My experience so far has been very limited and I recognize this now as I speak.

The interview ends before it begins. I am left with so much more I want to say. But I am grateful, because I have one poem left, and it's only fitting that I let my poems say all the things I can't. At the end of the show, I perform "Signs." I felt much more comfortable this time around. I am able to harness the same energy I usually have on stage, in front of a crowd of people. I remember that I am not performing for just a camera and a crew. South Africa is watching. I know I nail the poem when the crew claps raucously at the poem's ending. Their energy is astounding and makes me smile.

When I return to the waiting room where the show just aired, Teba is beaming and holding my stuff. The room is buzzing. He says softly "That was divine. The show was focused on you." I didn't see it that way at all, but I'm on the inside of it all, looking out. He's outside, looking in. I've seen none of the footage I've produced. I have absolutely no idea how I come off on television.

Because I'm not a morning person, and a Saturday morning person at that, I assume that most people are in bed, snoring through Morning Live. I am wrong. For the rest of my time in Johannesburg, people of all ages would stop me in all the places i walk, telling me that they saw me on Morning Live, and how my poem touched them.

I am always grateful when someone tells me my work touches them. As confident as a performer as I've become I still make no assumptions about how people will receive my work. It is my general understanding that no poem hits every time in every situation and every poem can fall flat in any given situation. A poem's success is nothing I take lightly or for granted.

The next time someone asks me if I've been on Def Poetry Jam, I will say no, but I have been on Morning Live!

2:00pm

Teba, Ishle and I are at the Market Theatre. Ishle and I are buying necklaces from vendors. There are vendors everywhere, selling everything you can and cannot think of. Bowls carved from iron wood. Beaded chickens. Spears and spoons. They are there precisely to target people like me: the American consumer. The mentality of liking something and having to have it, having to take it home with you. That beast awakened within me and Ishle both. But another beast was alive in well...the beast at the pit of my stomach growling for food. I had to feed that beast first.

Teba is hungry also we decide to sit down in a nearby resteraunt and eat while Ishle continues shopping in the market square. Teba's been driving me around all over the place, and i know it has been difficult to carry on a deep conversation while trying to preserve our lives. When we actually get a chance to sit down and break bread, watch each other's eyes and talk real life, Teba and I connect and I know now that I have found a brother for life. He is the person I spent the most time with in Africa; in fact he was my introduction to South Africa. He was the one waiting right outside customs with a sign that said my name. If you know him, or if you ever meet him, you will know that I have been blessed to have such an introduction, such an escort. One can't ask for a better introduction to the African continent.

Our intense conversation at lunch makes me realize now what I must do while I'm here--to soak the people up. It is always less about the place and more about people, because the people make the place. I am here to connect with people, my people. My energy falls open like a trap door. I have fallen in love.