By Wanda Sabir
San Francisco BayView Newspaper
Photography by TaSin Sabir
MAAFA
We Remember You
The Middle Passage and all that we went though,
We’re Still Here … Lest we forget
Our heads to the sky … We cry … Why?
– For the Millions –
©2005 Dana Austin-Sockwell, Brother Clint, Roberta J. Roberson
She wore a white gele, hands holding a chekere with Yemonja’s blue and white beads singing in the slight breeze as supplicants eased through the Doors of No Return … that final call on the way into a diasporaic hell … an experience none has been able to fully articulate let alone completely recover from, perhaps because the trauma still lives in our collective psyche … the Middle Passage an excursion African people have now claimed – the nouveau enslavers: capitalism motivated by low self-esteem and self-hate.
(Recall Condi Rice’s response to the Katrina Hurricane in her home state, Alabama. She went shopping, while her boss and friend, King Bush, partied.)
The day was a warm predawn Sunday morning, although the evening before was one of the coldest Maafa participants (who spent the night in years’ past) had ever experienced. We never count attendees, yet this year seemed to have record attendance (at least 200 people) and despite the sound system going out after three hours of extended broadcast – this was also one of the best events because everyone could hear.
Libations called on the ancestors to join us and accept our desire to honor them, especially those ancestors whom no one mourned when their bodies were thrown overboard. They expired in cramped cesspools in ship bowels or took their own lives or that of a loved one.
If African people do not mourn their dead, no one else will. This a key factor in the Maafa commemoration.
I hadn’t known that the deity Yemonja was the one our ancestors called on to save them when they were trapped on the slaveships, that she heard their cries to return home yet couldn’t grant their wishes. In a poem, Omilade Wanda spoke of this dilemma and how Yemonja was present when Africans hurled themselves into her arms or were thrown overboard into them.
Omilade Wanda and I had never met – funny but I recall year after year seeing the watermelon with seeds on the beach, okra and other items planted near the shore’s edge. She told me if she cut the watermelon inside the circle, Yemonja might cause the ocean to come up to us, which I thought would be cool, if not impractical. It was comforting to know Yemonja was present to grant our African ancestor’s solace, to assure them they were not alone, just as we weren’t that morning.
The Pacific Ocean was so warm Sunday that participants walked into the water, its cool warmth a baptism and a cleansing – relief from what felt like lifetimes of depression, grief and sorrow. I saw friends crying, praying and meditating throughout the morning, seated, standing or lying on their sides.
Though similar to Maafas in the past, this one seemed to take on a life of its own – the Maafa dance and song cycle spun out into an African Village with a sister seated at its center, dancers and drummers surrounding her in a tight circle dancing away the collective grief and sorrow, pent-up emotions of the past, whether that was yesterday or thousands of yesterdays ago.
This is the way Maafa San Francisco Bay Area is: a ceremony which has room for spontaneity … change and flexibility as the people’s response to the call shapes what happens.
As the line snaked its way through the Doors of No Return and everyone stopped at the altar – the circle grew bigger and bigger as we kept reaching capacity and had to open up for more. I hadn’t realized Sister Harriet Tubman had joined the table this year … her work alone reason enough for Sister Geri Abrams to call her name, one echoed by others early on.
Neter Aameri’s altar, situated on the other side of the Doors of No Return and the long line that stretched back as far as the eye could see, reminded me of the long walk our ancestors had to endure from the holding areas – or dungeons to the waiting ships off the West African coast.
We came to give our ancestors a funeral; we came to honor them with prayers and librations, cries and thanksgiving … and we did.
I saw only one other person who like myself was present 10 years ago when Rev. Donald Paul Miller and I began this event, then called the Black Holocaust Commemoration. It has grown tremendously over the 10 years from a handful of friends into an annual tradition where many couples have met, and even given birth to Maafa babies. Many African children who grew up with the Maafa ritual, which needs no translation, look forward to it the same way their peers greet the birth of Christ or his resurrection.
It was amazing how everything fell into place – all petty arguments and complaints laid aside for the bigger goal: remembering our ancestors and giving them a funeral.
A friend asked me later on about the term Maat which is a Kamitic word for truth, justice and balance and Maafa – if the two words are connected linguistically? His question was a preview of the service I was to experience later on at Wo’se’s Community Church of the African Way, which has hosted a Maafa Service for the past two years. It was marvelous last year and just as wonderful this year.
Minister Moxlisi Ozosawandi leaped linquistic barriers to infuse Maafa with Kamitic consciousness as he took these three letters and saw the connection between the two.
“The first three letters in the word ‘maafa,’ though Kiswahili, (are the same) in the Kamitic transliteration as for the word ‘spirit,’ ‘the inner vision,’ ‘desire and determination of the creator to bring creation into being,'” he said.
African people “need to look at the Maafa and have respect for the ancestors and allow (this spirit) to be the fuel and the foundation for new vision and determination within, to create the reality and future in the here and now.”
He called this semantic exercise “a Kamitic infusion into the word (maafa), with Kamitic consciousness.” It certainly worked for me. It was like “wow,” everything is certainly connected: Maat, Maafa, Sankofa and Ayaresa.
The way African people come together locally around Maafa is a model of how we should interact all the time. Let go of the “me” in favor of the “we.” The personal good for the greater good.
I saw people on the beach Sunday who just hours or days before had told me they weren’t coming. I saw people whose last words to me had me spinning out of orbit … present that morning. Sunrise was after 7 a.m., so some people who’d arrived at 5:30 a.m. had already been there for hours before we began, but no one was in a rush and those who were keeping the Ramadan fast had time to have their meal and make salat (prayer).
To borrow a phrase from the past … everything was not only everything; it was groovy too!
If I have one regret each year regarding Maafa – it is that the ritual and related events do not automatically mean that we are connected as a community or that our circles have widened or become more supportive or inclusive. We’ve started Maafa bookclubs and had plans for a film series, salons, retreats and workshops, just to get together, organize and keep the healing process going, but neither spirit, will nor money was there to continue.
I often feel very alone as the days and months between Maafa seasons grow vast like a Sahara desert; then that one Sunday I wave to other ships swimming on the Red Sea. I know people are busy, but I think we need to make time to heal, to connect, to form a more perfect union (to take a leaf out of Jefferson’s book, with an entirely different interpretation in mind).
If we notice what happened in the Gulf, we might call ourselves Americans, but we do not have any “inalienable rights.” This government does not respect Black people, no matter how many wars our people served in, no matter how hard we work to pay taxes and support this government.
Let’s not forget the many Africans, hundreds of millions who died over the course of four centuries building this nation’s wealth without any compensation. The debt is so huge, apologies, even money, can’t begin to address the cost.
We lost our language, family, culture and land. They took our identity and made us into a new people – New Afrikan. We can never really ever go home again, ’cause home is gone.
If African people can let go of conflict for the ancestors each year at the Maafa Ritual, then I think a lesson to be learned is that we can let go of anything which keeps us apart. Disagreements don’t have to be deadly, which is why conflict resolution can be taught.
Peace is an attitude as is war.
The Maafa is not about personalities or individual desires; it’s about community, the “we.” And in order for there to be a “we,” we have to trust each other, which comes from our honoring our commitments, keeping our word and being honest, even if we are at fault. These are crucial steps in our unification and development as an African Diaspora people.
I was raised with the knowledge that I was Queen of the Universe and Mother of Civilization. With this understanding came responsibility. If we all learned to recognize the greatness within ourselves and in each other and live that truth, we’d be a stronger, more determined and loving people.
Why or how the enemy came to be the one we trust the most just shows how disconnected we are.
The Maafa Commemoration is bigger than the sum of its collective parts: ethnic heritage, classism, sexism, other learned biases or bigotry we can certainly unlearn once it’s recognized, proof that African people really can get along, the first step in building a nation.
“Up you mighty nation; you can accomplish what you will!” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, echoing Marcus Garvey, and we can. This time for ourselves.