Remember who you are

Know who you are

“Remember who you are”

I often have interactions that feel otherworldly - where people seemingly appear out of nowhere to share some kind of information with me and then, seemingly disappear.

These four words ‘remember who you are’ were spoken to me just before boarding a flight to Jamaica. They (and few other words) were shared by an elder Black woman, who could not stop staring at me (and she told me so). These four words and what ended up being a beautiful exchange have stayed with me ever since and re-appeared during a trip to Ghana, 11 months later.

I have lineage lost to slavery.

There’s something quite magical about returning to West Africa. About returning to land so many generations of people, numbers so large we have no accurate record, were taken by white Europeans, transported to The Americas including the Caribbean, with a view that we would never return to West Africa. And yet, here I was in defiance, putting my feet on the ground, returning.

The act of returning is remembering.

The act of remembering is one that should be intentional for Black people with lineage lost to slavery. For centuries, upon centuries, white European enslavers and traders used deliberate, sustained and systematic attempts to make us forget. For us to forget a life before slavery, for us to forget our native language, for us to forget our cultural and spiritual traditions, for us to forget what freedom felt like. But ultimately for us to forget who we were and the life that existed before the interruption of slavery. Because the act of remembering was a threat to the entire slave trade.

One of the ways they did this, was by giving enslaved people plants that induced memory loss - one of these plants is known as crotalaria arenaria.

They were extremely successful in their attempts - but they did not succeed. I and many others are remembering.

I had the pleasure of being invited to join some beautiful friends and dear colleagues, including, Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomolafe and Orland Bishop, as part of the Center for Healing Justice and Liberation Three Black Men tour - which explores trauma, ritual and the monstrous, by tracing the transatlantic slave route in reverse. From the US, to Salvador Brazil and finally Ghana.

With beloveds - L-R Victoria, Resmaa, Andrea, me and Edwin

With beloved Orland

Including our film crew, there were around forty of us on this journey together and it was glorious to be surrounded by majority Black folk committed to racial justice and Black liberation. My soul delighted in the opportunity to gather, organise, discover and be intellectually stimulated and nourished.

Gathering with curious minded people dedicated to our collective healing was an absolute balm. The conversations over shared meals will nourish me for years to come. The constant invitation to burst into song and call and response from the Djembe drums, triggered spontaneous dance that awakened something in my being that reminded me, ‘you have been here before’.

Strangers and new friends instead of saying hello, greeted me with; “welcome home”. And almost every day - one of our local media team, Eric (pictured) would shower me with such tender compliments. From complimenting my hair, to my skin, or to my multiple outfit changes - he noticed.

I and other Black women in the West, often speak about straddling the tension of being hyper visible in the U.K and yet invisible. It wasn’t fetishisation or attempts to sell to or objectify me. It was a beautiful reminder of how, depending on where you are, blackness is not feared, but revered.

Eric and I letting our inner child come out.

We covered a lot of mileage (and many more hours at a standstill in Accra traffic!) and managed to visit some glorious sites for remembering. One of which, was the Nkyinkyim Museum. A profound museum in Ada, in a farmland, that preserves history and culture through artifacts by fusing art and history to guide visitors towards healing from the legacies of African enslavement. Most of the installations were made by artists working with clay to depict history and the truth of some of the conditions my ancestors experienced. They were extraordinary.

The sacred site where we were asked to remove our shoes took my breath away. I found myself instinctively in deep reverence and prayer at this site.

Standing against a wall of literary canons - who have been immortalised by artists, from Octavia Butler to James Baldwin, was a reminder of the unmistakable contribution to deeper understanding, change and radical honesty, that has been and continues to be offered to us, through the power of words.

But it was as we were leaving Nkyinkyim Museum that stayed with me. We were encouraged by our griot (an African storyteller) to remember to ring a bell to symbolise our commitment to keep remembering who we are and to return.

The act of returning, is an act of remembering.

We have to remember.

We have to remember who we are - and who we were always meant to be before the interruption of slavery.

We have to remember that our very existence is a reminder of the lineage of extraordinary survivors we come from.

We have to remember what it feels like to be liberated.

We have to remember our inherent divinity.

We cannot co-create futures that are entirely different to what currently is - if we don’t remember the wholeness and the power of who we are and who we come from.

Remember.

Much love

Nova xx

Nova Reid is a writer, author of The Good Ally, TED Speaker and Producer. You can find out more about her work on www.novareid.com