Free From All These Chains

 

We finally arrived in Ghana! My mom and I. For years I had wanted to go, but  didn’t know how we could afford it. I was doing my undergrad at UBC studying acting and “I and I” were a low income single parent family. There was so much about myself that I didn’t know. I wondered about my blackness, about the cultural rituals I was raised with and how I rarely saw that around in my everyday life in Vancouver. My mom has the wackiest sense of humor … and so do I, and the minute that we reached Accra I understood where it all came from; it is part of the Ghanaian culture. I was home. How blessed am I that I know the exact location of my origin, my story, my herstory. My mother is from a small village near Winneba, Ghana and my father from Sekykrom another small village outside of Accra. My great great grandfather was chief of the village, which has stayed in the family making me somewhat of a princess.

One of the days my mom and I were out walking along a beach together holding hands and taking in the rough waters. By the time we knew it we had encroached upon a small group of beach-side shack-like houses playing the music of Bob Marley and emanating the sweet smell of ganja. The Rastafarians welcomed us gave us a CD of their own music and water to quench our thirst. They offered us weed too … which I would have acquiesced but mom is very Christian and against all mind altering substances. So water it was. They spoke to us about how blessed we were to know home and how blessed they were to finally be home.

Chamberlin claims that “Rastafarianism may be the only genuine myth to have emerged from the settlement of slavery in the New world” (177) and I believe he thinks this because it is a religion that takes language and redefines it’s meaning to suit its people; for their benefit. For example “Dread Talk” which specializes in rhyme and reversals (Chamberlin 188) infuses language with wonder and metaphor needed for the formation of a re-imagined identity outside of enslavement and homelessness. A fundamental metaphor of Rastafarianism is the re-imagined word from“We” to  “I and I”. “I and I” honors the self and the new born messiah now found in the person of Hallie Selassie. “I and I” allows us to constantly be with the self, rooted, as well as with God. For a displaced people there is nothing more important than finding home and if one can do so by shifting their language and taking back of meaning in words in order to reconnect with God, then why not?  Of course the “Dread lock” too has metaphorical meaning. Hair carries the experiences it witnesses and the time that has passed and so our stories may be found too in our hair. Rastafarians don’t cut their hair. It seems to me that Rastafarians have learned to hold onto the stories they have. As we leave the beach on the coast of Ghana, I think about the experiences of finding home, both mine and the Rastafarians we just met. Though part myth I too hold my stories in the language of my hair, I hold it in my kinky curly locks. I hold it in my sense of humor, my language.

Till next time!

Yours,

Sarah Afful

 

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J, Edward. If This is Your land Where Are Your Stories. Vintage Canada, 2003.

Mykpoponeblog. https://mykpoponeblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/why-people-openly-defecate-at-beaches-in-ghana, (Image) 15 March 2018. Accessed 21 January 2020.

“Rastafrianism.” United Religions Initiative, 2019, http://uri.org/kids/world-religions/rastafarianism. Accessed 17 January 2020.

Stephen Marley. “Hey Baby (Con letra)” YouTube, 14 Mar 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=R62Yi16FYkl. Accessed 17 January 2020.