The Land Was a Revelation

There are many personal revelations that come out of the experience of going to South Africa and sharing some culture – far too many, in fact, to describe here. I could talk about being an African-American who has finally arrived in the land of my ancestors (actually, a little south of there, since most slaves were brought from West Africa), and I can tell you that this land and the black people who live there felt familiar. In a way, I've known them all my life through the people and culture of the American South. It's true that African people of the Diaspora carry within them an essence of Blackness which can be heard in the language and seen in the faces and experienced in cultural nuances that are universal to African people no matter where they are in the world. And as an African-American who embraced African cultural consciousness beginning in the 1970's, I felt at home among the music, the dance, the colorful garb, and all the reflections of African culture which I encountered. I was also familiar with the poverty, the racism, and the struggle for freedom and respect with which Black South Africans continue to grapple.

More than the people, I think, the land was a revelation. I am close to nature wherever I go, but I felt so nurtured by the land that is South Africa. I understood why the Blacks there fought so hard to reclaim their Motherland, for being in South Africa felt like being in a nurturing womb, full of life-force energy. One of my most precious memories is sitting by a fire with my CCC colleagues, under a canopy of stars, right by the waters where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, and sharing our impressions about the Sharing Cultures Project, South Africa, and the wonderful people we'd had the privilege of meeting and working with.