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 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 ground 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 then 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 kind 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 today, let us all celebrate this African Heritage that’s now “ours”!!
…“the apology”
Your Eyewitness is a tad surprised at the excitement over the Gladstone family’s apology for their role in Caribbean African slavery. At the last moment – because some from Guyana pointed out the irony of the family that introduced Indian indentureship not even mentioning that monstrous system – “indentureship was” slipped it as an afterthought!! And it showed – from the speakers to the whole bash.
He would’ve been a bit pleased if the Gladstones had parted with at least ten times the 100,000 pounds they’re supposed to have donated to a UG project on migration. Wasn’t their entire family fortune – reputed to be in the billions – based on slavery and indentureship?? But the “migration” moniker for the UG institute suggests slavery and indentureship were just simple jaunts taken by the millions who were dragged across the Atlantic in chains – and across the Indian Ocean – on lies and deceits!!
Anyhow, the point is that the GOVERNMENT of Britain still haven’t apologised – and until they do, our chances of getting reparations is zilch.
Let’s keep the fire to their feet!!
…and reversions
Wasn’t it wonderful that so many people are now garbed in African clothes?? Time there was when wearing them was seen as “backward” – but thankfully, that’s now in the past!!
