Image courtesy of @FirstGentleman
Central Africa in Jamaica
The arrival of Central Africans to Jamaica is generally situated within the Post- Emancipation period i.e. after 1834/1838 and the following twenty five years when it is estimated that some 10,000 Africans were immigrated to Jamaica as indentured labourers with contracts for 1-5 years, the Central Africans, settled mainly in the parish then known as St Thomas in the East. At that time this parish included the present day parish of St Thomas and a good part of the parish of Portland. More specifically, the migration of Central Africans to Jamaica, took place about 1841 – 1869. They settled primarily in Plantain Garden River area of St Thomas, spilling over to Portland and later to St Catherine and St. Mary. Other settlements were also later identified e.g. Kongo Town in Trelawny. These Central African settlers were from the Kikongo and Kimbandu speaking people who resided predominantly in the Kongo region of Central Africa.
It is interesting to note that some or perhaps all of the Central Africans may not have come directly from Central African to Jamaica. The story is told that after the British declared the termination of the Atlantic trade in African peoples, they put patrols in place to enforce the law. And so some Central Africans came to Jamaica from St Helena/Sierra Leone where they were recruited after a British Slaver was stopped by a British patrol and forced to dock and free the 'passengers' there. The British then negotiated contracts with them to take work as indentured labourers. Jamaica was one of the locations to which they were brought to work.
A number of words taken from the language of these Central African/Congolese people have been traced back to the original Kikongo language. Laura Tanna in her paper, Kumina: The Kongo Connection, talks about the work of Edward Seaga and the research into the identification of words spoken by members of the Congolese community/Kumina people. Edward Seaga had interviewed elders in the community. In a tape he shared with the School of Oriental and African Studies, Dr. Hazel Carter, a Bantu language specialist, was able to identify 47 out of 48 words as 'Congo' words. Two of the words recognised as being very close to the modern day Kongo language are ngoma which means drum and
Ndzaambi amphuungu meaning God.
The work of Frederick Cassidy and Braithwaite illustrates that the Kumina/kongolese, Central African people understand and are able to clearly articulate their world-view. Some beliefs are:
- Life force flows freely from the Supreme God through every person, animal, plant, element
- The invisible world of spirits is real and the world we see is a reflection of that world
- The dead continue to be a part of the earthly family
- Kalunga – water forms a natural barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead and is the home of a deity of the same name
- Importance of water as the home of the ancestors; a force or life; origin of all life
- Veneration of Spirits
- Divine harmony must be maintained at and between all levels of life
The Central African/Kumina people have a clear sense of ancestors and ancestry. In identifying themselves as Bongo Nation or Bongo People they separate themselves from other Africans. But even within the grouping they clearly differentiate between “salt – water Bongo” i.e. those who were born in Africa and “creole or creolin Bongo”- those born in Jamaica of a Bongo (Kongo) ancestry. They also go further to identify tribes among themselves. Up to and including the period when St Thomas and the resident Jamaicans of Central African origins were the focus of attention, many community members were still able to remember the names of some of the old ones who had come from Africa or had been born in the community. In Kumina: A Kongo – Based Tradition in the New World Bilby and Fu-Kiau present a list of 41 names of 'Bongo' people who where deceased. These persons were from districts in St Thomas and Portland. Of these 13 were said to have come directly from Africa i.e. salt water bongo.
For Kongolese Jamaicans, Kumina is a ritual that allows for communication with the other world, i.e. the world of the Dead. For them the 'dead' is not dead. According to one researcher, “If Kumina possess a single most important organizing principle, it is the continuity between the ancestral dead and their living progeny.” The Kumina recognises a relationship between man and spirit where man gives respect, feeds and entertains and spirit helps with solutions to community problems, share knowledge, give advice and help to settle disputes.
Kumina was, but now sadly less so, an important a part of the life of some of the people living primarily in St Thomas but also in Portland and other parishes. St Thomas became known for the practice because of the larger population of Central African/Kumina people present there fostering the more frequent hosting of the activity or perhaps we should say the more frequent use of the Kumina ritual. Although it is well known as a Kongolese retention it is not the only means of spiritual help recognised by the people who believe that Nzaambi gave power to man to work in different ways and with all aspects of nature to resolve and create solutions to his challenges.
Image courtesy of @FirstGentleman