Such a Big World for a Little Girl

By Lulu Bimbo

A story about a little girl who fought through adversity to get where she is today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781458346698

Book preview

1) Big journeys for a little girl

2) The path out of suffering leads through it

3) The book of Richard

4) Miracles are all around us

My name is Lulu and I am a seventh generation psychic. My people are said to have come from North

India hundreds of years ago. Since we left that faraway country, we are said to have lived as

strangers in strange lands. We were travelers and skilled handworkers, nomads and wanderers, but to

this day, we collectively remember that we come from culture. We have roamed the world but stuck

together, guarding our community and our deep faith through countless trials and tribulations. We

speak a tongue that only we understand. This is what my mother taught me, as her mother taught her.

The words are all we have because we have no book of our own and for a long time, most of us did

not know how to read or write. Throughout history, we have been blamed and shunned, discriminated

against and exterminated at many horrible turns of history and yet, we have stayed true to our

beliefs. We have been chased from lands, mistrusted, ill-treated, even enslaved for centuries. We

have traditionally not been able to read and write, but we are unparalleled in our knowledge of

human nature and have a rich oral tradition of storytelling. Our history is reflected in our

language which is like a beautiful necklace of words gathered from tongues all over the world. It

sounds like Italian to some, like Romanian to some, like Sanskrit to some and like Greek to others.

We are the original entrepreneurs, selling our wares all over the world, long before the word,

Entrepreneur was coined. Only one thing has remained constant with us, through the centuries-

persecution.

I ask myself, why has so much hatred been directed towards us? Was I not born in the United States?

Am I not an American citizen, same as anyone else? So, why is there so much prejudice against me

and my kind? I wanted my children to learn how to read and write and be educated. But, when we

tried to put our worries of bullying and discrimination aside and send our kids to school, they would kick

them out as soon as they learned of our nationality, by which I mean our cultural identity. My kids used

to be harassed on the school bus, in the school yard and every opportunity in between. I taught my

children to be proud of who they are. It would never occur to us in a million years for them to deny

their heritage and nationality, and why should  they? Are they a lesser human because they come from

our culture? Do they not deserve an education?

For my whole life, I have sought answers from my country for why I have spent a whole life being

discriminated. Yet, the government does not care. Why? Am I not an American, born in this country

like millions of my fellow citizens? Yes, I am. So, why have I been made to feel like a lesser

being my entire life? Why has so much vitriol been directed at my children, my innocent grandbabies

even?

See, different does not mean dangerous.

It has broken my heart time and again that my country does not count me as a full person and it

does not give me the rights a natural born citizen of this land should have.

To my grandparents, the United States was a place of refuge from the relentless persecution they

faced in Europe, a new homeland where they could live with freedom and without persecution, just

like so many other religions and cultures did all around them. All they wanted was a chance to

exhale and not have to hold their breath in, every waking moment. They simply wanted to be left in

peace, to observe their customs and their faith. But, that was too big an ask to make of the world

around us.

Do our people keep at arm's length from those who don't come from culture as we do? Yes, we do. We

had to, to stay alive, throughout the many centuries of wandering our people have been subject to.

But, it was also that we were kept out- kept out of villages, driven out of churches, escorted out

of shops, prevented from drawing water from the village well and attacked in our own beds and in

our own homes, more times than I have drawn breath and too tiresome to recount. We have no way of

writing down these things, these traumas inflicted upon us as individuals and communities. So we

dust off and move on as a people. But, we are human like anyone else and we remember and we lose

sleep trying to cope and we make sure to pass on caution to our children. How else can we protect

them* Stretch a canvass cloth, battered and torn as it might be, over their heads against all of

life's tornadoes that will surely come their way?

The experiences that drove my grandparents to the U. S. of A, the horrors they witnessed in their

lifetime alone and what their parents and their parents' parents went through in Europe would curl

your fingernails if you heard but a tenth of it. The irony of it all is that in parts of Europe,

the villagers who burned down the gypsy quarter were the ones who got all the sympathy of the law

enforcement, the government, the churches, everyone. We were accused of being shiftless,

provocative, criminals, every last one of us. I ask you, if someone sets fire to my home in which I

have my family...my babies, and the state orders me to pay to compensate them for the jacket they

singed in the attack; where is the justice in this? Who is the criminal here?

Sticking to our own kind did not mean and does not mean we are criminal or anti-social. Far from

it. We see that times are changing, even for communities like ours. Technology is everywhere and

our children are seeing the same social media and video games on their phones as everyone's kids

everywhere. But, our kids are still behind in school and in gaining the degrees they need to get ahead.

They are behind in computers, all the things that they need to make decent wages in the future.

Entertainment on a smart phone is not the same as academic learning and I despair of our children ever

benefitting from the latter. Time is moving on and we have been left behind.

Bear with me, for I am an old woman and I feel as if I'm over a hundred weary years old. I sit

alone in the darkening evening and think about my people and our history, trying to make sense of

it all. If we go back in time, our entire history as a people has been one of persecution and

togetherness. Outsiders have typically been the source of the former, our traditions, language and

customs the only protection we possess. Yet, when I think of my people, my heart swells with pride.

I challenge you to show me a people with more spirit, deeper faith or more resilience. I'll give

you fair warning, it's not going to be an easy job!

We were the original entrepreneurs, centuries before the word was coined and came to be

synonymous with intermittent fasting and designer coffee. We sold our wares all over the ancient

world; across what is now called Iraq, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Middle East. Our men used to be famous

for the skill of their hands and the cleverness of their workmanship in wood and