Saturated in Black futures and histories!

Just got back from Cameroon last week and feel saturated in Black futures and histories. This was my third time in Cameroon and the continent and my mom’s first, and the layers of ancestral singing and listening were vibrant in us all. I love Ngowo’s homeland and I swear her dimple deepens when she smiles on this soil.

We took my mama and nibling Axelle to the Bimbia African Concentration camp for ancestors of the middle passage. We learned (and felt) the deception and violence and shadow that surrounded our ancestors. The brutality and confusion. My mom kept saying “this was real!” Which we knew but feeling and seeing will rock your world. Seeing the boats that left this coast and arrived in Trinidad was chilling and real.

Ngowo said she never even knew about it growing up in Cameroon. When I spoke to Ngowo’s mama, she spoke of the stories her grandma told her of her own people running away to the hills and of other nations being forced or enticed into facilitating this industry of stolen and enslaved people.

As a child of the diaspora I re-root myself to this continent with sweetness and wildness and love and healing. When I’m there I always smile at how despite the attempts to deracinate us from our legacy I feel at home in this land, my ancestors are here still.

When I’m on the continent of Africa Black Futures sing in my bones. That ancestral blood memory tingles in me. I feel beautiful and thick and lush and of the earth and connected.

Also peep the chocolate sand beach…