– commemorating MAAFA in the age of COVID-19

OCTOBER 12, the commemoration of the Atlantic Slave Trade, a holocaust that took the lives in a restrained account of no less than 100 million Africans, was conducted at the rise of the tide. This is the age of COVID-19. Thus, considerations were made for a commemoration with less pageantry, no tent, gatherings and presentations that analyse the real state today on which the commemoration reflects, that would come via Zoom. We who are descended from the onslaught of the slave trade can do this much, though we have evolved from that time, the collective ‘Atlas’ of another world. But what has enabled our survival, with currents of awareness that stir the desire to understand and respond to an innate passion for resisting the reshaping of men into echelons of zombies of chattel-dom. These are the same currents of awareness that unpropelled by common ritual inculcate the inner argument to repair the ‘Timelines’ by first recognising those who rebelled on the slave ships and died, committed suicide in protest and those who managed to seize ships through resistance and survive.

Records are scant, here and there with trusted sources that indicate that Africans were not only slaves on plantations, Maroons or manumitted artisans (slaves who arrived with skills, and eventually bought their freedom) in the JG Press publication ‘PIRATES-Terror of the High Seas from the Caribbean to the South China Sea’ 1988: “ These were not exceptional cases, for ‘Negroes and Mulattoes’ were present on almost every pirate ship, and rarely did the many merchants and captains who commented on their presence call them ‘slaves’ Black pirates sailed with Captains Bellamy, Taylor, Williams, Harris, Winter, in 1718, sixty of Blackbeard’s crew of one hundred were black, while Captain William Lewis boasted ‘40’ abled Negro sailors among his crew of 80,” etc. “The age of piracy had its own redeeming ideal, that of ‘Libertalia,’ which was a Utopian pirate settlement on the island of Madagascar, following an ancient prophecy that paradise would be found on the east coast of Africa.” Away from the unscrupulous dictates of Kings, Queens and Popes. With the Royal Navy, they employed members of the Kru or Kroo tribe who were excellent sailors. In the popular paintings and engravings of The Battle of Trafalgar-1805, there are always one or two Africans included, thus the pursuit of the unemotional discipline to reconstruct a practical ‘Timeline’ beyond what is traditionally recorded that fills the popular awareness. The tribes who arrived here in Guyana are in some families mentioned, an elder cousin who referred to my late dad as his younger cousin, told me that we came from the Fulani people; however, since African spiritual philosophy is rooted in an internal consciousness and do not relate to defining other humans by variation (colour or race), well they saw beauty and companionship in what we term soul-relationships, thus, the descendants of my Fulani Matriarch now includes Carib, French, Scottish and several other African tribes folk and East Indian, all upon our extended family tree. What prevails is the internal consciousness that can be identified as the African root, within specific creeds and principles.

The seeds planted through this process of Maafa have yielded the fruit of curiosity, suspicion and the boldness to question why we stand solemnly before the rising tide and cast floral offerings into the sea? This is because of the dynamic of the dogmatic religious instructions that have persisted from the beginnings of Guyana, which is human and also constituted divisive perceptions of self. Belief systems that utter differences are common among all peoples but at different intensities, among Africans Amerindians before the European slave trade and colonising quest. But because of the importance of African slavery to the existence of the slave nations, an intensified thrust to remake all (white and melanised) on and within the colonised stage, by force or subtle means was created, and enforced, before the proliferation of the printed word and media, the adopted Hebrew religion was the vehicle. With this simple act of commemoration, a level of discussion will present itself, be it confusing and wildly seeking, but such is the initial nature of all conversations, reaching for sources of clarification, as to why and what has to be done. Whether we propose that there is some cosmic root of the phenomenon we describe as consciousness, or instead the whispers of some higher ancestor, a process has begun and answers will shape over time, answers to questions we didn’t yet conceive, for some. From a simple commemoration and its symbolism in respect of ancestors past, who in all truth are broken sinews of the collective ‘Atlas’ that implore our humanity to commence its healing.