(Excerpt of an interview with Vibert Cambridge, Georgetown, Guyana, July 28, 2007.
Professor Cambridge served in various capacities at Ohio University, in the School of Media Arts and Studies. For six years, he held the Chair of African-American Studies. He is an executive on the Guyana Cultural Association in New York.)

PP: ONE hundred and seventy-three years on, we are still coming to grips with the effects of slavery, but I feel now more than ever we are beginning to understand that situation, and what it has done to the people themselves and their descendants. Let’s discuss the reasons why we are still so embroiled in the past, starting from whence we came, and how we are dealing with the situation now.
VC: I think the first we have to do is to deal with language. Slavery connotes there’s got to be something called a slave. There is nobody who is born into this world a slave; people are enslaved, so I think that is the first position. Africans were enslaved; they were made captive for various reasons.
So, we have to get into this language distillation. The other thing about the discussion on enslavement is for us to understand the geography of enslavement, so as we can put faces to the peoples who were enslaved.
PP: Is this some sort of new scholarship? If so, let’s apply it to the Guyana situation.
VC: If we use Guyana, I may not follow a straightforward geographic or historical timeline. We refer to many Muslim people as ‘Fullaman’. A ‘Fullaman’ is a ‘Fulani’; the very first Africans who came into this region.
Then, in the early and mid-17th Century, the trade in African captives moved into what is contemporary Ghana. So we would find those to be Akan, Ashanti, Ibo, Yoruba. So, names like Cuffy or Kofi, and Akara will tell of a specific West African community. By the end of the abolition of enslavement, we moved into the period of indentureship.
PP: Was it a deliberate ploy to bring people from different areas with different skills, different languages?
VC: There are multiple theories about that: One, availability; and two, specific skills. For example, rice: The establishment of rice as an industry in the Americas is directly tied to the people of the Sene-Gambian region. On the other hand, directives were made not to import Mandingo, because they were found to be arrogant; full of pride; they resist.
Yes, there was a specificity of labour. However, in the latter period, when the trade was being suppressed by the British and the Americans, liberated Africans were placed in St. Helena, and plantation owners in Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados etc would have agents in St. Helena, suggesting to these liberated Africans not to go back to Liberia, Serra Leone, but instead to come to the Caribbean.
Guyanese writer, Professor Monica Schuler, in her important book, ‘Alas, Alas Congo’, speaks of liberated Africans coming to the Caribbean aboard ships that were bringing indentured Indians labourers.
PP:  Interesting find, that! Earlier, we discussed similarities in various cultural patterns of both groups.
VC: Yes. And hear this! You will also find Africans who were ‘jihaji bai’ too! So, in understanding the African presence as a function in the trade of African captives, you are looking, over time, at changing ethnicities as points of departure.
PP: Different peoples; various skills; changing ethnicities. Changing values too?
VC: Different and similar: Similar religious values and common linguistic roots. We must bear in mind, Africa is not a static society; it’s a huge continent where people are moving up and down. But you would find a linguistic continuity.
PP: Many of the enslaved peoples who came, they came from highly civilised, advanced societies. Many, too, were royalty; others highly regarded and respected. How were they able to deal with this transition from that lofty position to lowly slave labourer?
VC: That is difficult to answer, but in any society, you will find social classes; the leadership class is always very small. So, in wars, when people are captured and sold into enslavement, you would find some of the ruling class, and you would find some who are the working class; the foot soldiers. I would say: That is diversity.
Now to the question of how they were able to cope with work in this new space. Walter Rodney talks about enslaved Africans humanising the coast of Demerara; the coast of Guyana. He said with shovel in hand, moving over a million tons of waterlogged clay. That is serious work. So, when we look at the humanising of the coast of Guyana, we have to think of that nature of work: Tending to agriculture; that is a standard thing. The nature of the work, the conditions of work, the abusiveness of work showed that they were a people who worked very hard.
PP: Now, we have various angles from which to look at this subject: We have persons coming from various backgrounds, bringing various skills, speaking different languages. After time, what brought these peoples together? Was it a language; a common language; a language evolving through use?
VC: That is an interesting question. Information now coming out on this is how the process of the trade in African captives existed. You had, along the coast of Africa, what you called factories; big warehouses. Goree in Senegal, and El Mina in the Gold Coast, where you stored captive Africans until you had a boatload. They were coming in from all over the place, and coming in with various languages. Added to that, the coast of Africa was associated with the Dutch, Portuguese and British traders. So you have a language emerging on the coast of Africa that is a pidgin language.
PP:  So, that emergence started in Africa and developed in other lands like Guyana?
VC: Yes. Out of those encounters at the factories, a language emerged that is a mixture of Dutch, Portuguese, etc, and various African elements where it was modified, as in the Guyana situation. For instance, Dr Ian Robinson, who is at University of the West Indies in Trinidad, his work is on the Dutch-based creolese that we find up the Berbice River; I think the last speaker of that old Dutch-based creolese is found there. Then you have people like Dr Walter Edwards, who gave a talk here on reduplication in Guyanese creolese…
PP: Hilarious and thought-provoking: Eh-eh; dan-dan; din-din; one-one; lef-lef; back-back; putta-putta…
VC: There is another phenomenon we need to add to this: No language; no culture is static. And there is another phenomenon that we refer to in the Americas as re-Africanisation. There are periods of time when new African elements get into the society. For example, after the abolition of the trade in captive Africans, Guyana’s African population became essentially creole; local born, using a broken English: Creolese. Then, with indentureship, a new stream of African came to Guyana that will re-Africanise many sectors of social and cultural life. The last wave that came comprised of Angolans, Congolese, Kru from Sierra Leone.
So, when you hear people say you behave like a ‘Kru-man’, or a ‘Conga’, it’s a direct reference to that latter wave that helped to re-Africanise the society. So, scholars like Dr Gibson, Dr Kendall, these folks studied the later phase. Dr Maureen Warner-Lewis’ recent book is about the Conga presence in Guyana; about Queh-Queh in places like Ithaca.
PP: At this point of re-Africanisation, let’s shift slightly and find out how we are dealing with the effect of enslavement in our art forms and literature.
VC: Let me start by saying that enslavement was not a condition that was accepted; there is always resistance to enslavement. Our Guyanese writers/historians have written about this resistance. Professor McGowan, Professor Thompson, Professor Rose and others; this is a tradition of separating yourself, creating your own space, preserving your religion, preserving your values of honour. So, resistance to enslavement holds a dominant element in the African values. This resistance took its form in many ways; mainly in retentions. Retentions became part of the songs; it was manifested in the manner of dress, the way you walk, the food you eat. Those were patterns of resistance.
PP: Were there other patterns of resistance; other manifestations?
VC: Yes. In our society, our urban writers began to incorporate these elements of resistance within the formal literature. Edgar Mittelholzer, in his Kaywana series, although, in a surface read, it is about the grand old family; it is also about the humanity of the African woman.
Jan Carew, in Black Midas, is not only of somebody making money in ‘the bush’, but it is about the dynamics of colonial life. It is Martin Carter seeing within the ‘Nigger Yard’ the heroic prototypical Guyanese hero. Then we have our paintings: We’ve got Denis Williams with his Human World; Aubrey Williams with his abstracts; and Philip Moore taking it to fantastic heights with the symbolism of the 1763 rebellion. Look what the guys are doing with wood! Winston Strick with leather!
PP: Amazing, uplifting works of art!
VC: Yes. There is this effervescence that is taking place. And, basically, what the artist is doing is showing that the human spirit is not subjugated or dominated. So, today, when you see African-American kids or peoples of the African Diaspora wearing their clothing in a certain way; sporting certain hairstyles; using certain speech and art forms; it is a continuation of patterns of resistance.
And, as we find the ‘new’ records in the new scholarship, we can go into minutiae; details. And what we must not forget is how the people of African ancestry and the people of Indian ancestry lived in closed proximity. Yes; there was mutual suspicion then, but the synthesis in the cultures now is not to be dismissed.
PP: Even this is part of the answer to the question of how we are dealing with the effects of enslavement.
VC: Yes; this is the language of enslaved people.

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