momo
Padawan Learner
Hello,
last summer, I went to my husbands home for the first time - we've known each other and been a couple for 14 years now.
He's a Yoruba from Nigeria.
I'm an Austrian with ancestors from all parts of middle Europe.
This connects into a really interesting mix of quite different cultures - and makes it a little easier to get to the bottom of what being "human" might mean, because there are aspects that are different, and aspects that are equal.
He took me and the children to Badagry, which used to be THE place for slave trade not very long ago.
We went to see one place where they kept the slaves - separated by gender, in tiny buildings with only one small window at the top of the wall.
We also saw what was traded for the slaves - the most important thing that "cost" a lot of slaves (i think the guide called it 200) was a huge umbrella, there were mugs (one was from bavaria, with german writing on it - a traditional beer mug), bowls, glass-beads and such.
And the chains and tools they used to keep the slaves, along with pictures of people being led to the ship.
After being brought to that place, they had to wait - often for weeks and longer - in those little "prisons", until the ship came. When it was time, they were chained together by the neck, had to walk across the beach and were taken on little boats to an island offshore where the ship was waiting for them. They were given some potion that - and the guide insisted it worked and still works today - made them forget everything: their name, where they came from, basically everything about who they were before.
The point on the beach where they drank that potion is still called "The Point of No Return".
It was a really tough experience to stand right at that spot, and there is a very helpless energy around there. I cannot explain this with words now.
Then, in the backyard, there is something like a shrine, and I was really shocked to find out that it is the grave (a building, actually) for the man who was then running the slave business. At the time, he was a highly appreciated member of the society. He was a servant (the guide thinks in Brazil) before, and the "white" people had instructed him and set up his business, so he continued being their servant while being a "free", "successful" and respected business person amongst the Yoruba he was trading.
Some of his ancestors are living right there on the same compound up to today. Their wealth is gone.
The way the guide speaks about them is as if they were not human, but on a "lower" level of existence.
Just about 100 m away, we went to see how this part of Africa became "enlightened" by the British: we saw the First Storey building of Nigeria.
Everyone I met in Nigeria knows about it, and there is an old Yoruba christian man that offered to be a guide.
The building served as what they call "the first school" in Nigeria, a British priest lived there, and this is where the first bible was translated to Yoruba (there is a transcript still in there, but the original is in a museum in England).
The old Yoruba christian man impersonated the complexity of the confusion that is around everywhere I went in Lagos: Lagos is a place of the Yoruba, but there are people from all over Nigeria - with the most diverse cultures - and from the rest of Africa, plus from China, India, Europe, the Americas, basically from all over the world. There are so many contradicting forces - the British system, the Christians (with so many diverse "religions" - or rather businesses - that deserve an extra chapter), the Muslims, those who follow the traditional Yoruba (which is the basis for Voodoo, I was told - so maybe the potion did not work - at least not on the spiritual level), the other people of Nigeria - Igbo, Haussa, the many smaller people from the Benin area...
And thus, when showing us around in the building, he got torn apart hailing what enlightenment, perfection, precision and technological progress the British brought while (only after realizing my husband is not a Christian) regretting that the basis of the Yoruba culture has been drowned in disrespect.
So much for now - I am continuously working on this trans-cultural aspect in my life and so eager to learn new concepts, new languages, just to get onto the basis it all came from.
I hope you enjoy my little story, and might write some more if you like it...
Still very insecure about sharing and exchanging, don't know exactly what to do about my feeling "obsolete".
greetings,
momo
last summer, I went to my husbands home for the first time - we've known each other and been a couple for 14 years now.
He's a Yoruba from Nigeria.
I'm an Austrian with ancestors from all parts of middle Europe.
This connects into a really interesting mix of quite different cultures - and makes it a little easier to get to the bottom of what being "human" might mean, because there are aspects that are different, and aspects that are equal.
He took me and the children to Badagry, which used to be THE place for slave trade not very long ago.
We went to see one place where they kept the slaves - separated by gender, in tiny buildings with only one small window at the top of the wall.
We also saw what was traded for the slaves - the most important thing that "cost" a lot of slaves (i think the guide called it 200) was a huge umbrella, there were mugs (one was from bavaria, with german writing on it - a traditional beer mug), bowls, glass-beads and such.
And the chains and tools they used to keep the slaves, along with pictures of people being led to the ship.
After being brought to that place, they had to wait - often for weeks and longer - in those little "prisons", until the ship came. When it was time, they were chained together by the neck, had to walk across the beach and were taken on little boats to an island offshore where the ship was waiting for them. They were given some potion that - and the guide insisted it worked and still works today - made them forget everything: their name, where they came from, basically everything about who they were before.
The point on the beach where they drank that potion is still called "The Point of No Return".
It was a really tough experience to stand right at that spot, and there is a very helpless energy around there. I cannot explain this with words now.
Then, in the backyard, there is something like a shrine, and I was really shocked to find out that it is the grave (a building, actually) for the man who was then running the slave business. At the time, he was a highly appreciated member of the society. He was a servant (the guide thinks in Brazil) before, and the "white" people had instructed him and set up his business, so he continued being their servant while being a "free", "successful" and respected business person amongst the Yoruba he was trading.
Some of his ancestors are living right there on the same compound up to today. Their wealth is gone.
The way the guide speaks about them is as if they were not human, but on a "lower" level of existence.
Just about 100 m away, we went to see how this part of Africa became "enlightened" by the British: we saw the First Storey building of Nigeria.
Everyone I met in Nigeria knows about it, and there is an old Yoruba christian man that offered to be a guide.
The building served as what they call "the first school" in Nigeria, a British priest lived there, and this is where the first bible was translated to Yoruba (there is a transcript still in there, but the original is in a museum in England).
The old Yoruba christian man impersonated the complexity of the confusion that is around everywhere I went in Lagos: Lagos is a place of the Yoruba, but there are people from all over Nigeria - with the most diverse cultures - and from the rest of Africa, plus from China, India, Europe, the Americas, basically from all over the world. There are so many contradicting forces - the British system, the Christians (with so many diverse "religions" - or rather businesses - that deserve an extra chapter), the Muslims, those who follow the traditional Yoruba (which is the basis for Voodoo, I was told - so maybe the potion did not work - at least not on the spiritual level), the other people of Nigeria - Igbo, Haussa, the many smaller people from the Benin area...
And thus, when showing us around in the building, he got torn apart hailing what enlightenment, perfection, precision and technological progress the British brought while (only after realizing my husband is not a Christian) regretting that the basis of the Yoruba culture has been drowned in disrespect.
So much for now - I am continuously working on this trans-cultural aspect in my life and so eager to learn new concepts, new languages, just to get onto the basis it all came from.
I hope you enjoy my little story, and might write some more if you like it...
Still very insecure about sharing and exchanging, don't know exactly what to do about my feeling "obsolete".
greetings,
momo