We celebrate freedom every August 1st, but the long night with shackles clanking in an unending nightmare continues for many. Haunted like bodies alive and dead chained together in the dark below decks of ships making their way across the Atlantic Ocean. Screaming like they are on the ocean’s floor where the ghosts are restless of those who jumped or were thrown. Some are still sold like they are on the auction block. Some are displaying and selling themselves. Some are still brutalized, hands bleeding from working to enrich massa with hopes of enriching themselves.
The ancestors were heavy on my mind this Emancipation. The names of the ones I know and the faceless and nameless majority that I do not know. The libations we pour in honour of them, the prayers we whisper, I wondered if they are enough and if they appease them and give them hope of a return from how far some have strayed from the definition of true freedom. They were resilient, they worked and died for this country, they bought land to make sure their descendants had a home. For many of them, a long night might have ended in 1838, but who knew that decades later, the night would continue for many of their descendants.
This Emancipation I did not really feel like celebrating. Ancestors heavy on my mind, the reality of living in Guyana 2023 staring me in the face, I went through the motions of what I usually do on Emancipation Day like going to the National Park and eating food and looking at the people in beautiful colours, but the urge to dance and celebrate escaped me. In my moments of silence, I kept wondering about how the ancestors would feel about how some of their children are now living in this Guyana. How would they feel about how many of them are dishonoured – how would they feel about those who have turned their backs on them.
The price for prosperity was paid in this resource rich country by those whose sweat, and blood penetrated the soil of British Guiana, but many of their descendants are today still living in poverty though their blood and sweat are still penetrating the soil of Guyana. The new plantation, where few hands are stained with oil that will further impoverish some. For the promises about prosperity for all they are realizing is a farce. This plantation where even some of the educated must leave to find their way in a foreign land.
This Emancipation I thought about those who would have halfway made their way through the long night and know something about who they truly are and about pride. Some may appear enlightened, but their enlightenment is the kind that keeps them trapped in the darkness. Some are now back on the plantation where the long night obscures everything they are meant to see, everything they should know and every move they should make. Many are for self and not the collective. They have no sense of pride. They embrace the cultures of others but do not know or embrace their own. They do not love themselves. They demonize their own people for upholding the spiritual practices of their ancestors. How many are afraid when they hear beating drums, shudder when they see those dancing in the spirit, people walking into the ocean to lay wreaths for the restless spirits and chanting. How many condemn in the name of the god they choose. A people who are lost spiritually, a people who cannot unite and a people who love those who have made themselves lords over them more than they love themselves is a people who will continue to face subjugation. With their hands on the hem of their masters’ garments they plead for relevance and are desperate to be counted. The long night tells some of them that they are better than those for whom the price was paid but whose prosperity never came. Though they are in the night they rub shoulders with the rich and prominent.
This Emancipation I thought about that woman who was covered in mud when homes and businesses were bulldozed in Mocha a few months ago. It is an image that will never escape my mind. How are there children of African descent in Guyana, whose ancestors after Emancipation purchased lands around Guyana with resources they saved during apprenticeship – how are some of these children now being booted from some those same lands? The disrespect, the disregard, the desecration of ancestral lands by letting the inheritors cry, bleed and die without will haunt this land. The roads to be built that result in food out of people’s mouth like vendors on Plaisance line top will put a permanent stain on this land. In the name of oil and gas the acquisition of lands, but the unwillingness to adequately compensate some of the owners of those land, will frustrate some of the citizens of this land. In this long night it is greed, a sense of pseudo superiority, disregard for the poor and bullyism that obscures freedom.
When people have no place to rest in their country and are being made strangers in their land, how will we survive? When we continue to see faces crying on the news about their homes being bulldozed and about being given notices of weeks or days to move, when will it be enough? The hurt from the hurt people of this country grows.
This Emancipation I also thought about those who are used for the deaths and subjugation of their brothers and sisters. Their hands on the trigger, quick to brutalize and quick to break the broken. How can you be the one to bruise the backs and bloody the hands of people whose faces look just like you? United you can stand and say no. Divided you help to captain the new ships where innocent people are shackled for freedom of speech and tortured for standing their ground. You secure the shackles and do not care if they jump overboard and drown as the long night continues.
