Ep 193 : Transformative Journeys, Cultural Connections, and Global Citizenship ft Baudelaire Ceus

Baudelaire Ceus [00:00:00]:
I got an internship when I was a little bit older. I was probably, like, 19, 20. I got an internship. It was a regional internship at Def Jam. And I went to the Def Jam offices in New York, and I found out that day that 80% of the people at the Def Jam offices were white women. I was shocked. Shocked, and it broke my heart. It broke my heart, man.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:00:23]:
It broke my heart because I was like, I thought this was black. I thought we was all black in here.

Raphael Harry [00:00:38]:
Hey, everybody. Rafael Harry here. You're listening to white label American. Welcome to another episode of white label American. Thank you for sticking with us from day 1 to year 6 of this podcast. I'm your host, Rafael Harry, and it's a pleasure to bring you each episode. If you're new here, welcome. Stay a while, and invite your friend.

Raphael Harry [00:01:15]:
There's always room for more listeners. We love to hear from you, so stay tuned for how to get in touch. Your support means the world to us. In this episode, we shall travel a lot in storytelling, in geography, and in so much more. I'm honored to have our super talented guest today. He's a producer. He's, the producer of one of my new favorite podcasts that I've started listening to. He's an educator.

Raphael Harry [00:01:40]:
He's a historian. He's a, I've already mentioned producer. He's a podcaster, and he's also a researcher. I have the pleasure of introducing Odelaire Zeus. How are you doing today, my brother?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:01:53]:
I'm I'm doing good, brother. How are you doing?

Raphael Harry [00:01:55]:
I'm doing well. It's, just the heat, and I'm not too happy to be wearing the costume that I've planned to wear for a long time. Plan for cold weather, but I have to wear it now in hot weather in, for my trick or treating. So we'll see. I I might have to

Baudelaire Ceus [00:02:09]:
have to go trick or treating in a in a t shirt or something.

Raphael Harry [00:02:13]:
I I might just have to do that. But I like scaring the kids. That's why I'm a I love my costume. It was meant for cold weather. Well, they're not here for me. They're here for you. So, you you work with, an amazing podcast that I've been having a great time listening to. So how how did you get started with your podcast, and can you introduce your audience to the podcast that you currently work with?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:02:37]:
Yeah. So I am one of the producers of the Atlas Obscura podcast. So the Atlas Obscura podcast was started, I wanna say, in 2020. I came on board in 2021. And, basically, Atlas Obscura is a travel company. So they work with Stitcher, the company that I I work for. It's under SiriusXM, but they come together with Stitcher to coproduce the Atlas Obscura podcast. So when I came on, I basically was making, like, a few episodes a a season, and I was writing episodes for our main host, Dylan.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:03:14]:
But it's interesting places all over the world. So Atlas Obscura covers, like, for example, in Paris, we wouldn't do an episode on the Eiffel Tower. Right? Everybody knows the Eiffel Tower is there. We would do an episode on the the the place around the corner from the Eiffel Tower that if you know it's there, it's you know what I mean? It's you're really gonna be like,

Raphael Harry [00:03:33]:
oh my god. This is right here.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:03:34]:
I I like that kind of, we say the, the we highlight the the more curious and interesting places around the world. Right? The the more lesser known places. So, anyway, when I came on board, a lot of the places that the show had been highlighting up to that point, just by, I think, you know, the the staff and where they come from. A lot of the places were throughout Europe and throughout the United States, mainly, histories that involved white people, basically. I came on board. And, really, the past, like, 10 years, me and my fiancee have been doing a lot of traveling, throughout the Caribbean and Africa. So once I came on, I was like, well, could I do places like that I've been to? Could I tell, like, kinda like my own stories and even, like, other interesting African stories that I've heard? And my first episode I made was, Great Zimbabwe. Oh.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:04:37]:
The, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and

Raphael Harry [00:04:39]:
I know some of it, but that's one that it's always on my to read list because there's a lot that I every time I touch on it, they always, like, expand my knowledge. Yeah. So that that's so excellent. That's Yeah. I haven't gone to that episode yet. But Yeah. I I That's a good one. That's my that's my first African

Baudelaire Ceus [00:04:57]:
history episode that I did. And, I wrote it for Dylan. Then my next season that I worked on, I started I I started writing stories. And, you know, when you when you're writing for someone else, you have to write in their voice. Mhmm. Right? You're you're like, okay. How would Dylan is is a white guy. And I'm like, I'm like, how would a white guy say this? Because I'm talking about Africans, and I wanna say us.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:05:21]:
I wanna say we. I wanna say, you know, I wanna use that kind of language, but I can't. So when I I went to our senior producer at the time, and I asked him, like, hey. Would it would it be cool if I just hosted this? So that way, it'd be just way easier for me to write. And he was like, yeah, sure. But put yourself in the story. And I did that, and the episode performed well, as well as our other episodes. And over time, it now has become I host almost all the episodes I write.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:05:54]:
And I try to do at least 50 to 75% of my episodes, are African history related.

Raphael Harry [00:06:01]:
Nice. And I I can feel it because, you know, my very first episode that I listened to, you know, which, you know, while we're talking behind the scenes, you know, you you you would recommend that episode. I was like, oh, I already listened to that episode because I just went through. I was like, man, there's a lot of cool stuff to check out here. I was just like, when I just saw that, I was like, let me check out this story. This story looks interesting. It looks too interesting to skip over. I'll come back to later on.

Raphael Harry [00:06:32]:
It was Priscilla.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:06:34]:
Yeah. Priscilla is homecoming.

Raphael Harry [00:06:35]:
Listening, please go check out you know, go on the Atlas Obscura website. Makes it easy to listen to. In fact, I might copy that format for my website. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:06:46]:
Yeah. It

Raphael Harry [00:06:46]:
is. The Priscilla story is oh, lord. I was like, man. You know? That's how I knew this this was gonna be a podcast I'll be listening to.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:06:55]:
And Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:06:57]:
Yeah. That was that was I was just like, oh, man. I got it. This is it. When I listened to it, I was like, I we got a podcast here. We got a

Baudelaire Ceus [00:07:04]:
podcast here.

Raphael Harry [00:07:05]:
So I appreciate you guys' work because it it it felt authentic when I listened to that.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:07:11]:
Yeah. So for those that, you know, before you guys go go run and listen to us, so Priscilla's homecoming is a story about it began with a story about a slave castle off the coast of Sierra Leone called Bunce Island.

Raphael Harry [00:07:23]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:07:24]:
And a lot of people don't even really know about that. We know in America about plantations, but we don't know that Africans were taken from the inner land of Africa and moved to the coast in what is slave castles. There's a couple in Ghana that people know about. El Kino, El Kino.

Raphael Harry [00:07:42]:
Most popular one in Ghana. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:07:44]:
Ex yeah. Benin, Nigeria has a ton. Cameroon. You know? In Baton Rouge. Yeah. Yeah. So off the coast of Sierra Leone, there's Bunce Island. And as Bunce Island now is, like, in ruins.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:07:57]:
And as I started doing the story, I spoke to a gentleman that works with the Sierra Leonean government. And the story was we talked for hours about this. I could talk African history for men. Like, you you can see on my wall here, I got Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah. It's it's I could talk African history for days. And so, basically, our interview was great, but I found it was really academic. It was like, really it's, like, kind of dry. You know what I mean? I liked it, but I could I'm wondering, like, for the listener, would they be able to follow this? But in our in our interview, Mel Garber, who I spoke to, he said, have you heard the story of Priscilla? And I and when he said it, I we just kept talking.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:08:43]:
I was like, no, I've never heard the story. We keep talking. Then I listened back to the interview and I'm like, what was he talking about? So I do some research. And Priscilla was a little girl who was kidnapped from Africa, from what is now the Sierra Leonean area, brought to Bunce Island 400 years ago. Today, her descendant lives in South Carolina, and the Sierra Leonean government reached out to her descendant for a homecoming. And so I reached out to Tomalin Polite, who is her descendant in South Carolina. And Tomalin agreed to do the interview. She also agreed to send me her family's home video of the trip.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:09:22]:
Oh, wow. Now I was cooking. Now I had Yeah. Interview with Tomlin, interview with Mel Garber, and the the home video. So me and my editor came together, and we we made what I believe is my best episode. I I I still listen to that episode, and I'm like, oh, man. This is

Raphael Harry [00:09:37]:
Every time I listen to it, I think I catch something new.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:09:40]:
So Yeah. And and something that's important for people to know is all the episodes are under 17 minutes.

Raphael Harry [00:09:45]:
Oh, yes. For such a short amount of time, I I got a lot. I got so much from

Baudelaire Ceus [00:09:53]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:09:53]:
The podcast. So because I I'm a long form guy. You know, I do a long form podcast, but I do Yeah. Appreciate, short form podcast like that. Like, yeah, you pack a lot into your podcast. So, do you have anything

Baudelaire Ceus [00:10:05]:
to do? A long form one day, I'll do a long form podcast.

Raphael Harry [00:10:09]:
I got something to tempt you with afterwards. You know? I won't won't share that right now. But, do you have anything that your anything new in the works that you can share at this moment that you would like to, you know, tease to the audience?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:10:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. So right now, I'm actually working on a series, that I'm beginning production on a series about Haitian voodoo.

Raphael Harry [00:10:35]:
Oh, I love that.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:10:36]:
So I I'm Haitian. I grew up in a very Christian family. And so right now, I'm kinda learning more about voodoo, and I'm gonna be, yeah, documenting that journey and that experience. So that that is that probably I'm I'm literally doing it now. So that'll probably be something like next year. I think people, yeah, stay tuned. I I would say follow my website, bow nose.com. It's b auknows.com.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:11:06]:
That is probably the best way to stay, abreast to to to that project.

Raphael Harry [00:11:13]:
Alright. And at the end of the of this episode, you'll get another chance to plug that in.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:11:19]:
And Thank you.

Raphael Harry [00:11:20]:
We will yes. Definitely. And then in the show notes, you have the website again. And, yes, this, we we gotta stay tuned, and definitely you'll be back on this podcast again to know once it's ready to be out. Yeah. We gotta talk about it because, oh, I I I got questions, loads of questions for that. Yeah. So, we gotta roll back time.

Raphael Harry [00:11:43]:
You know? I'm a time traveling guy. Some people know about that. You know? Set certain parts of the streets know about me and my time traveling thing, and we're gonna go back to the very beginning Yeah. Of Baudelaire.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:11:57]:
Okay.

Raphael Harry [00:11:58]:
So you got beautiful names, and probably you're the only person in the world with this name except for, maybe a character on, what's the The

Baudelaire Ceus [00:12:07]:
series of unfortunate events.

Raphael Harry [00:12:09]:
Oh. Oh, yeah. That's another one. I was thinking of, the vampire animation on Netflix. Damn. So it's keeping my mind right now, but that that that's there's I think there's probably a character there who has, that that one. Podola.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:12:25]:
Interesting. I didn't know that about that one. So the the my name comes from a French poet named Charles Baudelaire.

Raphael Harry [00:12:33]:
Oh. He was

Baudelaire Ceus [00:12:34]:
he was a French poet in the 1800, a really dark, kinda depressing guy, to be honest with you. He he was, like, really he's like a Edgar Allan Poe kinda kinda writer for people who are familiar with

Raphael Harry [00:12:46]:
Which fits in with the Netflix vampire show I was thinking about.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:12:50]:
So the the thing about Baudelaire is that because Baudelaire was so dark and depressing, that's why a series of unfortunate events, those kids are named Baudelaire because Charles Baudelaire that's that's where the name comes from, for them. But my parents my name was supposed to be Rodney for the first The 8 months. Of my mom's

Raphael Harry [00:13:11]:
That is that is, that is quite a

Baudelaire Ceus [00:13:16]:
Yeah. Quite a jump.

Raphael Harry [00:13:17]:
I I don't see that anymore. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:13:19]:
No. I'm not a Rodney. Yeah. Hold on

Raphael Harry [00:13:22]:
one second. Rodney on this podcast, then, yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:13:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. And one of my really good friends is named Rodney, so it makes it's it's great that we don't you know, he's Rodney. I'm bold. But my my dad came at the last minute and proposed, my my name is gonna be Rodney Saint Pierre Sous. But my dad, last minute, said Baudelaire. And the reason why my parents agreed on Baudelaire is because Charles Baudelaire was taught in Haitian schools. He's back then, Haiti had a very French curriculum.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:13:51]:
Right? They learned a lot about about French writers. And not that they were huge fans of of Charles Baudelaire, but they felt like if I had the name of a writer, then I would be well spoken and that I would have to I would kinda have to live up to it. What was interesting, though, is that I became a writer before I I knew I was named after him. I was already a writer. I found out I was named after him when I was, like, 15. And I told my mom, I was like, mom, like, you have to tell me, like, you know, teachers have been asking me. My English teachers love my name. I'm like, why? Like, what what is what's up with with my name? And she was like, yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:14:25]:
We named it after a writer on purpose.

Raphael Harry [00:14:28]:
Wow. Wow.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:14:29]:
It it it worked out.

Raphael Harry [00:14:31]:
It it did work out. So Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:14:32]:
And I love my name. I and I also, when I was a kid, I hated my name too. As a lot of I think that's

Raphael Harry [00:14:38]:
something that a lot of us go through because

Baudelaire Ceus [00:14:41]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:14:41]:
When I was a kid, that was, like, the only well, the with the pronunciation that I had was Rafael. There was no other Rafael around. So Yeah. I don't know. Every other person seemed to have did get music around. I used to be

Baudelaire Ceus [00:14:54]:
pissed. Yeah. And And and, you know, it's so, like, you know, you being Nigerian, one of my friends in college, his name is Tunde.

Raphael Harry [00:15:02]:
And he

Baudelaire Ceus [00:15:04]:
yeah. So he me and him would talk all the time about this type of stuff. Like, us, like, African and, of course, from the diaspora, like, are growing up with immigrant parents. Like, they would give us these names that they don't realize, like, no, Americans can't say this. You know what I mean? So it would be like I would be in school, and I was the only black kid in my class until the 4th grade. So, I was all my classmates were John, Matt Yeah. You know, Nick. You know what I mean? So it was one of those things where I felt like when I would meet people, I would think to myself, maybe one day I'm gonna change my name to this.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:15:42]:
I found out when I was really young that you could change your name when you're 18. And from maybe 7 years old to, like, 16 years old, I knew, oh, when I turned 18, I'm changing this. This is this is borderline things not gonna last long. I'm a I'm a change it. But then as I finished high school, I was like, I really like this name, actually. I'm a keep it.

Raphael Harry [00:16:02]:
You know? Yep. I I did have a plan of changing my name. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:16:07]:
I think we all do. It's like because they're like, why did you give me this name? Like, why like, you know, and and literally everyone some of my brothers are Eddie, Joe, and James. So I'm, like, telling my mom, like, why? Like, why did she Wow.

Raphael Harry [00:16:21]:
That is, I didn't see that coming.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:16:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. So they all have these names that people could easily say.

Raphael Harry [00:16:29]:
For for for that, I I I think you had a fair case there if your brothers are Eddie.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:16:35]:
And then I got this. I was, oh, man. I was pissed, but, like, it worked out, though. Now looking back

Raphael Harry [00:16:40]:
like shit. Yeah. But, I mean, for for me, I think when I was around, let me see. And, audience, please let me know if you guys had plans of changing your names. What what what are the names you were considering? But,

Baudelaire Ceus [00:16:53]:
No. We're a community. The name changing people are a community. We

Raphael Harry [00:16:56]:
Oh, yeah. They'll they'll Yeah. Because, I think I was I was closer to 10. 10 or 11 when I came across the book of names that, my elder sister had. I don't know where she got that book from, books book of names and the meanings. And that's how I got to find out that my name was, Raphael was a Hebrew name, and our last name was, actually Celtic, not English, which, was the assumption. And

Baudelaire Ceus [00:17:24]:
Mhmm.

Raphael Harry [00:17:25]:
So and then I realized that, our traditional names don't don't exist in those type of books.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:17:33]:
Yeah. No.

Raphael Harry [00:17:34]:
But

Baudelaire Ceus [00:17:34]:
No. No. No.

Raphael Harry [00:17:35]:
So that's where I came up with the name that I was going to eventually change my name into, which was going to be Ferdinand, Ferdinand Stevenson. I don't I don't know why. He thought it was

Baudelaire Ceus [00:17:45]:
Ferdinand. Yeah. Wow.

Raphael Harry [00:17:46]:
Stevenson. Ferdinand. Yeah. Ferdinand Stevenson. Yeah. Steven that's Ferdinand Stevens or Stevenson. But yeah. What you I I I don't know why I picked those names.

Raphael Harry [00:17:55]:
But I read the meanings, and I was like, oh, Ferdinand. And then later on in life, well, one of my nicknames that, in some parts of Nigeria to this day, the people who only know me by the by that name is Fernando. I I became Fernando, and some people just know me as Fernando. And if you go to those areas and you ask of me, they don't know me as Rafael or Rafael. But you said, I'm looking for Fernando. Oh, we don't know what that guy, Fernando. Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:18:21]:
Yeah. There you go.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:18:22]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:18:23]:
So I'm glad that that nickname stuck, but that's how, eventually, I ended up with Fernando. And it was later on that when I started realizing how rare my name was, I was like, oh, yeah. I'm cool with this name. Yeah. And then when I eventually run into, a namesake, somebody with my name, I'll be pissed. Like, man, why why the hell? You you you gotta be the person. I'm seeing Rafael. They can't let me one.

Raphael Harry [00:18:49]:
Yeah. There's gonna be another, and then I'll arrive in America, and I'm like, ah, yeah. I mean, I'm I got a name that nobody else has, and I start, oh, hell no. This name is everybody got this name here. Yeah. Yeah. And then I

Baudelaire Ceus [00:18:59]:
already got Ninja Turtle.

Raphael Harry [00:19:01]:
So, you know, that's the I didn't think about that because you're watching a cartoon. I didn't it didn't occur to me that, oh, there'll be people with that name across the world. It's like, oh, it's just a cartoon that has that name. And then, you know, that's the thinking I had. And then you arrive here, and then you meet Dominicans. And Dominicans, oh, we had a ruler who he he was named Rafael. So he was not naming all our kids after him. And I was like, what? Because I'm I've made a family from the grandfather that they all have Rafael's.

Raphael Harry [00:19:28]:
And I was at the event. I was just like, man, I I don't wanna be here.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:19:31]:
The Dominican the Dominican Rafael is not the Rafael. He he's probably the worst Rafael there.

Raphael Harry [00:19:38]:
He's the worst, but when I when when I'm at the at the I was at a wedding and on the bright side from her grandfather, father, brother, son, cousins, Rafael, Rafael, Rafael, Rafael. Rafael. I was like, man, it it's because wait. Just say, Rafael. Everybody's everybody's turning heads up. Like, damn. What? How? Who who's come on, man. I got my just a black.

Raphael Harry [00:20:04]:
Just a Negro, Rafael, whichever, man. I I just have to different differentiate. Yeah. It was too much. I'm going back to Fernando now. That that spirit is coming back again. So no. That was like, yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:20:19]:
Dominica, I I gotta rule out Dominican Republic. I can't yeah. I can't. I'll I'll leave visit one time. That's it. You guys out of out. Yeah. I'm picking beef with you guys.

Raphael Harry [00:20:28]:
I mean, I love the food, but, I had

Baudelaire Ceus [00:20:30]:
to pick

Raphael Harry [00:20:30]:
a beef with you guys because too many rafales. Yeah. And then Yeah. My brother from Venezuela is like, oh, yeah. With Venezuela too. It's a very popular name. I was like, goddamn.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:20:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. Next time, go to the other side of the island. Go to go to Haiti. And then that that I don't know no Haitian rafael.

Raphael Harry [00:20:45]:
Yeah. That that that's why I'm I I became cool. Hey. My hate Haitian people because, yeah, I'm like, I never met a Haitian rafael. So Wow. Until I meet 1, and then I was like, okay. The beef is on now. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:20:57]:
But if you're a Haitian rapper, you're a writer now. Let me know. As far as I haven't met you face to face, we we good. But if you join my Patreon, even better. There's no beef. Oh, man. For sure. I love names, man.

Raphael Harry [00:21:12]:
I love hearing about names and Yeah. You know, how when we're a young guy, we don't even think about you know, the thinking is old. The world the world is much smaller to us, so you don't even imagine how big it is. But, still staying with your younger days, what city of, were you born in? And, you know, you've already alluded to your childhood, but also, you know, expand on what childhood was like in your city of birth. And did

Baudelaire Ceus [00:21:42]:
you stay

Raphael Harry [00:21:42]:
in that city, or did you move around when you were a kid?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:21:45]:
No. No. When I was a kid so it's funny. As as an adult, I've moved a lot. But as a kid, I've man, I wanted to move, but it it didn't work out for me. So I was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, which is like 30 minutes outside of Boston. Oh, okay. And when I was a kid, we're talking like the mid nineties.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:22:05]:
It was even now. I mean, it's a pretty white place, but back then it was white. There was no there were so few black families, in the town that I didn't have a black classmate until the 4th grade. I think I said that earlier. And even when there was so the first other black person to come and be in my grade, because there was a couple of black people in grades above me, but the first black person that came in the 4th grade, it was a girl. And, shout out to Whitney. She lives in London now. All the kids made jokes that we would get married.

Raphael Harry [00:22:41]:
Oh, wow.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:22:42]:
They all would tease us like, oh, you 2 have to get married. Right. And, but, like, it was it was tough because not only was I not white, but I also came from immigrant parents. Like, my mom didn't understand that none of parent teacher con all this all these things that Americans did. You know, my mom was just like, it just didn't really, not that it didn't register to my mom. It just wasn't so important. You know what I mean? Or like, chaperoning on field trips. My mom never was going to do that.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:23:14]:
Like, it was Ulike, well, I was like, I got workAfrican . I don't know. You know what I mean? My mom was a nurse. Like, my mom wasn't gonna do it all that type of stuff. Even, like, sleeping over sleepovers in other people's houses. Never. Never. Right? But yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:23:30]:
So, like, you know, growing up, Stowe was a very white place. So I think it kinda created on one hand, I think I know white people really well

Raphael Harry [00:23:39]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:23:39]:
Today. Right? So now that I have, you know, in my later years, I'd say from, like, college onward, you know, I've done a lot of exploration into, global African history, Haitian history in particular, and even African American history in particular as well. Now I feel like I have a well rounded knowledge base because I love history. I even like white history. You know, I just feel like white history is easy to learn because you learn it in school.

Raphael Harry [00:24:08]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:24:08]:
But now learning black history, I feel like it's a much more, I'm grounded, much more firmly than I was Yeah. Before. I felt like I knew a history that I wasn't a part of, that I didn't have anything to do with. You know what I mean? Yeah. But, yeah, you know, growing up, I think a lot of those nowadays, it's funny. A lot of the kids I went to high school with are are, like, huge MAGA people. Like, a lot of the a lot of people, you know, they're like I was just talking to a friend the other day at a party, and she was telling me because she still hangs out with some people from our hometown, and she was telling me, like, yeah. You know, they get real conservative when they when they get drunk, when we're all out, they get really and yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:24:50]:
I don't know. You know, it just it's something that nowadays I don't even I feel like embarrassed sometimes when I'm around people from my hometown because I'm such a more evolved version of myself than I was

Raphael Harry [00:25:04]:
Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:25:04]:
Than the version that they knew of me. Right? So it's like, you know, sometimes I'll be hanging out with somebody or, I mean, I'll see somebody out and they'll say, like, oh, man. You remember this time? And I'm like,

Raphael Harry [00:25:14]:
I don't

Baudelaire Ceus [00:25:15]:
really care about that time anymore. I I I that that version. You you you

Raphael Harry [00:25:20]:
you you said. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:25:21]:
You Exactly. In that version that version of me and that story, I'm like, I don't really well, not, You know, not really. Not that I'm not I mean, I'm not proud of some of the stuff, but it's like, it's just, you know what I mean? I'm a completely different person now. I really feel like I've lived like a lifetime in the last 10 or 15 years. You know what I mean? So if you tell me, like, man, we if I if I was so cool with you when I was 16, I feel like that was a completely different person that you were friends with. That's not

Raphael Harry [00:25:47]:
It it it was. You know? Because Yeah. I mean, you've all the experiences have added to your growth. And even Yeah. Even with people that I grew up with, you know, but I I did move around back in Nigeria. But Mhmm. I know people from different cities, and sometimes it's difficult to have conversations with, you know, some of my people who last time we were together was when we were teenagers. And Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:26:16]:
Yeah. You're you're trying to catch up and you're having a conversation Yeah. All and all they try to do is take you back to your teenagers. They're like, hey, man. It's okay. We don't need to go back then because Yeah. We didn't know anything. We thought we knew.

Raphael Harry [00:26:30]:
I I thought I was a superstar and all that, but I had an afro and, you know, and but, yeah, I I didn't, like, joke. An older man told me back then was like, oh, this this your hair is holding withholding the withholding too much stuff in. Let it out.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:26:47]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:26:48]:
And maybe that's, you know, part of why I went bald quickly. But, you you you you don't realize with time, you start realizing, like, oh, that's why there were so many mistakes that were made. But instead of staying back there, you it's okay to laugh at certain things, but we can say, hey. Look. These were the mistakes. It's good to move on. And, like, if I'm talking to my younger ones, you know, who are way too young to, you know, to remember stuff, I can tell, look. When I was your age, look at the mistakes I was making.

Raphael Harry [00:27:24]:
You know? Yeah. Then it's okay if you made this mistake. You can learn from it. You can move on, but don't think that just because I'm your uncle. After I made mistakes in my life, I'm perfect. Because that was the messaging I used to get when I was your age.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:27:37]:
Yeah. From all

Raphael Harry [00:27:38]:
So I I don't repeat that stuff that, you know, I I that got that they did to me, that most of my elders did to me about Yeah. That's why I'm I try to make it different for them. But Yeah. When it's my mates I'm talking to, I'm like, hey, man. Why why are we still stuck in 1999? Why are we still stuck in early 2000?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:27:56]:
Yeah. Well, no. And and to the the second part of your question about, like, if I stayed there so I stayed there until, college, until, like, my 1st year of college. I I did locally, but then I'm I went to UMass, which is about an hour away. And then once my 3rd year of college, I studied abroad in London, and that was going to London was my 3rd time ever getting on a plane. And, like, it was and the only other time was in the 8th grade. I went to a wedding in Miami. So it was like, yeah, you know, a few hours.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:28:30]:
Every Haitian has family in Miami. But I was go like, the whole plane ride to London, I couldn't sleep because I was just so excited. Like, I was like, I don't even think I slept when I got to London for, like, 24 hours. I was like, I need to be awake for every second of me being here. Like, every person I talk to, like, the people that know me from that period know me as so I was so even going to London, I had to take out loans. So I took out student loans, obviously, for college. I took out separate loans just to pay to go abroad because I something like was just telling me I need to go. Like, I need to.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:29:12]:
Right? So I go, and it was the probably the greatest experience in my life in terms of impact. Yes. Because it changed it broadened my scope so much. I'd been to New York a couple times, and I knew I wanted to leave Massachusetts. But living in London showed me I can live anywhere in the world. Like, it it showed me it it turned me into, like, a global citizen versus a American citizen. Like, right. Like, I met so many people from so many different places.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:29:40]:
Like, met a lot of Nigerians in London. That's why I can't do London. A lot of

Raphael Harry [00:29:43]:
That's why I came to London.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:29:45]:
A lot of Nigerians. That's why I came to London.

Raphael Harry [00:29:48]:
I I went once, and I was like, woah. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:29:50]:
Yep.

Raphael Harry [00:29:51]:
Yeah. I went to the square. Yeah. My boy took me around there. I was walked on that street, and Yeah. It's like, there's like there's a time bubble. I walked through that bubble, and Yeah. All I was hearing was only Yoruba.

Raphael Harry [00:30:02]:
I'm preaching English. I was like, goddamn. I can't I can't get away with anything around here. I'm alright.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:30:07]:
Yeah. No. No. But I I yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:30:09]:
Take me back.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:30:10]:
But, like, but, like, being in London was was so transformative for me because I came back, and then I just I started to want to go everywhere. Even now, I still have that. But I

Raphael Harry [00:30:21]:
I understand that. I won't

Baudelaire Ceus [00:30:22]:
turn around. Yeah. I I there was there was nowhere that someone would tell me, like, hey. Like, would have you ever thought of going here? I'm like, yeah. That's on my list. Like, my list is long. You know what I mean? The the a 100 places. And everywhere is something big.

Raphael Harry [00:30:36]:
There are lots of places in the world. You know? Like, it's it's like when people ask me, oh, have you gone back to Nigeria? And I'm like, no. Not not since 2009 slash 10. And it's like I don't miss my I I miss some of the fun I had. Yes. But Yeah. It's not the same as when I left. I know I know everything that's happening.

Raphael Harry [00:30:58]:
I'm still in touch with what's on ground. Yeah. But there's 54 African countries. And people keep saying, I wanna go to Africa. I wanna go to Africa. I'm like, yeah. Why is the 53 not included? Because every time I talk to my Nigerian born, they keep saying I'm going to Africa, which means You

Baudelaire Ceus [00:31:16]:
may just be Nigeria.

Raphael Harry [00:31:17]:
Nigeria. And I'm going to my part of Nigeria, and I'm going to my village. And I'm like, Yeah. You're not really going to Africa. You're just going to your place. I see. So that's that that don't count. So I I need to go to other places.

Raphael Harry [00:31:30]:
So I always appreciate when I see people traveling to other places, and it was kind of similar for me. You know? Yeah. I moved to America. And then when I got to the Middle East, thanks to the navy, I get deployed there. And I right before Arab Spring happened in, Bahrain. But I was meeting people from other places too, and there is something that gets triggered within you when you start meeting other cultures and interacting with other people. And, you you know, there's artificial barriers that start to break within you because you're like, oh, I had this pick whatever picture or whatever, stereotype or whatever wall had been that you had set up within you to say, these people are this. This is that.

Raphael Harry [00:32:17]:
I had this within me, but once you had that conversation with somebody from that culture, doesn't mean they don't have bad people, doesn't mean they don't have whatever within them. But you've talked to somebody. You've interacted with somebody 1 on 1. It something starts to break within you. You're like, oh, because I took a taxi one day. I asked the driver, where are you from? He says, I'm from Morocco.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:32:39]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:32:39]:
I said, oh, where do you eat around here? He says, you would you like to eat where I'm going to eat? Because I was planning to go have lunch after I drop you.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:32:48]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:32:48]:
I said, I would like to have lunch. Where you have lunch? He said, are you sure? I'm going to eat Moroccan food. I said, I've never had Moroccan food. I said, okay. I take it the way I go eat. Took me some place which was supposed to be the slums, which was a very nice slum, if you are calling that slum, but they was trying to tell me this way I'm going to eat. I said, I don't do people die after eating the food there? No. Okay.

Raphael Harry [00:33:12]:
Let's go. And Yeah. Yeah. That's why I tried Moroccan food for the first time. And he was so happy that I came with him. He was like, oh, don't pay. I pay for your food. I was like, no.

Raphael Harry [00:33:20]:
I can't he's like, no. No. No. I pay. He was so happy that I was willing to try. One day, I just went to my walking around. I saw some sign. I'm like, okay.

Raphael Harry [00:33:29]:
This look nice. I don't know. Walked in there, and I was wearing a Real Madrid soccer shirt. And the the chefs the guy saw me at the counter. I was like, you like Real Madrid? I said, yeah. And he oh, wait. Wait. Wait.

Raphael Harry [00:33:41]:
And the chef came out. Oh, you're Real Madrid? Hala Madrid. I said, Hala Madrid. That's how Real Madrid fans greet themselves. And Yeah. Oh, and he eat extra food for you. Oh, no. Okay.

Raphael Harry [00:33:53]:
He was Iranian. American Iran are not supposed to agree. Right? Yeah. I'm American military. They they know. It's not like they don't know. They know. Mhmm.

Raphael Harry [00:34:02]:
But, hey. I got extra food. And when I got to my boy's house, fellow military guy, like, man, where where you got this food from? I saw some Iranian place. What? Iranian? I don't know. The the dev yeah. Whatever, man. I'm eating. He like, man, that feel a little good, man.

Raphael Harry [00:34:15]:
Take me back there with you tomorrow. Oh, alright. Yeah. I took him there. I said, he's my friend. Oh, oh, and he gave him extra food, but it starts to change. Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:34:25]:
Yeah. There's interactions like that and you know? But guess what? Before I arrived, I was heavily Islamophobic. And, you know, even when I'm at a club and by myself, when I was technically a pub, but they they had late nights, and it was one place I couldn't escape from regular It's funny

Baudelaire Ceus [00:34:42]:
being Islamophobic being Nigerian as well. Right? Because there's a lot of Muslim Nigerian.

Raphael Harry [00:34:48]:
It's it's some it's tied to you know, way before the British came, you know, we had we had a jihad.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:34:54]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:34:54]:
That's part of Nigeria's it's it's not something that let let me see. Big long story short, there there are some big historical facts, no, big historical events that Yeah. Are part of Nigeria's history. So, like, before the British arrived, you had the jihad, the the, the Sokoto jihad, which reduced the Benin the Benin, Kirby, Benin. Not Benin, like Benin. Where Benin I'm, you know, I'm terrible. I'm beginning to lose my pronunciations, but it's b I r n I n, Kebbi, dash Kebbi, k e b b I, which was to the northeast, empire to the northeast of the country, which included present day Chad, Tichard, Nije, present day Tichard, Nije, Cameroon. So, not, Kebi, Bonu, is part of the northeast of Nigeria, and so the empire included Niger, Tichad, and, Cameroon.

Raphael Harry [00:36:04]:
But that was, like, the largest empire what is considered northern Muslim or what should have been northern Muslim north of Nigeria. And when Othman Danfodio, who is who has, is considered different person in Mali in, in the Malian manuscripts, who goes to Mecca, gets the blessing to take, to perform the jihad, Launches his jihad with, Sokoto becoming the capital of which to present day is the capital of, the Muslim empire in Nigeria or the Muslim leadership in Nigeria. Starts that jihad and creates a mighty empire that takes over large chunk of what is now Northern Nigeria, but his plan was to get to the ocean. He start he gets defeated where he stops at Ilorin where there's a defeat depending on who tells you the story. To this day, the city of Ilorin, which is supposed to be a Yoruba city, has 2 kings, an Emya, which is the Hausa king, and an Oba, which is a Yoruba king. So it's still it factors into the present day, but Yeah. The the sad thing is that well, it's not a sad thing, but the truth is that he won because he wanted to get to the ocean. But if you look into Yoruba states, Islam is like, mostly populations, like, 50%, 6 60% depending on who tell who gives you the count.

Raphael Harry [00:37:32]:
Yeah. So he made it to the ocean, technically, but there are people who still talk in the way on the terms of that we didn't win that battle. Mhmm. So the polarization is has always been there. The pop the largest ethnic group on paper in Nigeria, you don't meet them outside Nigeria. You rarely meet those guys. They rarely travel to, like, America or, the west or most countries, but, like, the wealthiest Nigerians are from there. Mhmm.

Raphael Harry [00:38:03]:
They are

Baudelaire Ceus [00:38:03]:
Okay.

Raphael Harry [00:38:04]:
You know? But there's Christian groups, populations in those places.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:38:08]:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:38:08]:
And, you know, their stories get you you people don't consider as story, but in the southern part of the country, people always see everybody from that part of the country as Muslim. So these guys kind of, like, knocked out the Borno, Kirby empire and made it so small. Like, even the empire was Muslim, but this jihad now came and took over a a large chunk and became a big thing. So people in the south, which when Europeans will start arriving officially from the sea Mhmm. Became converted to Christianity and all that. It's like that counter who now, you know, counter narrative will now pop up, and you'll now start seeing that these guys are your enemy. And now with all the stuff happening today, like the person causing issues on southeast, who somebody I know personally, he is now pushing this narrative that the Muslim infidels, the or the barbarians, whichever way the whole language you want to use, they are trying to do a jihad against us. And then there are people in the north who are, like, using that language of the infidels from the south trying to convert us and all this back and forth.

Raphael Harry [00:39:19]:
But the people who have ruled all these years could have smashed all this down by doing the right thing instead of using language of, oh, it's the west trying to tell us we should be we should, enforce homosexuality, all this type of nonsense, which was just distractions. Because when all these, fanatics start popping up, they always use you not governing in the right way as to to fire they are to lights light up the fire, and that everybody has been taking advantage of that. But there's one last thing that I will, you know, use to wrap up my point. When I was a kid in, primary school, just like, after elementary school, that's like your 1st grade, you know, upward before you get into junior junior school. When we started reading, then our military rulers were all Muslim until, yeah, until we got into, until we convert until we return back to democracy. Mhmm. And the books that we use for reading in schools, we call them they were called readers. I guess it doesn't take much to figure out, but, the book that I was, the the the main story in my book in school had this warrior who was, I think, one of, Uthman dan Fodio's, lieutenants, Gandoki.

Raphael Harry [00:40:55]:
And this the the guy the story of him conquering towns when he conquers your your town, gets everybody the the king if the king is still alive and his, leadership, you know, kneel down. And, do you con do you accept Islam or not? If you don't accept, then your head goes off. That was what kids of, between age 5 from Yeah. You know? I reading in class where if you feel to get a word or 2 right, you get whipped. And you don't think you're creating something a problem for the future.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:41:36]:
Intention. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:41:36]:
And this is why I always push back on the narrative when I see people online just in the west, and all the time, like, somebody thought this was a way to show domination. So this is what's gonna be in the school books seem kind of similar to the way some people want to insert God in our schools here thinking that we'll change history to be about the Bible in America. And I'm like, I've seen this BS being done in the wrong way in Nigeria. Yeah. Because I grew up

Baudelaire Ceus [00:42:06]:
in done in it's done in in Haiti a lot too because, like, my mom, yeah, my mom left Haiti when she was almost 20 years old. And, basically, the and and this to to get into the voodoo thing a bit, like, the idea that voodoo is this, like, demonic

Raphael Harry [00:42:26]:
Yes. You

Baudelaire Ceus [00:42:27]:
know? I I grew up in Texas. That that I that idea comes from, 3 people, Christian missionaries. Yes. The French, after they lost the Haitian revolution, Napoleon needed some sort of, excuse to tell his other Europeans why he lost to these Haitians. They had the devil on their side. That's what you would say. And then American marines that came to Haiti, America the US occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1935. A lot of the stories you hear about voodoo being demonic, you know, voodoo dolls, all this stuff, the source of that is usually those marines that were there.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:43:06]:
Those marines largely came from Alabama and Mississippi in 1915. Now just imagine how racist those marines were. So how can we give credit to anything they believed or anything they saw when they're occupying a black country? They're not gonna they're not gonna say, oh, this is actually a beautiful place, and people here were very peaceful. They're gonna say, we saw them kill babies. We saw

Raphael Harry [00:43:31]:
them I got one better. Who who in modern times has lost a war and came out and said, you know, those guys are better than me. Yes. Exactly. You know, they were just, you know, they they were just

Baudelaire Ceus [00:43:45]:
The better man won.

Raphael Harry [00:43:46]:
They they were so good. They they just know how to hit me, papa. I mean, but I mean, it was free, but it's kinda it's a lot easier to say, man, they got some demons fighting with them. They got some things I've never seen before they was using. Yeah. And Yeah. That sound really cool to us back home because back home, when we have stuff, like, I'm like, oh, yes. Those Haitians were using voodoo, and we were believing that kind of stuff too when we had, because we were like, yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:44:10]:
Yeah. You know?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:44:11]:
Yeah. You know? It's a it's a strange thing. So would would I wanna get back to that. But the this idea, if for a lot of people that have been to Paris that are listening to this, if you go to Paris, a lot of those monuments, like the Champs Elysees. Right? A lot of those monuments in Paris were built after the Haitian Revolution. Napoleon trying to just change the narrative, right of that era of France. Like instead of because without those monuments, you would think of early 1800 France and think, oh, that's when you guys lost the war to Haiti. But now it's the time where they built the Champs Elysees.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:44:46]:
They built a ton of different monuments around the city of Paris that still stand today. Also, the Eiffel Tower was built with Haitian money that came from Haiti.

Raphael Harry [00:44:56]:
Oh. Right. Like That's what I didn't know.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:45:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. And in a, Citibank, the that bank also was founded with money that came from Haitian reserves, but that's a whole another thing. That's a we'll get into it. I'm a get into it in in the We're

Raphael Harry [00:45:14]:
gonna we're gonna have to do a whole episode on that. By the way, we've we've we've gone it tangent enough. We're gonna come back to you. Yeah. Yeah. So one question I forgot to ask you Yeah. Before because, that was still have to take me take me back to your childhood Uh-huh. Before we get back to before we move on to your adult, well, to your to your yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:45:36]:
Before I move on from your childhood, it's a question I always ask everybody. Mhmm. And I try to trap people because everybody's always like, this is one question that's like Yeah. So at this moment, what do you consider your favorite childhood memory to be?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:45:56]:
Man, that's a really good question. Tell you. That's a really good I'm a steal that and ask people that. My favorite childhood memory. What how old are we considering childhood? Like, when when does like, are we saying, like, under 16? Like, you know Well

Raphael Harry [00:46:22]:
okay. For you, let's do under 16.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:46:24]:
Okay.

Raphael Harry [00:46:25]:
You act nicely.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:46:27]:
Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. My favorite childhood memory probably has to be when, around, like you know, I'll tell you much younger than that, actually. I probably like around 8 years old. I got my first, my first, like, big kid bike with no training wheels and nothing like that. And it was really nice. It was a mongoose.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:46:50]:
And I used to go to a neighboring city, Brockton, Massachusetts. I had my godbrother. My god my godmother lived in Brockton. And so my mom that was my mom's best friend at the time. My mom would drop me off over there. And me and my godbrother, my brothers, we would ride our bikes, like, all around the neighborhood, and we would, like, go to the ice cream truck. We would, my my godbrother knew how to fix my bike. So if I got a flat tire somewhere, he would just turn it over and be fixing it.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:47:19]:
We go to, like, the park. You know what I mean? Play basketball and stuff like that. I think that's probably my favorite, childhood memory. Mhmm. There's really nothing to do but halfway. You wake up, and you're like, how are we gonna have fun today? You know what I mean? Yeah. That probably

Raphael Harry [00:47:35]:
But it has to do with moving, moving around.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:47:39]:
And Yeah. And exploring.

Raphael Harry [00:47:40]:
Yeah. Exploring. So, yeah, it it still relates to the present. It's Yeah. That's why I love asking that question because there's always a connecting thread to the present Yeah. One way or the other. And it's not like people plan for it, but it just it just happens.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:47:56]:
Yeah. That's

Raphael Harry [00:47:56]:
a good question, man.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:47:57]:
I get there's just so many there's so many like, that era when I used to go back, that was my summers. My summers were in Brockton riding my bike around every year. And I'd come back the 1st day of school, and the teachers would say, oh, like, what do you guys do this summer? And people would say, I went to Ireland. I went to Israel. I went to you know what I mean? Because like I said, all my classmates are white, so they they would travel even if they traveled in the United States. They say, I went to the Grand Canyon, and I'd be like, oh, I went to Brockton, which is 15 minutes away. That was my mom couldn't my mom didn't have no the kind of money to send me all over the world. You know? And I used to be so jealous of these kids.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:48:32]:
I used to think, wow, I wish I went. Now I'm glad my childhood was the way it was, and I can travel now. You know what I mean? And now I have a son. I'm gonna have him traveling when he's younger, but, you know, it'll it'll, make him the man he'll be.

Raphael Harry [00:48:50]:
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Raphael Harry [00:49:36]:
Staying with, move moving a little bit older but still a little bit still with the younger self. Yeah. What was the first thing you said to yourself or first profession that you said to younger that when he grew up, this was what he was gonna be? Man,

Baudelaire Ceus [00:49:57]:
I thought I was gonna work in the music industry. It's so funny now looking back how much I wanted to work in the music industry.

Raphael Harry [00:50:06]:
That's what I was.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:50:06]:
A little kid as, like, as, like, a a and r. So the a and r helps artists put the album together, like, you know, when it comes to features. Oh. It kinda kinda does, like, the management of the albums, right, and of the groups on the record label. I wanted to be an a and r so bad, man.

Raphael Harry [00:50:25]:
And how how did that come about?

Baudelaire Ceus [00:50:27]:
Because I was a child of hip hop. Like, I I when I was a kid, I loved hip hop so much, and none of the kids in my elementary school knew anything about hip hop. Now white people know about hip hop. But in the nineties, white people did not know nothing about hip hop. Right. So, like, I used to tell them about, like, yo, there's this guy, Biggie. And they'd be like, who is Biggie? Who is this guy? Why? Like, what are you talking about? And, like, when Biggie died, I remember when Biggie died and went going to school the next day or a couple of days later. I'm pretty sure.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:50:59]:
Yeah. I went to school a couple days late, and no one no one knew Biggie died. They didn't know what what what was that what I even meant. Teachers too. Anyway, I loved hip hop so much, and it was it was a language that black people in America to this day, I mean, obviously, spoke. You know what I mean? And hip hop one thing that and I'm sorry, we we be getting into the tangent. One thing that I really want, like African immigrants and just the diaspora in general to to appreciate about African Americans is hip hop. Right.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:51:37]:
Because as a Black person from Nigeria, right, you could come to America and have a child here and your child isn't immediately initiated into hip hop culture. You know what I mean? Your your child's gonna grow up listening to hip hop, using hip hop slang, and no one's gonna question it. You know what I mean? It's like Yeah. It's almost like African Americans built the airport that we can land on.

Raphael Harry [00:52:02]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:52:03]:
You know what I mean? Hip hop makes it it's really comfortable to move around America when you understand hip hop and go to different black neighborhoods. You know what I mean? You there's a there's a base language that we understand that sometimes white people understand, but we know each other as black people in America. And and and it's a specific thing that black Americans contributed to the world that I think that as immigrants and the child of immigrants, we could do a better job of appreciating them for that. But I love I loved hip hop so much. I wanted to be a part of it. I felt like hip hop was so important and so powerful. I wanted to I wanted to to be in charge of some of the levers of hip hop. I got an internship when I was a little bit older.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:52:49]:
I was probably, like, 19, 20. I got an internship. It was a regional internship at Def Jam. And I went to the Def Jam offices in New York, and I found out that day that 80% of the people at the Def Jam offices were white women. I was shocked. Shocked. And it broke my heart. It broke my heart, man.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:53:10]:
It broke my heart because I was like, I thought this was black. I thought we was all black in here. Like, you telling me you guys have been making the decisions this whole time? Like so that was the beginning of me falling out of love with the business of hip hop. I still love hip hop, but it's in fall like, it was around that time that I was like, I don't know if this is this is what I wanna do. And I also had a friend that worked at Roc Nation, and she was, very, like, disillusioned. And so, like, talking to her, I was like, oh, man. This is very stressful, the working in this business. Like Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:53:40]:
I don't know if this is the thing I wanna do. So but, yeah, as a kid, I thought I wanted to be Dame Dash. It's crazy to say now.

Raphael Harry [00:53:51]:
Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:53:51]:
So I thought I wanted to be Diddy at this is back then.

Raphael Harry [00:53:55]:
No. No. The back then, the At

Baudelaire Ceus [00:53:58]:
this this is 20 years ago. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:54:01]:
I mean, I was in Ibadon when, mo' money, more problems Oh. Video came out.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:54:10]:
And That video.

Raphael Harry [00:54:12]:
That's

Baudelaire Ceus [00:54:13]:
it's one of the best videos of all time.

Raphael Harry [00:54:15]:
The Christmas Yeah. Coming up, and this was when weather still behaved a little bit like it was supposed to. And we only have 2 seasons, the rainy season and the dry season. So towards the end of the year, Christmas time, it's usually by Christmas time, it's dry season. No rains. It's dry in most parts of the country and

Baudelaire Ceus [00:54:35]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:54:36]:
Very dusty. Yeah. Boys had that plastic looking leather outfits that Diddy and Maze had on.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:54:46]:
Yep. Yep. I know exact the red one. Yep.

Raphael Harry [00:54:49]:
And you could tell this was fake because I was like, I'm pretty sure that's not what they were wearing, but whoever was importing it was making business.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:54:58]:
I'm sure. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:54:59]:
Bunch of boys, but I I couldn't afford it, and I couldn't get anybody in my family to buy for me. So I was like, damn. But then, boys, this was everywhere. Chris at Christmas in the bottom of this amusement park kind of that everybody would just go get out. It was the only one in the city, so everybody would be there. And you just saw the boys baggy wearing that. Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:55:21]:
I mean, I imagine the heat. We're all wearing that.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:55:24]:
Alright, man. What a time. I wanted to be

Raphael Harry [00:55:27]:
in those fields. Like, hip hop hasn't been, influencing. I'm like, I saw my eyes. It had a huge influence because in that heat, boys wore that. So Yeah. Yeah. So,

Baudelaire Ceus [00:55:39]:
But even today, you know, you see, like, like, in Afrobeats

Raphael Harry [00:55:43]:
Oh, please.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:55:44]:
Afrobeats is a uniquely I I I I I

Raphael Harry [00:55:48]:
I was alive before, all them boys who the top guys of Afrobeats were singing before it was called Afrobeats, and somebody said, hey. Call it Afrobeats. And then so I said I I know when it existed. Yeah. It was just called Nigerian hip hop, And then Yeah. You know, that song with Drake happened, and then somebody repackaged it as Afrobeats. But, like, I saw Burnaboy. I knew Burnaboy before he well, I'm not knowing him personally.

Raphael Harry [00:56:15]:
But You knew of

Baudelaire Ceus [00:56:17]:
him. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:56:17]:
Yeah. I knew of him, but we lived in the same estate. It's a long story. But he you know, all of them, Wizkid, I was in the Middle East, and they were playing Wizkid songs in clubs Yeah. Back then. He was under Yoruba hip hop. So the biggest Yoruba songs were Fuji. They don't wanna touch that anymore now.

Raphael Harry [00:56:37]:
It's not Afrobeats. And I'm like, it's funny. But all that is hip hop influence because when 2010, 2 face and all those guys were reigning, It was based on hip hop coming in, and people finally acknowledging because he went Tu face, said the n word on one of his songs. That was a huge debate on Nigerian radio. Like, Nigerian does not say the n word. They didn't ban it on the the Nigerian radio commission didn't ban that song.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:57:04]:
Maybe Nigerians don't, but in hip hop, you do, though. So it's like it's that that's that's what tells you hip hop is a universal language. It's not. Hip hop has no borders. You know what I mean? So I I I think

Raphael Harry [00:57:15]:
that somebody who was who grew up in Russia on the podcast, and he was Yeah. He like, he was in Russia during the Then when the iron curtain was still up the Oh, USSR. Union. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:57:27]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [00:57:28]:
Before he moved here, and he talks about, when did they used to get tips from the black market, and his favorite artist to this day is still Tupac. So he was getting so even Soviet Union didn't approve of that. I've know people in China. How come during the the Olympics, how did they get a break breakdancing team? How did you guys know breakdancing? All this

Baudelaire Ceus [00:57:53]:
Yeah. Had

Raphael Harry [00:57:54]:
They tried to stop it. It couldn't. It still came through. It beats all the

Baudelaire Ceus [00:58:00]:
In Haiti, you'll see Tupac on the side of a bus.

Raphael Harry [00:58:04]:
We had, I remember the early nineties not early nineties, right after Tupac died. Then there was a hostage situation at, I think it was the Japanese embassy in Peru. Mhmm. And the group that committed the that did the hostage taking, They were called the, Amaru Shako, something something, but they named themselves after 2. Amaru. Yeah. Like but so people can there's some weird revising of history. Some people like to do sometimes online, and that's why I I agree with the the notion that social media is not real life because we have proof in real life of

Baudelaire Ceus [00:58:48]:
Yeah. Barrier You had to be there.

Raphael Harry [00:58:50]:
I mean, look at my even Michael Jackson Michael who's Manny Jackson broke all barriers with music. He proved that you know? And he's he's he's he's part of hip hop because, I mean, how many rappers performed with him? So Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, you can't you can't you can try to set up a I've I've seen the the tape of Vladimir Putin complain about, we we can't stop this thing called rap. So, we should find a way to, integrate rap into, our government programs. He's addressing generals.

Baudelaire Ceus [00:59:24]:
Yeah. It's crazy. I never even

Raphael Harry [00:59:25]:
He's like, well, how do we stop this? We it's American propaganda. But since we can't stop it, we we should now look for a way for Russia. Russian right to be out there. So Yeah. Yeah. You you you gotta acknowledge that is the power. That's why I don't talk bad of, you can't you can't you it's just it's a place of hate if you're talking bad about hip hop. It's just because it's it's it's too powerful.

Raphael Harry [00:59:48]:
It it's black culture. It's it's unstoppable. So no. No. Absolutely. But although when I was, what, 12, 13, the first there was a guy who moved to, I was in Benin City, and a guy moved from Lagos to our neighborhood. And he came to play with us. We're playing soccer, and he came to play with us.

Raphael Harry [01:00:06]:
Like, he was like, what's up, my niggas? And everybody stopped, and we're like, what? What's up, my diggas? I mean, we'll beat the hell out of here. Man, then we had only been told in school Yeah. The 2 highest insults were being called nigga or the the one in South Africa. Those are the 2. I forgot what that one is called. It starts with a k, which the whites use on the blacks there. So we're like, what what what kind of greeting is this? It's like, man, I hear you heard of Snoop Dogg Doug? Yeah. And then the I then I was beginning to start in the evangelical ministries, and there were pastors saying, how can a man call himself a dog? And he said, he's supposed to be a man.

Raphael Harry [01:00:57]:
How dare he call himself a dog? He's not a man. He's not a man. God don't make you a dog. God make you a man. Black. Oh, yes. Amen. Amen.

Raphael Harry [01:01:06]:
You know that in church and, yeah. Get out here with that bullshit. We know about that. Right. So, have you visited, Haiti? And you visited Haiti. Right?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:01:22]:
Yeah. In 2019.

Raphael Harry [01:01:23]:
So what was your, yeah, what was that like, your first time being in Haiti?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:01:29]:
Man, so I went to Haiti on, a volunteer trip. I didn't go, like, with my family. My whole life, like, both sides of my fam like, my mom was telling me, like, I'm gonna take you to Haiti. Don't go with your dad. Like, you know, go see where my family's from.

Raphael Harry [01:01:47]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:01:47]:
And my dad's like, don't go with your mom. Come to Haiti with me, and I'm a show you where my family's from. And it ended up being that nobody brought me to Haiti. So what what ended up happened in 2019 is I decided, like, I'm just gonna go for myself, and I'm a just figure I'm a figure it out. I went to Port au Prince, not both of my parents aren't neither are from Port au Prince. But, I went on a a volunteer trip helping, I mean, basically, helped any way we could. We brought a bunch of supplies, but we also installed electricity into this, it was a small business, like a jewelry making business. We helped this woman move from working out of a closet to now having, like, an actual, like, a storefront.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:02:29]:
And and, yeah, man. It was it also, there's a lot of, like, medical people that came, so they did, like, medical work. Yeah. But I was on, like, a small team. And I don't know much about electrical, but I could follow orders. Yeah. So I just was told, dude, put this there. Put this screw this there.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:02:43]:
You know, that type of stuff. But, yeah, it was, man, it was incredible. It I wrote a book about it called My Journey Home, but it was so much more than I could ever have put in that book. Like, it I genuinely felt that feeling of like, oh, I could be related to any of you. You know what I mean? And it and I it was before I'd ever been to Africa. I I went to Africa months later. I went to Ghana, but, it was, man, it was amazing. It was it was absolutely amazing.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:03:18]:
Like, being able to just I was also scared because my creole isn't, like, so good. It's like, I understand creole really well, but I speak it kinda poorly. My grandmother died when I was in the 8th grade. After that, I never needed to speak Creole to anybody. It just was I only would listen to my parents, but I would respond in English. So, yeah, I was, like, really nervous. I thought people would, like, laugh at me and be like, oh, what kind of Haitian are you? You don't even speak you don't even speak Creole. Like and people were really helpful.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:03:47]:
No one ever did that. Everyone was just so happy that I came. Some people were just amazed. Like, you're from you from America, and you came here by yourself? Like, why? You know? Like, that was more so the response that I got. And I I I felt like I needed to do something, for, for Haiti as a as a member of the diaspora. And I planned to go back to Haiti the following year and bring a lot of nurses. Haiti Haitians run nursing. There's Yep.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:04:17]:
If you know That's that's 5 Haitian women, especially, 3 of them are nurses probably.

Raphael Harry [01:04:23]:
That's true.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:04:23]:
And so I knew I had a lot of Haitian nurse friends. And, like, my network had a lot of Haitian nurses, so I planned the following year to go to Haiti and and bring these nurses. Right? Because the problem with the team that I went on, I was the only black person. All white. And it was it was kinda like Christian based also, which I didn't really realize until I was there. And I don't know how it's complicated how I feel about that now, but it's a whole another thing. And they also had translators there that they had to pay for.

Raphael Harry [01:04:53]:
Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:04:53]:
And I felt like, if I come back with Haitian nurses, you guys don't need translators no more. Yeah. And more of the money can go to helping people. But the following year, kinda like the turmoil began Oh. In Haiti. You know what I mean? So I had to keep postponing the trip, and then, COVID started. Yeah. And from there, it just you know, COVID starts, so it pushes it there that year.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:05:21]:
Then the following year after COVID, the president gets assassinated. Mhmm. And so from there, it almost became like, I would go to Haiti myself, but I couldn't, in good conscience, bring a trip of people with

Raphael Harry [01:05:32]:
me.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:05:32]:
Yeah. You know what I mean? So I I'm I'm planning on going myself, soon. But, yeah, until until things are a little more stable in the capital, I feel like it's hard for me to tell people, like, trust me.

Raphael Harry [01:05:44]:
That's true.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:05:45]:
Let's go together. You know?

Raphael Harry [01:05:46]:
Yeah. Because it's it's one thing to just go, you know, and then you gotta think about people's welfare, and you you don't wanna go scar people making that trip because people coming from from a good place and then go get people hurt. It's yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:06]:
Exactly. I couldn't do it. It's yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:06:08]:
You can't say

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:09]:
So the money that I raised Mhmm. Because I the book that I wrote, all the proceeds went to funding a trip to go, to go to Haiti.

Raphael Harry [01:06:17]:
Oh, nice.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:18]:
And I I need

Raphael Harry [01:06:19]:
to get a Yeah. To bring get that book.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:22]:
Yeah. So to to that was that was the point of me writing the book is they funded my first trip. Right? Like because I raised money for the for the trip, and in that was like, okay. A lot of people in my network told me, like, yo. You should write a book one day. A lot of people knew I was a writer already. So I was telling people like, okay. Well, I wanna go to Haiti.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:43]:
So if you donate over for every $20 you donate for me to go to Haiti, you'll get a copy of a book that I'm gonna write about going to Haiti after I get back.

Raphael Harry [01:06:53]:
Wow.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:06:54]:
And that that was how I funded going. And then when I got back, I was like, okay. Cool, everybody. Now I'm raising money to bring a whole trip of people. I think we raised a few $1,000, but because I was never able to go and, you know, the whole complication of everything I just said to you, when there was the earthquake in southern Haiti, I donated all of that money to the earthquake. My great my great grandfather, is from southern Haiti. I I my family doesn't really have much connection to Southern Haiti now, but my great great grandfather was from there. So because of that, I was like, you know what? This earthquake, I'm sure I'm, of course, distantly related to a lot of people there that that suffered from that, so I donated all the money

Raphael Harry [01:07:39]:
to them. Oh, yeah. The in, I think, 2010, that was when that great earthquake happened. The 2010? 29?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:07:49]:
That 20 No. No. Well, I'm talking about the there was a earthquake that happened a couple of

Raphael Harry [01:07:52]:
years ago. I'm talking about the that that one that happened. Was it 2009 or 2010?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:07:57]:
2010. 2010. That was January of 2010. Yeah. That earthquake also was kinda like the beginning of my when consciousness. No. When that happened,

Raphael Harry [01:08:08]:
Yeah. The navy sent the, one of our hospital ships, both of them, the the 2 hospital ships that we have to Haiti. So they were, like, drafting sailors from our commands to go down there. So I was it may have been a little bit racist because I know one day, I I I came to the command, and somebody was like, hey. Harry, you speak French? I was like, what? No. I Why

Baudelaire Ceus [01:08:36]:
would I speak French?

Raphael Harry [01:08:37]:
But I I'd gotten a lot of that when I checked in from when I checked in because, you know, somebody else oh, you you you were born in Africa, so you speak French? I was like, what? No. And you speak French? No. I kept getting that. And as soon as that guy asked me that day, I was like, no. I was like, but your name's on the list to go to Haiti. I was like, to go to Haiti? Why am I going to Haiti? And, like, oh, we need all the help there. They're like, is it because I you think I speak French, or is it because they need help? Which one is it?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:09:09]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:09:09]:
Well, I get just pack your bags. So I was like, dang. Well, if they need help, I don't mind going to help. But I hope it's not because you think I speak French because I don't.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:09:18]:
They're gonna be disappointed.

Raphael Harry [01:09:20]:
So but I know how to say Rafael, and, you know, some basic French. But, no, I don't speak French. So I had my bag packed up. I was waiting for the official paperwork to arrive, and it never arrived. And some white guy got sent instead from my command. Yeah. Arrive for him. He spoke Texas, though.

Raphael Harry [01:09:40]:
I know he spoke Texas. And he got yeah, I think he went for, like, 3, 4 months. He came back.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:09:47]:
Wow.

Raphael Harry [01:09:47]:
And, yeah. And I know it was some, you know, some girl who went she was, like, a real spoiled brat. And when she came back, all I heard that complaint was about it. I couldn't shower. I was like, goddamn. You know what? I would have loved to go if that if that's all you gotta complain about.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:10:02]:
Yeah. I mean, it's like it's just, this is the like, when I was there, it was cold showers every day. It wasn't like

Raphael Harry [01:10:09]:
Yeah. But I I knew the assignment if I was going for something like that.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:10:12]:
Also, it's where you go. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They give me their response.

Raphael Harry [01:10:16]:
But she was the type who was like, I got the makeup and all that. I was like, why did you join the military? But I think she was rebelling against our parents. So, yeah, she's I was like, must be nice.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:10:28]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:10:28]:
Must be nice. But, anyway but, yeah, that's Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:10:31]:
That,

Raphael Harry [01:10:31]:
That's how I missed out on going to Haiti, but I guess somebody realized I didn't really speak French. And it wasn't like I was bluffing, and I guess so my name was taken off the list, and I was sent to the Middle East. So

Baudelaire Ceus [01:10:43]:
Yeah. The thing about that 2010, I think, that was also the begin that was, like, another kinda turning point for me because that my dad was in Haiti at the time, and I remember seeing the earthquake on the news, like, as it happened. My birthday is in December, so my dad left to go to Haiti before my birthday and was like, you know, when I come back, like, I'm a make it up to you. Right? So I think you flocked, like, the day before my birthday. And, the earthquake happens, and we don't hear from my dad. So I believed that my dad had passed

Raphael Harry [01:11:16]:
away. Oh.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:11:17]:
So I was like, cried for days. Right. Like, I was I was convinced. Then one day, I got back from school, and my mom tells me, like, oh, we we talked to your dad today. And he's gonna call. He knows you come back from school at 3 o'clock, so he's gonna call at 3:30. My dad calls. I talked to my dad, and my dad is, like, really somber on the phone.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:11:39]:
But I'm I'm so hap I can't believe that he's alive. You know what I mean? I I was I already had been convinced for 3 days that my dad had passed away. So I'm I'm just happy to talk to him, but he's not you know, something's wrong. And then, after him telling me that he's okay, you know, whatever, he tells me that, my sister, who lived in Haiti, my sister, Jennifer, she, was a year older than me, you know, African and Caribbean parents. I had siblings in Haiti as well as, here, that she passed away in the earthquake is is is what he had explained to me. And I'd only talked to her on the phone. I'd never met her in person, but we every time she called my dad, if I was around, she'd be like, oh, put on the phone. So and she was supposed to come to America that summer and begin school in America.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:12:30]:
I was gonna help her. Right. You know, regardless of what I wanted to do, it was gonna be my job to help her get acclimated. But yeah. So but she, went to the capitol that day to, get supplies to cook my dad's favorite food. Because my dad doesn't live in the capital, but she was in the capital that day looking for supplies to help him cook. So that changed him Mhmm. For forever to this day, and through extension changed me, I think, because it then became like, oh, wow.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:13:03]:
Like, I I kinda had, like, a new, like, duty where I felt like I have to live for myself and for

Raphael Harry [01:13:10]:
her. Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:13:11]:
You know what I mean? I it kinda, like, I have to create I have to have the impact of at least 2 people Wow. Instead of, for myself. And then also, like, before that, you know, people would make, like, jokes about Haiti or stuff like that. And they used to just I'm like, god. Whatever. I don't really. You're an idiot. I don't really care.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:13:29]:
Now I started to take it way more personal Mhmm. After that. You know what I mean? Especially, nothing hurts my heart more than, like, black people, like, African people and, you know, all of us talking bad about Haiti, not just because I'm Haitian, but because I understand the importance Haiti has to all of us.

Raphael Harry [01:13:48]:
Yes. You

Baudelaire Ceus [01:13:48]:
know what I mean? Even if I wasn't Haitian, like, there's an importance that hate the Haitian revolution changed the world. It changed especially the African world forever. It did. You know what I mean? And all and even, like, you know, being Nigerian as you are. Right? Like, the majority of Haitians come from Benin, Nigeria, Congo. You know what I mean? So I, myself, had it not been for the transatlantic slave trade, would more than likely be Nigerian. You know what I mean? Or or Yoruba or, you know what I mean, from from, from Benin. So it it yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:14:30]:
It did that that hurts to hear, but, you know, it comes from people not being educated. So there's also that. It's like, you

Raphael Harry [01:14:38]:
know? Yeah. Sorry to hear about the loss of your sister. Wasn't Yeah. I

Baudelaire Ceus [01:14:44]:
know. You know? It's It's

Raphael Harry [01:14:46]:
tough. But I relate to that, you know, dad or uncle, and I never knew my, biological father, but, I I was I relate to having my uncle been around, my guardian, and, having to go get the ingredients of for their favorite meal. You gotta go you could get it fresh made.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:08]:
Yeah. From the kit yeah. Yeah. So From the biggest city around. You gotta go

Raphael Harry [01:15:12]:
to the market.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:13]:
So that's how

Raphael Harry [01:15:13]:
Get the ingredients. That's how

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:14]:
it goes by.

Raphael Harry [01:15:15]:
You know what? And speaking to, you know, trying to insult Haiti or Haitians and act like we're not the same or we're not family.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:24]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:15:25]:
You see, your sister go get ingredients to make the meal. We do that. And our manager, we're not, you know, not close to Lagos, but Patoki, please do that. Even your Urohobo do it. Hausa do it. Tiv do it. TIV.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:43]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:15:43]:
Effie. Everybody do their own thing, but there are still other things that we do the same way. So,

Baudelaire Ceus [01:15:50]:
yeah, it's just And, ultimately, the thing about and my last thing about the the Haitian thing Mhmm. Is that Haiti does not have the power to stand up to whether it be the United States or the West. Right? It it just doesn't. It's a fact. It it it it has tried for 200 years. Nigeria does not have the power to stand up to these people. Right? Until an offense to Haiti is an offense to African people around the world, until an offense to Jamaica is an offense to African people around the world, until an offense to Nigeria is an offense to African people around the world, we have no hope of overcoming our current situation. Right? The kind of poverty you see in some parts of Nigeria I I was in Benin in December.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:16:39]:
The part the kind of poverty you see in Benin, we are doomed to it until we all see it as a collective problem because we've been trying to deal with it individually Yep. For at least 1 generation, a whole generation of people That's the have been trying

Raphael Harry [01:16:56]:
to solve it. Myself. I don't need Yeah. Any other person because Dangote is the richest man in in Africa. So I can serve it myself, and I'm like, that's not a that's not a factual thing. It's It doesn't work like that. But

Baudelaire Ceus [01:17:11]:
We've tried for so long. It would have already been solved if that's the case. So that's the another thing too is that, like, when an offense to Haitian happens at to Haiti happens and Haitians all are up in arms, but I see other African people not offended, I know we still have so much more work to do because it can't be like you know, I've been a lot of places throughout the diaspora as I've said before. And, like, I see that familial that feeling I had in Haiti. I still have it when I go to Benin, or I've been to Senegal. And yeah, or even in Ghana. Right? A non French speaking place, but I still see that look that I'm like You recog I could live here.

Raphael Harry [01:17:55]:
You recognize it. No. Once you see it, you see it. So

Baudelaire Ceus [01:17:58]:
Yeah. You know what I mean? What? Jamaica as well. Right? So, like, it's just it until we have that collective kind of feeling, then we yeah. Like, we'd just it's I've reserved myself to understand we're doomed, that we cannot solve it individually. It has to be I agree.

Raphael Harry [01:18:19]:
We it's something that yeah. I agree. I agree on that. Because although I don't believe in the 1 Nigeria project, but, I do agree because it's hard. It's why, like, you know, when with the End Sars protest, it was more regional. It wasn't like the whole nation. Online, they tell you it was the whole nation, but it wasn't the whole nation that participated because there were people who were like, yeah. If you don't like these police guys what they're doing, send them to my part of the country.

Raphael Harry [01:18:56]:
They was do we need them here. The others were like, you complain too much. You the others are like, oh, when they were doing it to us? You didn't complain. You let you were enjoying it, and you see that it's, like, not my problem. It's your problem, and it's like, but it's the same Yeah. Problem. Yeah. If everybody's not choosing to okay.

Raphael Harry [01:19:15]:
We all want to we are ready to complain now. Why don't you all bond together and Yeah. And make it a one time solo find a solution now. Everybody's come to the table. No. No. No. No.

Raphael Harry [01:19:26]:
No. No. It's you're the only ones who want to make noise now. You go. When we are ready, we will come. And it's like, ah, goddamn. So we gotta go back to the circle again, circle again, and then and then, you know, repeat.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:19:38]:
And I'm confident. I think in our lifetime, especially in my in our kids' lifetime

Raphael Harry [01:19:43]:
I think our kids are the ones who will. I'm I'm more I'm I'm more confident in our kids than, ourselves because

Baudelaire Ceus [01:19:50]:
Than us.

Raphael Harry [01:19:50]:
Our kids are more, they are more, like, I think they believe in challenging authority, not just authority, but the question what is called the truth. They don't just say, oh, because, like, my my my tribe, Ijo or Izon, literally means truth. But I have elders who I can see them misbehaving, and just because they're elders, you don't say, okay. I see you literally misbehaving. So you can't request you can't say, yeah. You're misbehaving. That's wrong. What you're doing is wrong.

Raphael Harry [01:20:25]:
Yeah. But the much younger ones coming up, they're like, you tell us don't do bad. Don't do this, and then you do it.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:20:34]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:20:35]:
So they are now saying no. You can't that's not the example that you set for us. You beat us in schools, and you're saying you beat us for doing the wrong thing, and then you're doing the exact same thing. No. We're we're calling it out. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:20:47]:
Yes, sir.

Raphael Harry [01:20:47]:
So they're challenging it, and it's the much younger ones. And I'm not even talking about the kids who are protesting. I'm talking of the kids coming after them because those ones are literally challenging everything they're trying to Yeah. So it's gonna be them who I put all the yeah. They give me more hope. So yeah. But, speaking you already, mentioned Benin, and I just want one clarity there. So it's the Republic of Benin that you

Baudelaire Ceus [01:21:14]:
The Republic of Benin. Yeah. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:21:15]:
Because I I grew up in Benin City. So just a lot of people Yeah. A long, like, long time listeners.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:21:21]:
You know one thing, though, about so I'm glad you bring that. Yeah. Because when I was in Benin, right, so I was in Kohtanu. Mhmm. And all for I was in Benin for, like, 4 or 5 days. And most of the days, I spent in Kotonou. But I wanted to go to Nigeria. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:21:41]:
Right? And I was talking to I think it was one of my, well, my friend in in Kotonou, Crisbell. Shout out to Crisbell. He said to me that to get into Nigeria, I would need a visa. Yes. And he was and he told me it would be easier for me to go to Nigeria if I flew to London and flew from London to Nigeria in terms of, like, document process.

Raphael Harry [01:22:04]:
Which I'm not surprised. That that part, I that blew my mind.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:22:10]:
That, like I

Raphael Harry [01:22:10]:
mean, there's there's another way there's another way in which you could still go through the same border, but it's just a few. If you're not on the video, you can't see what I'm doing with my hands.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:22:22]:
But, yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:22:24]:
Yeah. Yes. My uncle used to work. He just retired from the immigration Nigerian Immigration Authority, so I know how the system works at the semiborda, which was a very juicy posting for yeah. People literally fought to get that posting. That and the Nigerian passport office in Keja in Lagos. So yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:22:45]:
So, yeah, that was disappointing. But next time, next time I go to Africa, I'll probably go to Nigeria.

Raphael Harry [01:22:49]:
Okay. Benin City is, the Asian kingdom of Benin City. That's, one historical plea. I'm I'm glad I grew up there. I was a kid, and I didn't I didn't realize I was learning about human trafficking and all that stuff because those guys travel. Those guys travel.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:23:09]:
I actually did a episode about, about the Benin bronzes

Raphael Harry [01:23:13]:
Yes.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:23:14]:
Which I

Raphael Harry [01:23:14]:
saw Benin bronzes. Believe it belongs. There's a, in Siloko Road. It's literally on the street. You just see them making it, and you didn't realize that you know, in schools, the the the way their school system works in Benin City, there are times when they they touched on it, but you don't realize you're touching history. Right?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:23:37]:
Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:23:37]:
As as a kid, you don't get the importance, but like the Oba of Benin is like the way kings are rated in Nigeria. There's a ranking of kings. So the above Benin is, like, at the top of kings of Nigeria because he's one of the guys who the governor cannot literally he cannot approach the guy. But, like, Kano, which has one of the top kings, EMEA of Kano, is up there with the kings, but the governor literally broke the guy's kingdom to 5. The guy who gets only 2 terms and after 8 years, you're gone. They they can mess up with you. The sultan of Sokoto is like number one king for all the Muslims in Nigeria. They can be uprooted.

Raphael Harry [01:24:12]:
But Abba Abbinin, he sometimes doesn't talk publicly, but when he says if he says, I don't like this guy for this political party, all Bini people will vote against you. That's his he's they still love that. They not like love. He's really revered many people following to the core. It's a powerful position. So it and that's I I I don't know if you're familiar with, tank. I'm trying to remember this. The the British rate that led to the 3,000 over 3,000 artifacts.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:24:45]:
The punitive the punitive act. Well, that's what my episode is about. So, like, the the Benin bronzes were on tour to the, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Yeah. And I went to go see them, and I, you know, had all my recording equipment and whatnot. And I interviewed a, man, this this was, like, 2 years ago. I can't remember the guy's name, but I interviewed an expert on the bronzes who was in Nigeria, for our interview. And it was just all about how the bronzes were stolen

Raphael Harry [01:25:14]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:25:14]:
And all over the world. And really just That

Raphael Harry [01:25:17]:
that was taught in schools. That that version of it Mhmm. In, you get it in schools.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:25:23]:
Oh, okay. And I went to the,

Raphael Harry [01:25:25]:
The whole detail, you you don't get, like, the you get, like, the details of the the killings. Uh-huh. Like, you know, because it was during Igwe Festival, which is still huge to this day in Benin City.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:25:37]:
Yes. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:25:37]:
So it's so, like, stuff like that. Like, even the mold around the Benin City, which is, like, at one point in time was the 3rd longest wall around the city in the world. Yeah. Stuff like that, you didn't realize you are around history because you saw it all the time. The red clay soil, binning soil is considered red, red soil, and the Obas Palace is is made with that soil or the fence, even the buildings. But now you have more modern cement and all that mixed in there. But you see all that around you every time you drove around the palace and all that, but you're around Asian history. And there's a way they have it in their school system, but there's a way it's not also part of the school system because you don't recognize how much you were around.

Raphael Harry [01:26:29]:
Yeah. World it's not just you you are on world history. And it was until, you know, you you you start hearing in the news, you start because Bini are one of the people who, unlike other tribes, they've they've been pushing for their artifacts to be returned, not with Nigerian government Absolutely. Which I like to clarify. I like pointing out a lot of times that it's not the Nigerian government. It's the Benin people. But there's also like, when people say, what's it called? The you like Britain or like like gem Germany has been much better at returning artifacts compared to, like, Britain and other countries. I would give the Germans credit on that.

Raphael Harry [01:27:07]:
Yeah. But there's some clashes like But Benin, there's also clashes like Oba Benin. And if like, the governor who's about to leave, he has when he has a clash with the governor, he also blocks it from being returned sometimes because he'll be like, I want a new museum for the artifacts to be in there, which not everybody who's researching gets those information if you have to be, like, into the local politics. So he will now say, no. No. Don't return it yet. I need a new museum for the if I go in there, federal government should build the museum. The state government, like, oh, we're gonna build the museum.

Raphael Harry [01:27:41]:
All of the people from the world will contribute money. We are ready. No. I want. So he's fighting. All that will not delay the artifacts from the return because they've been ahead of everybody. They've been ahead of Europe by people even for returning the artifacts. And then everybody's like, oh, delay.

Raphael Harry [01:27:58]:
But on the headlines, will it be and there's no defense of Britain and all that for returning of artifacts. But once you start knowing all this stuff and you start going to be people within the scene, you're like, damn, man. Just get the artifacts back because they weren't in a museum in the first place when they were stolen. How about you get it back first?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:28:15]:
Well, 2 things. 222 things to that. 1st, because I went to the British Museum to see them. Mhmm. I've been to the British Museum to see them a few times, but, like, I went to the British Museum to see them. And until the British Museum, which has the largest collection

Raphael Harry [01:28:30]:
Oh, yeah. They do.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:28:31]:
Returns them, then we're talking about Peanuts.

Raphael Harry [01:28:34]:
Oh, yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:28:34]:
Oh, yeah. Right? Because the British Museum needs to be the one to start the wave for all of them to be ready.

Raphael Harry [01:28:39]:
Oh, yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:28:40]:
And then, also, the thing about the the Oba, I understand what you're saying about him holding them up. But if you owe me a debt, it is up to me. I I set the terms, especially if it isn't a true debt, if it was a robbery.

Raphael Harry [01:28:58]:
Oh, that's that's that's not a debt. That's yeah. I agree. It's a robbery. Yeah. That was it. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:29:02]:
So the In

Raphael Harry [01:29:02]:
fact, what's even worse than a robbery? That that is whatever is worse than a robbery, call it that. Because

Baudelaire Ceus [01:29:08]:
Exactly. You know what I mean?

Raphael Harry [01:29:09]:
So every terms of agreement. They had an agreement in place, but you were the one who violated all the terms and came and ransacked my house and took everything.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:29:21]:
You get

Raphael Harry [01:29:22]:
some grace. Making money off it.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:29:25]:
Billions. So you you get some grace some grace from me. So You could be a little

Raphael Harry [01:29:30]:
return it with interest. But yeah. I but I just like to remind people of that little caveat in there. Like, yeah. It's not it's it's not I it's technically not mine because I'm not a beanie, but I've I've due to my growing up there and some people who I know, there's some information that always comes to me that I'm not like I'm like, dad, have you guys because I know that I've been in received the the chunk. It's like, it opens the floodgates because I know people in Eurobar's side who are, like, actively blocking the release because they they're, like, everybody comes they're, like, owned, like, some of the largest arts gallery in, like, the 1st and the largest art gallery in, like, Lagos. So I don't know if that's the reason why they're blocking some of the artifacts being returned because I've heard them saying, oh, it's corruption. We'll not allow this come, but they are powerful people in Lagos, like one person who I know in particular, but that's on the Lagos side.

Raphael Harry [01:30:29]:
But Binny had been way ahead of that person in doing that. And that person doesn't have a say on Binny territory. And but I know, like, if Binny starts receiving theirs, then Ijo can go for theirs. Ijo has no excuse for not collecting theirs. House has no excuse. Everybody has no excuse because a lot of people start asking, why not receiving yours? Why have you not made a case for receiving yours? Ethiopia has received some of theirs. Namibia has received some of theirs except for the 2 tribes who have a specific case for why they don't want to be part of the government's solution, settlement. I mean so, yeah, I like I like I I like to look into the little details for any case, but, yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:31:10]:
It's it's always fascinating what you find out, you know, in this, cases out there. But, we might that that's another one that, we can stand a longer tangent on. But, yeah, but, no. No. That's another episode I'm I'm going to about, man, it's due to the traveling thing, if you go to, like let let's say this is, October, end of October that we are doing this recording. Won't be happening right now because all the guys, girls literally out of the country, vast majority out of the country. You come around December, it's gonna be full. Many have returned from all over the world.

Raphael Harry [01:31:54]:
One last example I'll give before we move on, early 2000, I mean, the University of Benin, I I didn't attend, but I was with my in law. I was at my in law's compound. They had a compound where students of the university leave that, and they had a phone business. So I helped one of my in laws man the phone for a couple of days, and this old woman will show up. This was just when cell phones had been cell phones were introduced in Nigeria, the global, mobile cell phones had yeah. We're introduced 1999. So not everybody had cell phones then. So this was, 2,002 Old lady, she'll be, like, probably in her eighties, shows up, in Benin.

Raphael Harry [01:32:38]:
They call Edide for old woman. So Edide shows up. My son my son, call call this number. So she has a diary. She points to this is, the the code, area code, the the country code. I said, ah, I don't think I've seen this one before. Which country? So I look. That is, Seb Serbia.

Raphael Harry [01:32:57]:
You sure? That's where your son is. He said, I did my son there. I said, okay. Yes. He did. So call. So the the the trick is this. You you dial the number.

Raphael Harry [01:33:06]:
It rings. The person picks up. Hello? Oh, hang up. I'll call back. Okay. Hang up. And then 2 minutes later, the person calls. That's my mom.

Raphael Harry [01:33:16]:
Right? I put my mom on the put my mom. I said, okay. Alright. She speaks.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:33:21]:
Okay.

Raphael Harry [01:33:21]:
And that person will come. Give me the I'm going to call this country code. Give me code. I say, okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let me look. Wait.

Raphael Harry [01:33:30]:
Wait. What country is that? Because per the code you charge. Oh, this one is, where? Oh, Turkmenistan? Nigerians are there? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bini. Anyway alright. That that that was if you I I told one guy one time that if you the guy said he traveled somewhere inside of Libya. It was before the whole fighting began Libya, And somebody was like, oh, I found some there are some Nigerian you from Nigeria? I know some Nigerians there.

Raphael Harry [01:33:59]:
He was a Hausa guy. He's like, oh, I I know some Nigerians come. He said, oh, I he got there. There are Benin people. Benin people are like some of the first to go do the exploring. I said, okay. Yeah. Alright.

Raphael Harry [01:34:09]:
You guys can come. Fine. The guys who did the moving through the desert to tell me then make it through the desert into Sarat Desert into Europe. It's like Benipo found that part. I don't know how. It's like Benipo doesn't have, because it's there are those state which is the cap the capital has been sitting in the present day is part of the oil producing states, but it doesn't really have oil per se. So it's like people from Benipo just started traveling. I don't know if to go explore, and that's how you have which unfortunately is part of the the human trafficking team because they they you wanna travel? Come.

Raphael Harry [01:34:45]:
So, like, some families back then in the nineties, you see our families arguing that they will say, we we why are you talking to me? My son sent I have, like, 3 bosses from Belgium, which is Belgium. Italo Yeah. Which is Italy.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:35:00]:
Italy. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:35:01]:
And this one, you you only have how many bosses do you have? You only have 1. Don't even talk to me. Those guys everywhere. So, like, Brooklyn Yeah. A lot of beanie guys are here. I I know. So, like, when I hear their names you know? Like, I met somebody even in boot camp, and she had a beanie name. And when I was like, hey.

Raphael Harry [01:35:19]:
Hi. How are you? Where are you from? She's like, Jamaica. I was like, girl, you're talking to the wrong person. You have no names. So where where where in Jamaica do they have Osanubu Osage or Osawo? And she's like, what? She's like, wow. You know that name? Well, actually, my my dad didn't raise me. My mom did. My mom's from Jamaica.

Raphael Harry [01:35:37]:
I said, alright. Understood. I I get it. They I'm not I'm not trying to

Baudelaire Ceus [01:35:41]:
from Benin.

Raphael Harry [01:35:42]:
But you you're from Benin. I I know. She's like, wow. Can you tell me more? I said, later on, I will. So Yeah. Alright. Absolutely. Oh, man.

Raphael Harry [01:35:51]:
We went way over time, but we got we got a part 2 because I didn't get to ask you a whole lot of fun question. We got carried away on a tangent. But

Baudelaire Ceus [01:35:58]:
All good. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:35:59]:
Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:35:59]:
I got it.

Raphael Harry [01:36:00]:
Before but before we wrap up officially, I gotta ask you one fun question because, I did I did it. I got carried away on this one. So it's my I I take the blame. But

Baudelaire Ceus [01:36:12]:
No worries.

Raphael Harry [01:36:15]:
From your travels, what's your favorite cuisine that you've had? You gotta pick 1 and deny the rest so that we get some controversy here.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:36:31]:
Okay. That's a good question. Like, like, my favorite meal I had specifically in Ghana. Our second day there, we had this fried fish, and I believe it was jollof, Ghanaian jollof.

Raphael Harry [01:36:57]:
Fried fish and Ghanaian jollof. Alright. Right? That's sorry. Listeners, start writing. Get your pen. You know, I will even give you his mailing address. You don't even need to send email. I'll give you his mailing address right to him.

Raphael Harry [01:37:11]:
He picked Ghanaian jollof. So, you know, me have eaten jollof from 9 West African countries. So and then I've

Baudelaire Ceus [01:37:17]:
had Nigerian Nigerian jollof too. I had a roommate in college.

Raphael Harry [01:37:20]:
Yeah. Too late. Too late. You said you heard him. He said fried fish and Ghanaian jollof. So it's too late. That's why I told him to say one and deny the rest. He has denied every other jollof.

Raphael Harry [01:37:29]:
All of you from Senegal. Yeah. Yeah. Niger, Nigeria, Liberia, the all of you writing.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:37:37]:
All Liberian. I've had jollof from a lot of places. I'm telling you. It's true not take that.

Raphael Harry [01:37:41]:
That's why that's why I trapped him there.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:37:45]:
Yeah. Got him. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:37:46]:
But, you know, if if if you want me to pick your jollof rice, just sign up for my Patreon now. Now I won't you know, I'll pick your jollof rice. You know me you know me. So can't thank you enough for giving me your time. Oh, you are you are you a sports fan?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:03]:
Yes. Absolutely.

Raphael Harry [01:38:04]:
So you're with the Celtics?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:06]:
No. Abs actually, I'm not a fan of any of the Boston teams.

Raphael Harry [01:38:09]:
Oh, okay.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:10]:
I have I have teams. Yeah. I have teams all across. I'm a Dodgers fan. They just won this World Series today.

Raphael Harry [01:38:15]:
Wow. Well, congratulations. That that was a big surprise there. But,

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:20]:
Thank you. Thank you. Also, I'm a Knicks fan.

Raphael Harry [01:38:23]:
Wow, man. How how you go from yeah. Well, that that's a big man, you you you that's a big contradiction right there, but,

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:31]:
and and stuff And the New Orleans Saints.

Raphael Harry [01:38:32]:
New Orleans Saints. New Orleans

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:33]:
Saints on my football team.

Raphael Harry [01:38:34]:
Oh, wow. That is, if I was a betting man, I would have lost money right there.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:40]:
Yeah. Man, you also in in soccer.

Raphael Harry [01:38:42]:
Oh, god. This this guy. Yeah. Yeah. You go you go you go from up, down, up, down. The the graph is just as well, I mean, well

Baudelaire Ceus [01:38:50]:
The Knicks keep me humble, man.

Raphael Harry [01:38:52]:
Oh, well, I guess. I guess. I guess. So yeah. Yeah. But you you gotta you gotta have a team on the continent, man. You gotta have a team on the continent for for Afcon. I'm going to Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:39:00]:
The next Afcon in Morocco. So

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:03]:
you should Okay. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:39:04]:
You should.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:04]:
Oh, you're go you're going to Morocco for it? Yeah. Oh, wow. When is it? December 2025. Oh. Yeah. I'll see what I could do.

Raphael Harry [01:39:15]:
Yeah. May maybe we'll create a new podcast, you know, or something. That that that's a dream.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:19]:
December 20 okay. Dope.

Raphael Harry [01:39:21]:
Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:21]:
That's a that's that sounds like it's gonna be a great time.

Raphael Harry [01:39:24]:
It's always a great time. That's my bucket list, So that's it. I have to keep saying it so that I'll go.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:29]:
Is it in, like, Marrakesh?

Raphael Harry [01:39:31]:
Everywhere in Morocco. Morocco has lots of stadiums, so they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna flex on everybody.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:38]:
They're Yeah. Of course.

Raphael Harry [01:39:39]:
They're gonna flex because they they should have hosted 2015. It didn't happen. So they they they're gonna start because they'll be hosting the the one of the cohosts for 20 30 World Cup. So yeah. Oh, yes. They've been robbed a few times. Yeah. So it's it's about time to get their World Cup finally.

Raphael Harry [01:39:55]:
So

Baudelaire Ceus [01:39:56]:
yeah. Okay. Alright, man. Well, I'll I'll I'll see you there.

Raphael Harry [01:40:00]:
Yeah. Great. And, final question, what would you like to leave the audience with? It's your freestyle moment. Go.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:40:09]:
Okay. I would say check out my episodes of Atlas Obscura, again, at bow nose.com, b a u k n o w s. Atlas Obscura generally is a great podcast, so you could just subscribe to it on all your podcast platforms.

Raphael Harry [01:40:25]:
I agree. It's a

Baudelaire Ceus [01:40:26]:
lot of producers that contribute, and all of us make great episodes. But my episodes are just concerning the African diaspora. So if that's your thing, you could go to my website for that. And, yeah, man. You know, like I said before, you know, we're African people are doomed unless we, share in our problems and our successes. You know? So if you are of the African diaspora and you're hearing this, you know, gotta expand your pride a bit. You know? These nations and these flags, we created our colonial concepts to some extent. True.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:41:06]:
And we didn't choose these borders

Raphael Harry [01:41:09]:
Mhmm.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:41:10]:
In in Africa. And in the Caribbean, we didn't choose where we went to. We didn't choose the boat destination. So I I am, of course, proud to be Haitian as I'd expect you to be proud to be Nigerian. We could be proud, but our pride can only go so far. We should be proud to be Africans because before there was such a thing as a Nigeria or such a thing as a Haiti, I was an African.

Raphael Harry [01:41:32]:
Technically, I'm I I I rarely say I'm proud to be Nigerian, but I'm I'm proud to be African. I'm proud to be an Ijo man. Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:41:38]:
Ijo. Ijo man. Yeah. Exactly.

Raphael Harry [01:41:40]:
Oh, I well, that's the thing. Love for all Africans. All Africans. Absolutely. Because, I've never met an African, who say, oh, you you you were born in Nigeria, so I don't like you. That kind of thing. It's totally online. That kind of stuff happens to me.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:41:54]:
That is only online. Exactly.

Raphael Harry [01:41:56]:
Everybody has shown me love. And I mean, in food, especially, that's that's why hey. You know? I'm a foodie. So, it's why I always you know, if I meet somebody online, they say Pan African. I always run away from them because it's always my only my part of African accounts. You know, nobody else. And I that's why I find it weird because I don't know if they understand the word, Pan African. But, Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:42:19]:
I I I'm Wait.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:42:21]:
What do you you mean, like, you're saying, like, the, the you don't understand the Pan African?

Raphael Harry [01:42:26]:
No. Most people who I've met online who keeps saying that they're fine as Pan African. You know? And they always when when I start talking to them, it's always, oh, my this is my part of Africa. What I want for Africa is only me and my Africa. Uh-huh. Like, why is it calling yourself Pan African if it's this? Yeah. Not all

Baudelaire Ceus [01:42:46]:
the countries are not a real Pan African.

Raphael Harry [01:42:47]:
It's not everybody in Africa as well. They want people in Africa who gonna benefit. Okay. Well, I'm not

Baudelaire Ceus [01:42:53]:
I guess

Raphael Harry [01:42:53]:
I'm not for you. Bye. I have to go. Yeah. See you.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:42:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a I would say that that's a that's a that's not a real Pan African.

Raphael Harry [01:43:01]:
That that's that's why I I I just I just walk away from them, and it's, it's a red flag to me now because Yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:43:07]:
A 100%. I I I consider myself a a Pan African above all else, but I would say that also, you know, I embrace the diversity in Africa.

Raphael Harry [01:43:15]:
It has you have

Baudelaire Ceus [01:43:16]:
to.

Raphael Harry [01:43:16]:
You can't it's a diverse continent. It's a diverse place.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:43:19]:
It's like I wouldn't say

Raphael Harry [01:43:20]:
Well, if you don't eat, like, the last story I give my crew, the leader of my crew in used to say, you can't be a true African if you're a little if you don't love big women, women with big butts. And at first, we all agreed with him until we found out that the woman he loved the most he was in love with was the skinniest woman on our on our street. And that created a lot of confusion, like, hey, man. This is not the rule you gave us. So what does that make you? You're not African or what? There's diversity You know, you can't be saying that one one size fits all for all of us. Yeah. We have albinos. We have dark skin.

Raphael Harry [01:44:02]:
We have Nigerians who are who look like people from Afghanistan. They've been in Nigeria for, like, 3000 years. They they master the sun. They're from the northernmost part of the country. But if you're using skin color Yeah. We can't their eyes are, brown. Some have green eyes. I don't know.

Raphael Harry [01:44:17]:
I don't do the sign. I can't the science is crazy, but hey. So it's wild. But we'll we'll talk about that, man. We'll talk about that. But Absolutely.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:44:27]:
That would well, we'll get more into that in the part 2.

Raphael Harry [01:44:29]:
Oh, yeah. Well, man, we're gonna have a part 3 and 4 with you. It's it's it's yeah. Absolutely.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:44:35]:
I got time. So, yeah, let me know.

Raphael Harry [01:44:37]:
So please check out this podcast. I can't recommend it enough. I'm looking forward to your new project and your book. Yeah. I gotta get that book too. So as my people say, for coming on the show. I like collecting thank you. Do you know how to say thank you in your Creole?

Baudelaire Ceus [01:44:54]:
Well, it's it's Merci.

Raphael Harry [01:44:55]:
Merci. Okay. Like French. French. Yeah. So yeah.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:44:57]:
Merci. Messi. Yeah.

Raphael Harry [01:44:59]:
Merci. Merci.

Baudelaire Ceus [01:45:03]:
Thank you very much.

Raphael Harry [01:45:04]:
Okay. So Yeah. Yeah. So appreciate you always and we'll see you at the next one. And keep the support coming in. Listeners, share with your friends. Check out our merch and donation options. Thanks for being a part of our journey.

Raphael Harry [01:45:17]:
Thanks for listening to White Label American. If you enjoy the show, please give it a 5-star review on your favorite podcast app. You can follow the show on all social media platforms. Visit the White Label American website for links to donations, episodes, feedback, guests, merch, and the newsletter. Thank you for the privilege of your company.