Tres Taylor and Afriye Wekandodis

[00:02] TRES TAYLOR: My name is Tres Taylor and today's date is February 5th, 2025. We are located here in Selma, Alabama and I'm going to be talking to my sister, not my real sister, but my soul sister, Afriye.

[00:19] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: My name is Afriye, Wekandodis, Tres, Afriye, Wekandodis, Tres, Taylor, Afriye, Wekandodis, Tres, Taylor, Afriye, Wekandodis, StoryCorps. I am 68 years old. Today's date is February 5th, 2025. We are We are located in the magnificent, beautiful Selma, Alabama. And my relationship to my partner is, he's my friend, he's my brother, he's my soul mate.

[00:47] TRES TAYLOR: Shall we begin? You know, Afriye, I feel like right now we're in a coffee shop and it's like millions of people are eavesdropping right now. I feel so honored to be here with you. You know, I honestly think our souls were supposed to meet.

[01:11] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yes.

[01:12] TRES TAYLOR: I don't know if you feel the same way, but I have always thought that my pull to Selma had a lot to do with meeting you and, you know, my journey. Has been just kind of, I feel like, well, you have a, you call me Peter Pan, but I feel like more like Forrest Gump. But anyway, so do you remember when we met?

[01:38] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yes, yes, yes. It was behind the River Center for Humanity. You and your beautiful wife, Helene, and some other people showed up and you were eating out the back of your car, your cars. And it was in July. It was hot. I can't remember the every year. And I said, look at those people. They got to be crazy. And I opened up my back door and I said, hey, come on in here. I have air conditioning. Yeah, it's been great ever since.

[02:09] TRES TAYLOR: It has been. I feel like it was quite a few years before we actually moved down here. And I don't know if you remember, or maybe you do, but two friends from Arizona were with us, the Sazokos. And, you know, we were looking to start that museum in Birmingham at that time. And we brought them down here. But the energy of all that just sort of sealed the deal, it seemed like, how you and I were going to be friends, you know, through this journey here. And so, but I am curious. I don't think I've really ever heard and maybe you have told me this story, but how did you get here?

[03:00] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: God set me up. Yeah. My mother was born and raised here in Selma, and in 2004, she decided that she wanted to come back home. And we came here in March 2004, and I was like, Mom, are you sure this is something you want to do? And she said, Yes. So she asked about a friend that used to walk her to school when she was younger. And someone told her that he was still living. And we went to go visit him. And they were catching up on their childhood and all the things they had accomplished in life. He stops the conversation, points at me, and says to my mother, you, youngest daughter belongs down here. She has work to do.

[03:51] TRES TAYLOR: Wow.

[03:51] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: And my response, that's a crazy old man. It's the clean version. If he think I'm moving to Selma, and moved my mom here in July, dropped off at church, was in her living room, and I heard God say to me, Stay. And I said, Another clean version. Who are you talking to? There's no way I'm moving here. Now, I'm one of those people who always say, I need a sign. So I said to God, well, give me a sign. If you really want me to move here, give me a sign. He said, Go to Walmart. And I did. And what I was looking for, because I really love who God created me to be, I love being this beautiful Black woman. And I was looking for people who celebrate our culture. And when I went to Walmart in the parking lot was this beautiful lady with long locks. Dressed in Afriye clothing. I introduced myself to her. She invited me to a program that Monday. When I went to the program, I'm sitting in the audience. The presenter points at me and says, Hey, come up here and help me with my PowerPoint. And as I'm on my way to the podium, I'm saying to God, this is not funny. I don't think-- I don't know what you think you're doing. But this is not funny to me at all, right? And after the program, the lady who I met in the park, made an announcement that I was moving here. So I said to myself, now there's two crazy people I would stay away from whenever I come to visit my mom. Well, I went back, I actually stayed in the suburbs of Chicago, and I went back home and I cried every day from that July to September. And during that period of crying, people were telling me I had to move here to Selma. They were saying that.

[05:48] TRES TAYLOR: People in Chicago.

[05:49] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yeah, yeah, they said. I had a calling. And my daughter's my only child, and she was like, Mom, we'll be okay. My grandchildren were four and eight years old at the time. They were saying, Nana, you gotta go. And so friends from all walks of life, everybody's saying, you, gotta go. You gotta go. And so I'm crying almost every day. The last Wednesday or Thursday of 2004, I just said, God, I surrender. I surrender. But give me one more sign.

[06:25] TRES TAYLOR: You drive a hard bargain.

[06:27] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: And so I'm surprised he didn't hit me with a sign. But anyway, I was told to turn on Oprah. And when I did, Drew Barrymore had did a documentary about the Voting Rights Act, and she actually came to Selma to do it. And as she's talking, they showed a picture of the Old National Voting Rights Museum. And then the face of the lady who I met in the park-- Wow. --went across the screen.

[06:57] TRES TAYLOR: I'm getting chills.

[06:58] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: And that was Faye Ross Tres, the founder of the National Voting Rights Museum. And the Enslavement Museum and the Jubilee Bloody Sunday Commemoration. And so with that, I said, Hey, I'm on my way. I don't have a lot of material things. But a lot of things I still couldn't bring here. And I think I ended up with like maybe three suitcases. And after I bought my Greyhound bus ticket, I had $20 to my name, but I was determined. I was really determined to be obedient to what God was telling me to do. And on the bus ride was 26 hours long. And a four hour layover in Kentucky. And so I'm looking at this $20. I'm like, well, I gotta make it last. And what was so amazing, people were coming up to me saying they knew I was on a mission. A minister prayed for me. Somebody bought me something to eat. And so everybody was just like, They knew something was going on. And so when you said, like, Forrest Gump, that's how I see myself sometimes. I'm like Forrest Gump, Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, because I say, I gotta have that soul and a little bit of the matrix, because I never know what's gonna happen, but I'm open to it. And so when I arrived to Selma, I prayed and I fasted for about three or four days. Before I went to go see anyone. And finally, I went to the National Voting Rights Museum, and out of my $20, I paid my admission. And just as I was leaving out of that museum, I said, I heard you had a slavery museum. And I was told it was closed. I said, oh, I was hoping to see it, but before I can get out of the door, the tour guide, Sam Walker, said, I'll take you down there. And the moment I walked through the doors, I knew why I was here. And it wasn't for me to go, I came here to run your museum. I'm going to do this and that. It was about how could I be of service, right? So I volunteered. And there were days that I go in there, I know I was looking cute, being all my African clothing. Just beautiful as far as I'm concerned. And God, Queen. And God would say to me, go clean the bathroom. And they were like, we got a janitor. You don't have to do that. But again, it was about being of service. And even that first day when I went in and paid my admission out of the same, my last twenty dollars, the receptionist, when I came back, she said, I'm taking you out for dinner. No, I'm a cook dinner. For you at my house. Never met this lady before. So she said, We got to go grocery shopping. We went to the grocery store. She said, Get whatever you want. I'm like, She said, I know you like ice cream. So she's giving me groceries as well. So we go to her house and we're talking and it felt like when I met you, a familiar spirit. So she said, Look, it's late. I got an extra bedroom. Going in, you can go to bed. I said, Look, I feel very comfortable with you. And I am in my 40s. But honey, if I don't show up at my mama house, the police gonna be here. Because first thing she's gonna say, you don't know these people, right? But isn't it nice that when you meet some people, you know, right? And so I did end up being the tour guide at the Enslavement Museum. And then eventually I became the director. Of that museum for, oh, I think until 2007, I was there as a director. Then I went back as an independent contractor. And then in 2011, I opened up by the river center for humanity.

[11:25] TRES TAYLOR: Yeah.

[11:25] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yeah.

[11:26] TRES TAYLOR: I really want to explore that, but I wanted to just jump back one more place back in Chicago. So you studied theater?

[11:36] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: No.

[11:36] TRES TAYLOR: Are you?

[11:37] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: No. I have always been in family entertainment.

[11:40] TRES TAYLOR: Okay. Well, I can see how. But you did have a bookstore.

[11:48] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: I had an Afrocentric bookstore called Valerie's Motherland Connection located in Bellwood, Illinois.

[11:55] TRES TAYLOR: And there was something that happened there that there's a story that you've told me about another sign. Do you remember that? It was your mother, you went home, I'm trying to remember, it's something about somebody came to the door.

[12:15] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Oh, so that story is, so I opened up this bookstore.

[12:21] TRES TAYLOR: And just to clarify, wasn't this all tied in at the same time?

[12:26] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: No, years before, years before. But I had, We're at this-- I'm at the store, and they started doing road construction in front of my store. And there were days, even though I stayed, like, around the corner from it, there were days I couldn't get to my own store. And people started telling me, oh, how you're going to make it? But God kept saying, Everything is okay, right? And I started listening to people, especially people who never bought anything from me, right? And I kept looking out the window. How am I going to make it? How am I going to make it? And so, God told me, he said, you, got to close up. I'm like, what? You took your eyes off the vision, and because she took your eyes off the vision, I can't use you here anymore. And so I'm like, oh, okay, right. Let me try looking at it again. And so, was running out my money. And a professor came, originally from Ghana. He was teaching at Tres and college, and he saw the Black Bookstore, and he was determined that he was going to teach this history at this white college. Right? So he came in and put it in a large book order.

[13:51] TRES TAYLOR: Wow.

[13:52] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Okay. And I'm like, this is going to turn everything around for me. And some kept saying, don't do it. Order those books. So I took the last of my savings and put in his order. And he was supposed to pick them up in about a week and a half. Well, I didn't hear anything from him, so I started calling. And I'm leaving a message, pretty soon it's like, Please.

[14:19] TRES TAYLOR: Come get your book.

[14:20] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Please, please come get your book. And so the day of nothing, and I was like, oh my God, oh my God. And I went home. It was a family home, and no one was at home. And there's something about when you need your mama, right? Even though I'm grown, I found myself in the middle of my mom's bed, crawled up, and crying, but asking God to forgive me. I heard the voice of God saying that this was not a punishment, right? And I felt God holding me and whispered, this is my promise to you. You're going to rise again like the Phoenix. I promise you, you will rise again. Like a phoenix, but you got to close the store down. So I went back to the store, started telling people in two weeks I was going to be closing up. Two or three weeks I'll be closing the store. And so that night I'm in the, and plus I had a culture center too. It was a store and a culture center. So I'm in a culture center part and I heard somebody knocking on the window. And it was October, it was dark outside, it was about 8 o'clock at night. And I motioned for them to come over to the bookstore. And when I opened up the door, this man says to me, oh my God, a Black bookstore in Bellwood. And I said, yeah, brother, but I'm going to be closing in about two weeks. And he says to me, Don't worry, my sister, you will rise again like the phoenix. And when he said that, I grabbed him and I said, I know who you are. You are angel. And he just said, he said, you're going to be okay. I promise you you're going to be okay. And he, and he's, he told me, he said, I'll be back in a couple of weeks to check on you. And he did. He came back and he asked, he said, well, how are you? I said, well, my heart is breaking. He said, okay, okay. He said, well, you eat cereal? I said, yeah. He said, Can I bless you with a box of cereal? I said, okay. So he went out to the truck to get the cereal. And I look up and I said to God, oh, you just gone too far now. Now you got me taking cereal from people, right? And so when the man came back in, he had a big box of cereal. And, you know, they used to sell those little mini boxes of cereal. And so this big box was filled with 240 boxes of cereal. Many Frosted Flakes, my favorite cereal. And so I was like, oh, my God, to me, God was saying to me, this was, in a sense, my man, manner, and that at least I have a meal for the next 240 days, right? And he gave, and a brother also gave me this beautiful card. That he had created. And so we hugged and he told me, he said, you're gonna be okay. So when he left out, I thought about a lot of single mothers. So I started calling people up, sharing this cereal with people. And I kept some for myself. But to this day, on my altar, in a little treasure box, it's a small box of Frosted Flakes from that man to remind me that God is great, right? And God is. Provider and always keeps his, their promise by him.

[18:22] TRES TAYLOR: That's the thing. I'm so honestly, so the thing that I admire so much, I admire so many things about you, but one of the things that I really admire about you is this courageous spiritual kind of, I don't know what you call it, you have this courageousness about you. And you live- that's called crazy.

[18:47] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: It's okay.

[18:49] TRES TAYLOR: It's all right. You know, they always put them out on the outside of the village, but when they need some healing, they go.

[18:56] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yes. Right?

[19:00] TRES TAYLOR: I was gonna say, you know, a shaman or a healer, but we don't have to go that far.

[19:04] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Oh, no.

[19:09] TRES TAYLOR: But honestly, what I'm really trying to get to is this incredible Faith, this, just like this Faith that you have. There's a, there's an expression I heard recently or a quote. I can't remember who said it, but it's, everything's gonna be okay in the, in the end. Everything's going to be okay. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. And you, you live that kind of like, I just see you have this. This, this Spirit about you that just, you really live, it seems to me, in the present. And I want to tie that into what you do at the, by the River Center for Humanity, which is dealing with the past, but in the present, you know, you, can you tell us a little bit about that, how it got started and, If you could just give us, not necessarily an example of what that is, because the experience is so profound and in many ways life changing. It certainly has been for me to watch and experience it. But something in your life called you to do this work. And I'm just curious if you could tell us about that.

[20:36] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Well, see this is why I'm gonna give you a black eye when we leave.

[20:45] TRES TAYLOR: We can always add it in.

[20:47] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: So our relationship is, Tres sort of pushed me out. I've been trying to hide about whether all I do or what I'm really blessed to do. I want to say, even as a young child, There's something that I always knew that my calling was to remind my people of their greatness. I'm blessed that my ancestors trust me to tell their story. And it's all through love. When I was 11 years old, living in projects Henry Hony projects on the west side of Chicago. And it was a summer day, and I can remember laying on the hood of a car, and I just felt this energy. It was incredible. And I looked at my skin, and I started falling in love with me. It was that energy, I would never forget it. It made me look around my community and I looked at my people and I just started falling in love with them, no matter what they did or didn't do in life. In that moment, I knew I had to remind them how beautiful they were. And so that's how I came to be. But really, before then, according to my family, I was always a giver, right? And a server. That's what I want to say. Because even as a child, they say I would go to family members, clean it up. Either that I was serving or I was remembering I was a slave, I don't know, a maid or something. But I always felt If I went somewhere, I had to make it better. Right? One of my favorite pictures, and I can't, I remember seeing of myself, I was about maybe two years old in a pair of underwears, but I had a broom and a dustpan on my way to clean somebody's house. So this need, this desire to serve, to be of service, has always been with me. And I just wanted us to know our story and how great we were. And that's how I sort of got into the bookstore. It was an accident, because one of the things I always thought I would have is my own greeting card business, because I write poetry as well. And I saw this guy at a Black Women Expo in Chicago, and he was selling greeting cards, Black Greeting Cards, and he had Black books. And so I was trying to get close to him so I could get the information on greeting cards, but I kept being pulled to the books. And finally I said, why don't you sell more books? And he told me, There's no money in this, right? And before I knew it, I was selling books. And a spirit went over me. I'm working at the United States Postal Service. I started taking the books to work. I started giving classes and it kept fitting in. I lost my mind.

[24:31] TRES TAYLOR: I don't think so.

[24:32] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: But I was a good worker, you know. So I think they said, well, whatever she's going through, it'll be all right. I have books all on the table. I'm giving history. I got a Tony Brown. Tape in a cassette. People coming to me here. And I can remember even giving books to people. And it's one guy gave him this book. I think the name of it was, they stole it. We must return it by Tony Bradel. And I just gave it to him. I said, hey, brother, read it. And when you get through, bring it back to me. He came back a couple weeks later, and he said, do you notice anything different about me? And there was something different about him. And I said, you got a new haircut, new clothes, you trying to figure out. And he said, I'm standing up straighter. Okay. And that's when the calling was.

[25:26] TRES TAYLOR: Yes.

[25:27] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yeah.

[25:28] TRES TAYLOR: So you've been called.

[25:30] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yes.

[25:30] TRES TAYLOR: And you heard it.

[25:31] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yeah.

[25:32] TRES TAYLOR: A lot of people are called. We're all called, I think. I believe that. But many of us either don't answer the call, don't really hear it with all the distractions and everything. Was the By the River Center for Humanity a calling?

[25:50] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Almost definitely. In 2003, I had the honor of taking care of a friend, her journey, her end of life journey. And the day she made her transition, I went over to my daughter's house, cooling out, We were watching a movie, well, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins with Martin Lawrence in it. Good movie, all right. But it's at the end of the movie, part of the soundtrack was this song. Some of the lyrics were, is, By the River, where Black folks gather after church on a Sunday afternoon. And that song hit me in my heart. I just started crying, boohooing, and I can't rewind the DVD to go back to the song. My daughter rolling her eyes at me, but I couldn't stop crying. And then I said to God, I went into a covenant with God, and I promised God if I ever open up another business, even if it was in a desert, I would call it by the river. I had no idea. I was moving to Selma in 2004. I had no idea in 2007 that the owner of the building that we're in would stop me on the street and say to me, you, need your own place to do the work. It was said to do. And I would tell people, but we didn't open up until 2011. And the reason for that, I used to tell folks that it was because because I didn't have any money. Well, I still don't have no money, Tres. But the truth is, oh, God, I was taken care of. But the truth was, it wasn't a matter of money. I didn't have the faith. And so finally, a friend from Chicago came down. I said, this man keep bothering me about this space. She said, Let's go see it. And when we walked in, she said, I think you should do it. Well, it took me a couple more months to say, okay, okay. And I called the landlord up, and he waived two months' security the first month. He said, if you come in here and clean up, hey. And I did. And so on March 28, 2011, when I was waiting for my first tour to come, I went to go open up the overhead door in the back of the building, and I remember the covenant. I had forgotten what I said to God. And when I went to let the doors up, and I realized I had been by the river, down there on the riverfront for years, but I had forgotten the covenant. And when I opened up the overhead door, I remember, I said, Ah! By the River. And so By the River Center for Humanity is for all people, right? And I can do this work because I love me and because I fell in love with my people, then I can say I love all people, right? And it's always about being of service. I believe not when we show up, we show up to be of service. Not a saver. Right, right. Yeah. So I'm glad. Share a little bit about what that says. Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. We say it's a mixed use facility. We do. One of the main, main thing we do there is called Soul Prince of ourselves and our ancestor. Ancestors, and it's an interactive experience where people think they're coming to see a performance, but I know they're part of the work. So the thing is, the reenactment is anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes. It depends on the people. It's an emotional ride where your experience, I take on the role of the overseer, meet people outside in that spirit, in that environment, the men are separated from the women. You're told you can no longer make eye contact. We march you down to the river where we do a form of what we call the Willie Lynch Syndrome. Willie Lynch was an enslaver originally from England who had plantations in the West Indies. Developed this technique that he guaranteed would last four to five hundred years. So the United States invited him here to do it. And it was simple. Turn them against each other. Right? And if we can get people to the point where they don't trust each other, you can control them. Right? And so-- Sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. Nothing is new under the sun. Right? So if you do your research, they said you'll find that Willie Lynch was not actually a person. It was more like a system, like Jim Crow. Right? And so during this experience, we do turn people against each other. Each other. They have to decide as a group who they're going to get rid of. It's very emotional. It's a roller coaster of not trusting not only other people, you get to the point you don't trust yourself. And then when you come into the building, we have a replica of a slave ship. You go through the Miller Passage where we give you an idea of what those enslaved Afriye Africans went through. But we also talk about we make them human. We talk about their strength. That even in a time like that, that those who enslaved them would justify their reason for doing so is that these people were not human. If they saw them as being human, they say they did not believe in God. And I agree. No, my ancestors did not believe in God. They knew God. To go through that, to still call out to a Creator, to still dream or have the hope that even if you would not know freedom again, that someday your children's children would be free, if that's not a personal relationship with God, I don't know what it is. And then I turned to the mother searching for her children. And that's a very emotional piece for people because she's asking people, Will you help me find my babies? And then she admitted at some point, she doesn't even know what they look like anymore. And from that mother searching for her children, I become the sage, the sage who I love so, I mean, she's powerful because she has shackles on. She's 80 years old, and she talks about how free she is because they couldn't put shackles on her mind, her heart, her spirit, and her dreams, right? And then from there, she challenged people because she says to you, she sees your shackles, they're invisible, but you have them. And she asks, Are you really free? And she leaves you with these questions. Every morning when you wake up, ask yourself, How are you going to use your freedom? How are you going to be of service? And every night ask yourself, how did you use your freedom? Or perhaps you need to ask who auction block you stood on and why you choose to see so little value in what God says about you. And so we do a debriefing and even though it's heavy, people leave out there celebrating because we talk about how we, the people, have the power and the responsibility to make humanity better. We the people. Right. And so. And we do a healing ceremony and all that good stuff and everything. But I'm just grateful that I'm able to do this work. I thank you because you're encouraging me, kicking me to step up as a Healer. When you did that mural. And you were telling people that you based that on my spirit. I wanted to hide. You know how I gave you that look that day? But it was like, yeah, and I'm glad to do this work with you. We all are showing up and using the gifts that God blessed us with to make a difference in this world. To save anybody that I don't fight for anything. I stand. I stand for love, peace and justice. I don't see love as a weapon, but a tool. Right? And I'm just, I'm hopeful. I know what I know and I know it. That in spite of what's going on, that we're okay. Not that we're going to be okay. We are okay.

[35:34] TRES TAYLOR: You know, watching the work you do.

[35:37] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Is.

[35:39] TRES TAYLOR: It'S honestly, I really am astounded. I've seen it twice, I think, and I'm astounded at how what happens. You become these people.

[35:58] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: And.

[36:00] TRES TAYLOR: If anyone that's listening and has experience, they'll know what I'm talking about. But when I sit here and talk to you right now, you know, you're the sweet, lovely, fun Afriye, but then these, it's almost like these spirits are coming through you.

[36:20] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: And people say, I always want to know what acting school, how long did I go to, how long I've been a I'm a former and I say I channel. And even with that, when I do the overseer, people are like, oh my God. And I said, well, could that not be one of my ancestors? Right, right. That wants to do this work of healing now, right? Yeah. So I'm grateful. And each experience, people actually create their own experience. And I've been doing this since 2005, and it's been incredible. And every time I think I'm done, I'm getting a little too seasoned. It's freezing more to do the work.

[37:06] TRES TAYLOR: I don't know if we're going to have time, but there's one last thing I wanted to mention, which is, first of all, the work you do is healing. I mean, it is. It heals. It has this massive impact on groups of people, and it's really incredibly healing. I think our country could go through something similar. But the last thing I want to ask you about is the building that you have this center in was at one time a place where slaves were held.

[37:37] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Well, in that block, now I found out that we're not the original building. Well, I'm still doing research because some said yes and some research said no. But that whole block in Selma on Water Avenue from the Edmund Pettus Bridge all the way down to Martin Luther King Street was the slave District, the auction block district.

[38:00] TRES TAYLOR: Fourth largest.

[38:01] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Yes, yes. So at one point, Selma was the fourth largest holder of enslaved Afriye, not in just Alabama, in the United States. And so we're right by the river where hundreds, thousands of enslaved Afriye were brought up to be sold on Water Avenue. The two anchor buildings on the block that I'm in at the 1300 block on Water Avenue. Actually, there's proof where they had slave pins and auction blocks there. My dream is to have something, a marker, talking about this history. I think it's empowering. It would be healing for our community to have that history. I would love to see a park with the statues of enslaved Africans, but with waterfalls, fountains, and just a place of peace that all of humanity can come to.

[39:06] TRES TAYLOR: Last thing I want to say, I think that you are giving voice to the people who didn't have a chance to voice themselves, and that's we're talking about generations.

[39:19] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: I believe any work we do, we're not only healing the present, but we're going seven generations back and seven generations forward. And so to be that vessel, to be chosen, but not only that, I choose to be chosen at times. It's an honor. Yeah. It's an honor.

[39:39] TRES TAYLOR: Well, it's an honor to sit here with you.

[39:41] AFRIYE WEKANDODIS: Thank you, Peter Pan. And, yeah.