THE "MAAFA", held yearly by the Afro-Guyanese community and guided by the rise and fall of the tide, is a significant commemoration rooted in a complex history that must not be accepted without critical examination.
In shaping the New World order, the invocation of perilous doctrines rooted in the fiction of distorted belief systems continues to challenge the lens of history in the exploration of a past that remains relevant to the present and the new day that must be shaped by atonement and clarity.
Before the past can be laid to rest in the archives of our awareness, the records of a dark age must not be costumed differently or continuously repeated without the interaction of a ritual of cultural accommodation rooted in a garden of truth bearing fruit.
It must be realised that the acceptance of slavery was not a willing development by Africans. Records demonstrate that resistance to slavery unfolded in several areas. For example, in May 1803, a group of enslaved Africans from present-day Nigeria of Ebo or Igbo roots leapt from a single-masted ship into Dunbar Creek off St. Simon's Island in Georgia. It was concluded that the Africans committed mass suicide, possibly believing that their souls would return to the ancestral lands. Other methods of resistance were tried across the slave nations of the New World.
Another manifestation of the resistance against slavery, not often discussed, was the early escape from the horrors of plantation bondage, when the number of escaped enslaved Africans recorded had become members of pirate ships. In 1716, the slaves of Antigua had grown very impudent and insulting, causing their masters to fear an insurrection.
Hugh Ranking writes that a substantial number of the unruly went off to join those pirates who did not seem too concerned about colour differences. (See Pirates: Terror of the High Seas, from the Caribbean to the South China Seas.)
Of the Africans who were brought to the Americas and enslaved, many maintained strong belief systems related to the sea and water in general. Thus, the Maafa encompasses that universe within the significance of also recognising the savage journey to the Americas and the Middle East. Africans could find no rational justification for the slavery conducted against them by warring tribes or those who did not share their belief systems or cultural values. Hence, their rejection through revolt on slave ships, suicide, and rebellion throughout the era of plantation existence and servitude commits those who survived to acknowledge, through recognition and remembrance, the darkness they endured.