There’s a silly tempest raging in a teapot and being whipped up by some rascals that, because there are more groups than before seeking to celebrate African Emancipation Day, that is “divisive”!! Now, wherever in the world are these people from?? African culture always extolled diversity over everything else – for the simple reason that the world is indeed diverse, and all we can do is find ways to deal with that!! Now, when we in Guyana speak about “African” culture, we’ve tremendous legitimacy to do so, ‘cause 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, and 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. Diversity, baby!! Let a thousand cultures and celebrations flower!!
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 those indentureds!! So how were they brought?? Well, after the Brits abolished the slave trade in 1807, and emancipation was achieved 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. And, once again, we have to emphasise that was not singular. We might have made it so over the last 100 years, but the PRINCIPLE remains!!
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, this August 1st lets us all celebrate this African Heritage that is now “ours” – whichever way we know how!!
…Hillbilly culture
Well, Trump’s having quite a week. First, he get’s shot and emerges a hero to knock Biden’s bobby socks off right into the next county!! It’s now conceded it’ll take a miracle for the Democrats to beat him in November – no matter who they replace Sleepy Joe with!! And believe your Eyewitness, replacing him is about the only option they got right now!! Your Eyewitness is no fan of Trump – but can the Democrats really say with a straight face that Biden woulda been able to react quicker to an emergency than Trump??
But Trump then went on to gild the lily by appointing 39-year-old Sen JD Vance as his VP!! “Who’s JD Vance”?? Well, for starters, he wrote a NYTimes bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy”, which was then made into a Netflix movie that picked up TWO Oscar Nominations!! And what was the book all about??
Only about JD Vance and how he transcended a Hillbilly home and went on to Yale Law School and become an investment whiz!! Most critically, it explains how Trump has energized Red Neck America!!
…moderation
Another good thing coming out of the Trump assassination attempt is that it puts a spoke in the wheels of the local extremists who’d been entertaining calls for heads of PPP leaders to be lopped off!!
