♫ His Music Will Live ForEver ♫

shannonjai:

This is one of my favorite memories Jermaine Jackson shared in his book ‘You Are Not Alone Michael:Through A Brother’s Eyes’. After shedding some sad tears during the last couple chapters, this story brought some happy ones along with a smile! It’s a bit long, but I think you will enjoy it. :)

- In January 2011, Halima and I traveled to Senegal to visit some old friends. One day, we drove three hours away from the city to a village in the middle of a dusty nowhere where a community lived in clay huts with no water, no electricity, no nothing. As we arrived, so did some guy on a wagon loaded with yellow canisters carrying the villages water supply. But the kids didn’t chase that vehicle, they chased ours. Dozens of children ran alongside us, waving and laughing. That day I learned a lot: those people were happy and joyful without material possessions or expectations. Apparently they knew little about the outside world, but they had their community, each other and family and that was all that mattered. As far as they were concerned, I was just another black man, but one dressed in smart clothes and visiting from America. My name was Jermaine and my wife was Halima. That was how we were introduced.

We were led into a hut, where we met the village sage: 97-year old man with skin wizened like leather and only patches of white hair left on his head. His name was Waleef and he moved real slow, but he was the head of the village and what he said went. We stepped into his tiny place: it had a concrete floor and one raised mattress on a wooden frame, with four poles in the corners and a mosquito net. The flies were coming in and out, yet that man and his two elderly friends, were sitting down, untroubled. He took my hand and invited me to sit. He read my palm and told me I was going to have a long life, then said a prayer as he traced every line in my hand. He reached under his bed, took out a pan, mixed the contents of four plastic bottles with some oil and sand, then started to rub it into my face and hair. Now nobody touches my hair-nobody-but this man was allowed to, because I felt nothing negative from him as he mumbled and closed his eyes. “What is he saying?” I asked Kareem, our friend who had taken us there.

“He’s blessing you, and wishing you a good and safe onward journey.” I was told.

Halima, out of random curiosity, said,”Ask Waleef if he’s ever heard of Barack Obama.”

It drew a blank expression and our host was unmoved.

“Ask him if he’s ever heard of Michael Jackson.” she said.

Kareem relayed the question in the native tongue and the man started nodding and talking. “Yes! He knows Michael Jackson.”

“Wait”, I said. ”He’s heard of my brother? Out here?”

The sage took his hands off my head, placed them together as in prayer and said two words of English:”Michael….Jackson.”

The two men either side of him were nodding, and one asked Kareem a question. “Yes!” he replied. “This is Michael Jackson’s brother.” At that, a teenage boy who had been standing in the doorway rushed off. A few minutes later, I heard a gaggle of children getting giddy, jumping up and down. When I walked outside, there must have been 50 of them and more were coming out from behind the huts to swarm around me. They started to shout my brothers name: “MICHAEL JACKSON! MICHAEL JACKSON! MICHAEL JACKSON!” How was it possible that they knew of him in a place so detached from the modern world, without television? Kareem explained they sat around the rare, crackling radio.

My eyes filled with tears: this was innocence, purity-this was what Michael was all about, and he had penetrated the most primitive, most remote of places. It blew me away, because those people had no preconceived ideas that would have tainted him for them. They knew Michael only as an incredible human being, an entertainer- and that is how the world should remember him-that is what he deserves.

I sat down to write this book two weeks after that visit, because it is important to me that people the world over understand who Michael was, what his legacy is, and how his time on earth was spent. I couldn’t have been more motivated to write after walking into that village, where I didn’t need to explain who he was or defend him. Those Africa children already knew his name, and the sound of it lit up their faces.

Halima threw me a bag of candy and I stood in the middle of the mêlée to hand it out. It was amazing to see the excitement that a piece of candy could bring. I remembered Michael standing at our back fence in Gary giving out candy to the kids in the neighborhood who were less fortunate. And now here I was in an African community that perfectly illustrated what he had been about all his life, surrounded by his “We Are The World” children, who had nothing but love to give and joy on their faces as they shouted,

“MICHAEL JACKSON! MICHAEL JACKSON!”

That is the power of what he achieved. That is his legacy. That’s my brother. - ♥