Nsala malecum...
I write this in the spirit of sharing with my family....
In 1999, I received a mysterious email from a brother based in London. His name was Tekesala and he was a Bakongo person from Angola. The brother was very intuned and passionate about Pan-African issues and the oppression of White Supremacy ideology. We conversed over many e-mail communications. I discussed with him the possibility that I may have Bakongo ancestry. In one email reply from Tekesala, he asked me how did I know this word. He said it was the last word in my email. The word meant "wisdom" in Kikongo. I told him I never wrote any Kikongo words and he was adamant that it was in one of my emails. He sent me the email. In my email, I remember writing him thinking about one of my great great auntie that was still alive. For some reason, I had been thinking about her. During this time, I had a dream in which there was a funerary ceremony taking place. It was definitely an African ritual. In the dream, there was a man officiating, speaking in center and commanding the attention of all. He was speaking a different language. He turned to me, came over to me and said, "You think you are Yoruba. I'm here to tell you your ancestors were not Yoruba." At the time, I was involved with an Yoruba Ile and Egbe Egungun. Toward the end of my dream, I noticed one person standing out - my great great auntie, sitting there dressed in African garb smiling.
For a couple days after the dream, my auntie was on my mind. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. My mom called from back home to tell me Aunt Annie had passed. I was going to ask her how Aunt Annie was doing because she had been on my mind. The connection of Aunt Annie, Tekesala and the Congo is Aunt Annie represented the last living old-school person on a particular side of my maternal great grandmother's family, the Platts. The Platts had a certain funerary tradition, that after some research I came to find out was an African retention from the Congo area. The Platts' American journey began in early South Carolina, a state known for having a high concentration of Congo people.
I grew up on Platt family land in rural Louisiana in all-Black hamlet; a place that, according to my romantic childhood memories, held mystical qualities of stray guinea birds, glass bottle trees, stories of "simbi" spirits in the nearby pond, a mythical tree that cured asthma and ritualized buckets that contained railroad spikes and nails. To be continued....
Blackbird (leaving to go get dirt from a crossroads and meet with Papa Legba)
I write this in the spirit of sharing with my family....
In 1999, I received a mysterious email from a brother based in London. His name was Tekesala and he was a Bakongo person from Angola. The brother was very intuned and passionate about Pan-African issues and the oppression of White Supremacy ideology. We conversed over many e-mail communications. I discussed with him the possibility that I may have Bakongo ancestry. In one email reply from Tekesala, he asked me how did I know this word. He said it was the last word in my email. The word meant "wisdom" in Kikongo. I told him I never wrote any Kikongo words and he was adamant that it was in one of my emails. He sent me the email. In my email, I remember writing him thinking about one of my great great auntie that was still alive. For some reason, I had been thinking about her. During this time, I had a dream in which there was a funerary ceremony taking place. It was definitely an African ritual. In the dream, there was a man officiating, speaking in center and commanding the attention of all. He was speaking a different language. He turned to me, came over to me and said, "You think you are Yoruba. I'm here to tell you your ancestors were not Yoruba." At the time, I was involved with an Yoruba Ile and Egbe Egungun. Toward the end of my dream, I noticed one person standing out - my great great auntie, sitting there dressed in African garb smiling.
For a couple days after the dream, my auntie was on my mind. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. My mom called from back home to tell me Aunt Annie had passed. I was going to ask her how Aunt Annie was doing because she had been on my mind. The connection of Aunt Annie, Tekesala and the Congo is Aunt Annie represented the last living old-school person on a particular side of my maternal great grandmother's family, the Platts. The Platts had a certain funerary tradition, that after some research I came to find out was an African retention from the Congo area. The Platts' American journey began in early South Carolina, a state known for having a high concentration of Congo people.
I grew up on Platt family land in rural Louisiana in all-Black hamlet; a place that, according to my romantic childhood memories, held mystical qualities of stray guinea birds, glass bottle trees, stories of "simbi" spirits in the nearby pond, a mythical tree that cured asthma and ritualized buckets that contained railroad spikes and nails. To be continued....
Blackbird (leaving to go get dirt from a crossroads and meet with Papa Legba)