23 March, 2020
I left Barbados in 1958 on the Surriento, an Italian migrant passenger liner. As I was boarding the ship, my grandmother gave me an embroidered handkerchief with something wrapped inside. She told me not to open it until I arrived in the mother country. I opened the little bundle on the train to Victoria and found this penny inside. I laughed because she had said to me that I would always have money! I’ve kept it in my purse ever since then, and this is the first time it’s left my hands in fifty-eight years.
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23 March, 2020
I bought these in Chincheros in Cuzco, Peru. They are made by Incan women from remote communities who sell them to help raise their families. I bought this little pottery bowl when I was a child living in Independencia in Peru and it came with me to England because it reminds me of my origins.
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23 March, 2020
This bag was a present from a friend who brought it back from Colombia last August and gave it to me for my seventy- second birthday. It was handwoven on a loom by the Wayuu, the indigenous people of Colombia. It’s special to me because it reminds me of my country.
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