“What is most terrifying in the experience of the deportation of Africans to the Americas * is undoubtedly the unknown, faced without preparation or challenge” (Édouard Glissant, “The Open Boat,” Poetics of Relation)
I prepare to “sail” across the Atlantic,
travelling in the opposite direction
from the one forced upon my African ancestors,
returning freely over waters they crossed in chains.
My departure begins with a familiar ritual:
planning, packing and pre-empting,
trying to imagine everything the journey may demand,
and everything the road may unexpectedly reveal.
I plan the clothing for each day,
the medication my body may require,
and the few possessions that will accompany me
through each gruelling mile of the Portuguese Camino.
Carefully, almost ceremonially,
I arrange each item in my suitcase,
making room for what I believe I will need
and guarding against every possible circumstance.
I prepare even for surprises,
as though the unexpected could be anticipated,
as though careful planning might tame the unknown
and make the road obedient to my intentions.
Then, suddenly, a silent pause enfolded me.
My ancestors were never granted
the luxury of preparing to sail.
They were given no time to plan,
no freedom to pack, no future to pre-empt.
Others planned for them.
Europeans who came upon African shores
like thieves concealed by the night,
stealing bodies, histories, relationships and dreams.
Others packed them,
not with care, but like cargo,
bodies pressed against bodies
in conditions unfit for any living creature.
They were forced towards an unknown horizon,
across a dark, dangerous and daunting ocean,
through gates that offered no farewell,
towards a world they had not chosen.
Others had already pre-empted their future:
their strength would be exploited,
their labour taken without payment,
their humanity reduced to another person’s profit.
The Atlantic became both passage and grave,
swallowing the lives of millions,
carrying millions more in prison chains,
and holding their unrecorded prayers within its depths.
Centuries later, I prepare to cross those waters,
not from the shores of Africa towards enslavement,
but from the Caribbean towards the continent
from which their captors and robbers came.
I cross with a passport in my hand,
clothing chosen and carefully folded,
a destination known and a return anticipated.
I cross by choice. I cross in freedom.
This freedom did not begin with me.
It was carried like a sacred baton
through the long relay of emancipation,
passed onward by ancestors whose courage endured
when the finishing line could not yet be seen.
I owe them a gratitude beyond words:
for their bravery in the face of brutality,
for the faith they preserved in hostile soil,
and for the freedom they planted for descendants unborn.
How, then, can I continue preparing
as though this were merely another journey?
How can I plan, pack and pre-empt my passage,
without first remembering those who could not?
So I pause.
Before closing the suitcase,
before securing the final clasp,
I stand in silence before the mystery
of the lives that made my freedom possible.
My silence becomes remembrance.
My remembrance becomes thanksgiving.
My thanksgiving becomes prayer
for those whose names the ocean alone remembers.
Then I return to my preparations,
still planning, still packing, still pre-empting,
but now each act is slower, more contemplative,
and weighted with ancestral gratitude.
The Atlantic before me is no longer merely distance.
It becomes a baptismal sea:
a symbol of death and dying,
and also of rising into new life.
May this crossing immerse me
in the suffering from which I came.
May it raise me into deeper freedom,
and send me towards a new journey.
I prepare to sail, therefore,
not as one travelling alone,
but as a descendant carrying the memory
of those who crossed before me.
Their courage is packed within my suitcase.
Their faith accompanies my footsteps.
Their longing for freedom breathes within my own.
Their unfinished journey travels with me.
And when I cross the Atlantic in freedom,
may every wave become a prayer of gratitude,
every horizon an invitation to remember,
and every shore a summons to live freedom faithfully.
Beloved Reflections 