Understanding pain others feel

Adinkra symbol of understanding and agreement

The rock in the water does not know the pain of the rock in the sun. (Haiti)

Dear Zayda,

Haiti suffered a terrible earthquake seven months ago. Those of us who do not live in Haiti could watch news reports that filled our newspapers and televisions at the time. Some of us felt sad for Haitians, and others blamed them for putting up buildings so poorly that even a palace came crashing down. However, none but the Haitians knew the pain of losing everything. None of us knew the pain of not having food, or of losing loved ones and not even finding their bodies. None of us know what it is like even today to live on the street or sleep at every night in a friend’s car.

For many, the Haitian tragedy ended when the news reporters left Haiti and started to talk about other news, like the oil spill in the US. But for the Haitians, rocks in the sun, the pain continues.

A city like New Orleans suffered Katrina five years ago, and now had the sadness of oil spilling in the sea and killing fish and birds. I visited New Orleans a week after your mom and dad got married, and I fell in love with the city. The seafood was fantastic; I enjoyed the crab, shrimp, and couldn’t; get enough of fried catfish nuggets. New Orleans is in fresh pain today, but many of us can move on to the next big news item.

Moving on and forgetting is bad enough. What is worse is when those of us who are rocks in water add to the pain of rocks in the sun. For example, last week, a Jamaican businessman said that Jamaica needs more prisons to lock away people who break the law. I have no doubt that many of the rocks in the water agreed with him. However, the rocks in the sun would have different stories.

Now, people like this businessman (in the comfort of the water) and poor people (in the discomfort of the sun) are just as likely to break the law. Those in the water have a good chance of not being caught. The police are unlikely to search their houses or cart their young sons off to jail, beat them, and keep them locked up for weeks or months. Those in the water can afford lawyers to defend them if any heat reaches them and they are accused of doing something wrong.

Those who are like rocks in the sun have a good chance of being taken to jail even if they have done nothing except be found in the sun. Often, by the time the police release them from lockups, the scars from the beatings have healed. Anyway, this young man does not want to do anything to make the police angry at him. Therefore he gives up his right to getting money to make up for losing his freedom without having done anything wrong. If he had a job, the chances are he will lose it because he did not turn up for work all those weeks he was locked up. Or his boss (from the cool of the water) might decide the police would not have locked up this young man if did nothing wrong. In any event, the young man will not have the money to get a lawyer to take his case to court.

Now, if this businessman had an idea what was happening to people who are like rocks in the sun, he might want to be as sure as he can be that those (from water or in sun) who are locked up deserve to be punished. It seems, however, that it is easier to talk without seeking to know.

I hope, my grandniece, that you will be one of those who are rich and those who are poor are still human beings. I hope you can see that rocks in the water and rocks in the sun are still rocks, just with different stories to tell. I hope you will be able to tell your story and to listen to the stories of others, and try to understand.

Blessings,

Your shangazi

Lavinia Williams' natural gift of dance

MARCH 9
Women's History Month

She who is naturally gifted in anything becomes expert in it. (Hausa)

Lavinia Williams













I met Lavinia Williams when she was my summer school dance tutor. At midlife, I had finally attained my childhood dream of attending dance classes. The dances I did at my colonial-type school were Irish reels and Scottish jigs. Now, with Lavinia, my blood could throb to the beat of Africa. If my hips seemed contained by memories of my British schooling, I would hear her say, “Energy! Energy!” Freedom at last!

In 1953, the Haitian government hired Lavinia to work with Haiti’s National Folkloric Troupe. A year later, she founded the Haitian Institute of Folklore and Classic Dance, and became director of Haiti’s Theatre du Verdure.



She remained in Haiti for 26 years, helping to develop dance schools in Guyana and the Bahamas as well, and training hundreds of dancers.



Lavinia was seventy when I met her, and she was doing unbelievable splits and leg raises. I credit her with my acknowledging myself to be a dancer today, even if I missed out on dance classes as a child. She brought me in touch with the spirit of Katherine Dunham – she learnt Caribbean dance from Dunham and was a lead dancer in Dunham’s troupe for five years. She connected me to Alvin Ailey’s Dance Center School where she taught in the 1980s. Most of all, she put me in touch with my ancestors through her links to Haitian Vodou culture.



Born in Philadelphia in 1916, she died in New York in 1989. Her daughter Sara Yarborough, a professional dancer raised in Haiti, continues her tradition.

Katherine Dunham, High Priestess of Dance

MARCH 8
International Women's Day

“A lioness does not need to roar to keep the crowd in awe.” (Africa)

Katherine Dunham












As a child who yearned to be a dancer, I was familiar with Katherine Dunham and her School of Cultural Arts. Eartha Kitt studied there, as well as Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando. In addition, Dunham created the Dunham Technique, a style that is currently taught in dance schools. I recently came across a newspaper photograph of Dunham teaching her style in Jamaica.










It was no wonder then that I grew up thinking Dunham was a Caribbean woman. Like fellow anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, Dunham studied African roots of Black culture. Dunham lived for several months in the Maroon community of Accompong, and experience she described in her book, “Journey to Accompong”. Her study of the African Shango led her to Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago, as a result of which she choreographed her “Shango” dance.



Dunham retained a connection with Haiti throughout her life. She researched Vodou rituals for her thesis, “Dances of Haiti, Their Social Organization, Classification, Form and Function". Dunham was also initiated as a Vodou priestess. Her close friend, Dumarsais Estime, became the President of Haiti. She remained supportive when he was overthrown and exiled to Jamaica. As recently as 1992, Dunham went on 47-day hunger strike to protest the United States foreign policy of discriminating against Haitian boat people. President Jean Bertrand Aristide recognized her principled position by awarding her Haiti’s highest honor, and by terming her “Spiritual Mother of Haiti.”

She visited Haiti for long periods of time, and in the 1940s she bought property there containing a spring that is sacred in Vodou. Dunham provided free medical services on her property for poor Haitian people. Today, despite the arid nature of most of Haiti, that property remains a mini-forest.



Dunham holds a special place in my heart for her activism, and for her refusal to comply with Jim Crow laws. She once refused to perform after she discovered that Black residents could not buy tickets for her show. One of her pieces created controversy because it dramatized the lynching of Blacks in the South. She refused to sign a Hollywood contract that would have required her darker-skinned members to be replaced.



She died in May 2006 at age 96.

Black History Month - Grenada and Haiti

Is heart, not horn, dat make ramgoat brave. (Guyana)

1974 - Grenada proclaimed independence from Great Britain.

Grenada is known as the Spice Isle, and is the world’s second largest producer of several different spices.

This country became independent in 1974 with Eric Gairy as the first Prime Minister. In 1979, the New Jewel Movement overthrew the Gairy government and Maurice Bishop headed the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG).

Unrest occurred in October 1983, and Maurice Bishop was killed. United States marines and rangers, accompanied by a small contingent of Caribbean soldiers, then invaded Grenada. The governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Nations General Assembly criticized this invasion. Seventeen members of the PRG and the army were arrested and charged with the murder of Bishop and seven others. Accused persons, some of whom were initially sentenced to death, have been set free, the last in 2009.


1991 - Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn in.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born in 1953. He studied in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Italy, and Israel before being ordained as a priest in 1983.

He worked with the poor in Port-au-Prince slums, and his views on the class struggle were considered radical. Ultimately, his religious order expelled him because of his political activities, and left the priesthood in 1994.

Aristide was elected President of Haiti and took up office on February 7, 1991. The Haitian army deposed him in September of the same year, and it was widely believed that the United States was associated with this coup. General Raoul Cedras became Haiti’s ruler.

During his exile, Aristide went to Venezuela and then to the US to seek international support for his return. He eventually went back to Haiti in October 1994 to complete his term in office. When his term ended, he was not allowed to seek re-election or to serve the years he spent in exile. Rene Preval was elected in his place.

Aristide again became president in 2000 with results that opposition political parties contested. He was forced out of Haiti in 2004, and it is believed that France and the US had a role in his “kidnapping”.

He now lives in South Africa. As recently as after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Aristide expressed his desire to return to help rebuild Haiti.

Also on this day in -

1967: Christoper Julius Rock III, better known as Chris Rock was born.

1986 - President Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled Haiti after 21 years of a father-son Duvalier regime