Still Our Ancestors Cry!
BY BABA OMOWALE ENG
No impromptu attempt at a dissertation outlin ing the extent of Our Maafa could do justice to hearing of our People’s Cry to have their story told. That full story must come from the soul/spirit of Our People demanding justice! Demanding justice for them and through that demanding it for our selves. My name is BaBa Omowale Eng and from what I have learned from studying our history is that Our Ancestors were forced to undergo the greatest tragedy known to human beings on this planet. And let me be clear, the mere idea of tragedy is not even sufficient to bring to mind the horrors experienced by the human beings who are our Ancestors.
The fact that there was peace that was more than just the absence of war in the Nationhood built by our Ancestors is important. Africans BEFORE the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave trade lived in a peace and prosperity not known since that time! Understanding that Peace is essential to knowing what the Maafa is and what we should understand it as being more than just the absence of war. From my studies, it was a peace based on the ability of our ancestors to achieve Maat in their day to day lives. That meant they were able to establish a harmony among themselves and thereby align themselves with the Truth of Creation, in alignment with Our Creator.
They were, through mutual agreements, able to establish order in a society that was brought together based upon the balance and harmony of people’s thinking and being in the world. Everyone had to agree to do what was right or be exiled or ostracized from our society. It was that simple. Once that agreement was had, all people embraced the idea of reciprocity and were willing to give of themselves in order to receive what they needed for family and community. We understood that family was the building block of Nationhood and therefore we gave every thing to our families and community. By that commitment we were able to build a Nation that was united in a solidarity that astounded the world. Ma’at was the governing ideology of our Nation hood.
That concept of Nationhood, national government, was copied from us from the very beginning, ie, the whole idea of American democracy came from white people studying how we governed our selves and then twisting it to fit their agenda. Even to the point of naming their highest office, The Whitehouse, after THE ORIGINAL WHITEHOUSE THAT WAS FIRST BUILT IN ANCIENT KEMIT/ AFRICA! I am talking about Black people, Africans in Kush and Punt. Zimbabwe and Alkebulan before the invasion of white people that started with the Hittites and then the Hyksos and then the Macedonians and then the rest of the European hordes that gathered together to steal what they saw us build.
YES, STEAL WHAT THEY SAW US BUILD, COPY ALL THAT WAS GOOD and force us to build for them what came to be known as European civilization.
My people, under standing these timelines is important because the Maafa did not begin with us in chains or what we have come to know as the transatlantic slave trade. It began when the first white people came in contact and conquest with the Original Hue man beings that Our Creator placed on this planet, Us.
So, when we talk about the continuation of the great tragedy, the Maafa, where white people decided again to attack, wage war against and enslave Black people, we have to start with each of the truths as we know them from documentation. For example, when we get to the Berlin Conference where European hordes came together again and decided to enslave African people and carve up Africa, take the natural resources/riches out of Africa and build what they would call Civilization, we first have look at what hordes are we talking about? Well, we are talking about Spain and Portugal; the Dutch and the French, the Belgians and the Arabs, the Germans and the Italians, and most all of the white countries that had armies and ships.
Next, we look at the intent which came to be known as the transatlan tic slave trade. For that, there is documentation, the records kept at the Insurance companies, with the families that financed this euro pean enterprise. They came together here in America, in Great Brit ain and other countries where white people kept records so they could keep profiting off of our enslavement. Accord ing to the records kept in London, Germany and Arabia, for example, they estimate that over 100 million Africans were taken out of Africa between 1400 and 1866/67. Other sources estimate even higher numbers of Africans taken from the shores of Africa. Remember, we know that white people always try to minimize the harm and wrong they are caught doing so as to justify minimum punishment or responsibility.
Just think about that and let that sink in for a moment. What has been your experience in deal ing with white people caught doing wrong? So now we come to the point of talking about the harms. Forcibly taken from our homes, by gun, sword, trick or manipulation, it was done against our will. Then came the rapes and the hanging, all instruments of war to break and subdue people who became captives. Then the starvation. Then the three-month journey in the bowels of ships, packed like sardines stripped naked without regard for male and female gender. Then the process of dehumanization that was engaged in when shore was reached in the Caribbean which the enslavers used as breaking ports.
There, in those breaking ports Africans were subjected to public hanging, public castrations and public disembowelments in order to instill extreme fear in the minds of captive Africans who were forced not to speak their own languages upon the threat of having their tongues cut out. These were planned and executed systemic engagements against Black People and we were forced to use only hand signals and grunts to communicate. That is how our People, The First Hueman Beings on this planet were stripped of our huemanity as they were made into entirely new beings that would be called and treated as chattel, enslaved Negroes. Think about that part for another moment, My People. What is chattel? What is a Negro? Is there a place called Negro land? Well, according to my studies chattel is property, inanimate and not human and there ain’t no place on the planet called Negroland! That des ignation and treatment of Hueman Beings had never been engaged in. There had always been servitude that resulted from conquest where captives were made to serve the conquerors for a period of time and then either die or move for ward in whatever social system they found them selves in. For example, before white racism infected Arab culture.
Bilal was an Abyssinian that had been captured by Arabs and for a time he was held captive and made to serve his captors but there came a time when his worth was recognized and he was elevated to a stature equal to most of his captors, even to the point of marrying one of their best and most sought after and beautiful women in Arab society, and given the esteemed honorable position of the caller to prayer for all Muslims in that area of the world. In that example we must think about and remember that everywhere the white man has gone on this planet he has infected that population with white racism. Any place or civilization on the planet white Euro peans have raped the women and enslaved the children and men. That is what they would create for the Africans they enslaved. They would set the tone of convincing themselves and then convincing us and the rest of the world that we were other than human, hueman. We did say we would talk about the Maafa, right?
Yes, well these are the truths of experiences of our Ancestors as they were forced into the transatlantic slave trade. It is their bones that lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean floor from Africa here to North America, from Africa to Brazil and Africa to every other so called European nation on earth where the slave ships landed by our enslavers or by us when we took over slave ships and made our way to land.
Yes, that is a part of our story as well. Some of us were able to take over the ships from our Captors and sail to other parts of the world and yet everywhere we went when the Whites got there, they fought to infect the land and people there with their ideology of race and their delusion of white supremacy which they first had to lie and con vince themselves of and then keep us in the lies and convince us of. So, Today, My Beloved Black People we are defying all the lies and embracing the truths of Black Huemanity which requires us to study.
Don’t just believe what I say, take it on as a mission to find out for yourself. All I ask is that you reject the lie of our inferiority and do the work of studying our his tory to erase the mystery and find the truth of our Huemanity.
Your Brother/Servant