Goodbye Klamath - Hello Grants Pass

I have to say thanks to Jim Calvert - the GSE chair in Klamath, and Jennifer, my lovely host, and her family. Also to Linda and the other hosts of Klamath and Lake View too!

However I must mention our eye opening experiences. Let me explain...

I have just had a wonderful steak and potatoes dinner with my new hosts Nettie and Cliff in Grants Pass. We were chauffeured over today by Allan, a Zimbabwean doctor with a multi-tasking super hero of a wife, and we all got to talking... and the talking continues over my yummy supper (did I say they force fed me Krispy Kreme's?).

The fact is I only just found out from my Grants Pass family that Klamath is home to a Native American reservation - and to be honest outside the Klamath County Museum the only exposure we had to the population was Indian Village, which is not a cultural centre as you might expect, but an Indian themed restaurant, and the offenders that Liesl saw during her stint with the County Defender. Oh, don't let me forget the arrow heads that are apparently found all over.

We non-Americans may have a romanticized view of the Native Americans, but I honestly felt a lack of respect for them as well as Hispanics in certain places - which I will not mention. Certain things were said and there is obviously a disenfranchisement of that population which I am sorry to have observed. Closer to home, what may pass as political jokes against Obama are actually latent and repressed racism.

A caveat is needed here - at no point has any Rotarian I have ever met expressed any form of racism. In fact I have commented to the team that we are very spoilt, having mainly had dealings with successful and community minded individuals who wish to be of service to others. I greatly respect Rotary as a whole and the individuals that make it what it is.

Barbados too has racism, every country does. Being of mixed parentage (I am the epitome of a Pot Starver), I am aware of it when it rears it's uneducated head.

Readers, please take this as meant - This is but a footnote, and a reminder that we are diplomats for not just our Caribbean nations, but the ideals of tolerance and acceptance of what is different.

nuff said.