Emancipation Day 2008

We always complain that nothing happens around here, but every time there IS something going on, I manage to leave the camera at home. So bear with me as I borrow photos from the Government Information Agency (GINA) to accompany this post.

August 1 was the 174th Emancipation Day celebrations, which marks the anniversary of African slaves' freedom all throughout the "British Caribbean" (as opposed to the French and the Dutch parts, I suppose), which was declared on August 1, 1834.

On the way to a farewell party for departing VSOs Camilla and Steve (as well as their friend Leroy, who is about to immigrate to Canada), we passed by the Monument of 1763 and saw what the cab driver said was the beginning of the Libation Ceremony where present-day Guyanese invoke the spirits of their African ancestors with chanting, prayers, and drums. Unfortunately, we saw none of this.

The next day, Cookee and I trooped down to the National Stadium in the late afternoon to catch what was left of the day-long celebration. We were able to catch a few more traditional dances, a steel drum performance, and a drama; and then we toured the grounds to look at the exhibits on the history of emancipation in the Americas.

I've always wondered what it must be like to be part of that kind of history. Every Afro-Guyanese person here would have a British, Scottish, or Dutch surname: Cambridge, Meredith, McDoom, Macleod, Van Dyke. Although some emancipated slave families chose their own last names, some adopted the names of slaveholders, so modern family names give a clue to their past.

One of the best names of all time was chosen for herself by an abolitionist and women's rights activist in the 18th century: Sojourner Truth. Sojourner, she says, because she traveled from end to end of the United States spreading God's word. And Truth, because that's what she spoke.

That tangent aside, I wonder how it feels to think back to your ancestors and to know that there is this kind of history in your blood. As a Filipino, I can't claim not to know what it's like to have a colonial history, or to wonder about the circumstances surrounding my ancestors' arrival to the Philippines. According to family legend, the Fonacier line comes from a lone French soldier deserting Napoleon's army. I don't know how true this is, but it makes for a good story. Nicolette, another VSO volunteer who immigrated to Canada from the UK, says that her great-grandparents abandoned their child, Nicolette's grandmother, with a stranger as they sought their destiny in colonial Africa. Colonial history from the colonizers' point of view this time.

I would have had more interest in learning history, I think, had it been taught to me that history isn't something that lives on in the pages of books, and it isn't something that is removed from our times. History flows in our blood, and it has made us who we are.