THE COMMEMORATION OF THE ATLANTIC HOLOCAUST, A PAINFUL JOURNEY

AND so, it is, not every journey down memory lane is one we enjoy. The Annual Holocaust commemoration conducted by ACDA on October 12, 2022, in respect to those who are part of our national and bloodline ancestry reflecting on their journey of horror bound on slave ships and for those who survived the journey is one such necessary journey. The life they endured enslaved towards the shaping of hostile rainforest lands into plantations, then townships, cannot be faintheartedly forgotten without mental and spiritual consequences. Thus, we are sensibly committed to revisiting and exploring the legacy of the memories of those who came before us, memories from the records of their day, and the social and cultural values within us that remain as fruit notes upon life’s learning tree.

The Africans who were sold into slavery were in most cases prisoners of war, victims of tribal Kingdom expansion as a result of the need to eliminate enemy tribe folk with the potential to offer potent resistance to vassalhood existence. Then there were those who had for some reason lost favour with their own tribal upper hierarchies, and there were those who were victims of African slave raiders, collaborating with European slave-trading cabals; slave traders also linked to African slave trading kingdoms.

The journey within the hold of a slave ship was a torturous and terrifying experience that produced varied forms of resistance. In a few cases, ships were taken, some slave ships freed on the high seas became a part of European pirate fleets, and many Pirate ships were staffed by Africans, see-PIRATES: Terror of the high seas by JG Press. In many cases, suicide was chosen rather than face whatever fate lay ahead, unknowing at the time; ‘the intended life of slavery’.

Plantation slavery was not an accepted and resolved fate to the Africans cast into this mechanism. There’s another new book by Marjoleine Kars-BLOOD ON THE RIVER- (of the Berbice Slave Rebellion-Revolution), that adds new clarifications gathered from archives our local historians would not have had access to. This text is necessary for public and private libraries and reference bookshelves.

The Atlantic Holocaust embodies the symbolic burning of physical ties to the ‘Motherland’ but there is an ancient African mythology of change that, to me, embodies the process of destruction and restoration; that of the Bennu Bird. This sacred bird also known as the Phoenix, embodies resurrection from ashes or through the belief of transmigration, which today we most likely describe as genetic inheritance. Therefore, with people and cultural traits, what may become dormant through repression, will express an adjusted and contextualised expression within a new experience of self.

Slavery was never without its rebellions, its desertions and Maroon communities. The local militia of old Stabroek was forever seeking Maroons at the Sunday Slave market situated where Demico house is today, who would bring their vegetables and citrus fruit to trade with the crewmen of visiting merchant ships and the population of Stabroek. The inheritance of moral, cultural, historical and social activism is an ardent survival tool. Its elements are activated in commemorations like the ‘Trans-Atlantic Holocaust- Commemoration’ that embodies a background and experience pool of relevant and enlightening information, as important as a DNA test, that will not be readily taught through any other popular medium. In many varied ways, this simple meeting of descendants and understanding citizens with the sea, is a modern ritual that connects through understanding, why Guyana exists as a nation today, chartering each chapter, defining each wave of its evolution towards a full comprehension of who we are.

In closing, I do exalt the efforts to preserve both the tangible and intangible heritage, an inseparable necessity towards the confidence of coming to terms with the course of evolution that we endured, permitting us to look forward with a better awareness of our sacrifices, failings, and assets, thus to take refuge in the confidence that constitute, who we are.

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