One thing we’ve got to get out of the way is: when we speak in Guyana – or the Caribbean – about “African” culture, we have a greater legitimacy to do so because our African citizens were brought from all parts of West Africa – from Angola in the south to Senegal in the north. This includes the Congo, Ghana and Nigeria, just to mention some of the more popular names. So, we can immediately appreciate that, while in Africa – even within what we call Ghana today – there are dozens of ethnic groups or tribes. During the hundreds of years of enslavement, those cultural differences were homogenized as the Whites tried to grind their culture out of them in totality.
But what’s not appreciated enough is that, AFTER the Abolition of slavery in 1838, there were over 13,000 Africans brought directly from Africa, and transported to Guyana to work as Indentured Immigrants!! That’s right – not as slaves, but as indentured servants – to drive down the wage aspirations of the freedmen and women – just like the other indentureds!! So how were they brought?? Well, after the Brits abolished the slave trade in 1807, and gave emancipation in 1838, other countries, such as Brazil and Cuba – which continued with slavery – kept on shipping their African “cargo”. The British Navy was assigned to patrol the coast of West Africa and intercept these slave ships.
The “liberated” Africans were sent generally to Liberia or Sierra Leone, from where they were persuaded to emigrate to the West Indies. One unintended consequence of this latter arrival, when African cultural practices weren’t seen as a threat, was that after the Indentured Africans were distributed to plantations in all three countries, they became the nucleus and catalyst for the flowering of African culture.
Among the new arrivals were Igbo, Kalabari, Mende, Temne, Mandinka, Yoruba, and above all, West Central Africans such as Kru and Congolese.
If we were to map the areas where there are more significant expressions of African Culture, you can bet that some of the new arrivals were settled there in greater numbers – like in Bagotville on the West Bank. After their Indentureship, some returned to Sierra Leone, but, like other Indentureds, most remained. They gravitated to African villages and bought lands, where their immigrant drive for economic improvement soon made them exemplars.
Some African cultural retentions have spread in the wider Guyanese populace in the kinds of food we eat. While we may think of foo-foo and conkie, let’s not forget that the entire repertoire of “ground provision” dishes, from soups (including metemjee) and “boiled and fried”, are of African provenance!!
So, on the 200th anniversary of the 1823 Rebellion, let us all celebrate this African Heritage that is now “ours”!!
…and climate change
While your Eyewitness had been prepared – through the reports in the press – he’s still shocked to read that rice and sugar production has declined recently!! Moreso for sugar! Imagine half of our two major agricultural crops – which employ more than half of our workforce – under threat!! While the strike of the sugar workers at Rose Hall has been in the news – let us be reminded of their suffering since the vicious action of the PNC to close those 4 factories after 2015!!
We can’t afford to lose rice. Most folks don’t realise that the vast majority of rice farmers – actually paddy farmers – cultivate plots of less than 5 acres – from which they barely eke out a subsistence existence. So, if they reap substandard harvests, it means starvation time for them and their families. So spare a thought for them, shall we?!
If the Government’s serious about diversifying into agriculture for “food security” for the region, we gotta start with these rice farmers!
…and reversions
Wasn’t it a wonderful sight to behold so many people garbed in their African clothes?? Was a time when to wear them was seen as “backward” – but thankfully, that’s all in the past!! Ethnic pride!!
