wahala

Mom's best advice to me growing up was to 'kill 'em with kindness'. She would explain that most people find it really difficult to be mean/rude/condescending to you if you are sincerely nice to them. Many decades later, and it still holds true.

Back in 2008, when Obama became president, one of our black neighbors started acting rude toward us. They even went so far as to put up a tall fence between our properties.

We had already been neighbors for over 5 years prior to this, and on very friendly terms. We were quite surprised at this change in attitude, and really couldn't figure out why. The only thing that had changed was the president. We were not deterred, and keeping mama's advice in mind, we continued to chip away and be the nice neighbors we have always been. We would bring them fresh food when it came our way and share items from our garden. They begrudgingly started to come around.

Twelve years later and we are still neighbors, and now are back to being just as friendly as ever. In fact, probably more so in the last year or two. We even split costs on some tree removal to our mutual benefit. To this date, we really are not sure what caused the rift, but our continued, relentless kindness healed that rift, and we are good friends now.