Great Trepidation

I’m always nervous before going on trips by myself. I'm pretty much ready to go. My bag was packed since yesterday. My camera, digital tape recorders, batteries, trail mix, water, crackers, 2 sets of clothes, events lists etc. I’m making salmon cakes to eat with some spinach and before boarding the bus. I'll need to stop and get some headphones because mine are shot.

So what's got me on edge? I think I'm feeling nervous because I will be away from what is familiar. I'll be separated from family. It's only a couple of days but I feel trepidation. Perhaps it is the coming of the storm. I worry about all the families who have already been displaced. They are on my mind. Especially the black people. The coming storm will bring up the trauma that we've just experienced as a group. I don't know anyone not moved by those images on television of people stranded on highways, with their children and elders. For anyone who looked at those pictures and scenes and insisted that racism isn't an issue, all I can say is you live in another world. For me it was painful, frightening and very much the experience of the middle passage I studied under Dr. Marimba Ani at Hunter College. She sat at the feet of Dr. John Henrick Clark. He was the reason she came to Hunter. I know what I know because of her. She was the guest of Gary Bird on WLIB last night. He is a very popular radio host in New York City. She coined the phrase "Ma'afa." She studied many African languages searching for the right word to describe the middle passage experienced by Africans captured into slavery and spread throughout the world. Ma'afa means catastrophe in Swahili. I think the other translation by the Dagara people of Mali is the following: "Ma" means human being and "afa" means to kill. Last night Dr. Marimba said the "Ma'afa” is being played out right before our eyes.

When I saw those people in their own feces, sick, and dying with their children and elders I saw what our ancestors saw. I felt it. The chaos ensuing as they were being locked in the superdomes, we black people felt it as a group. Others were held back from crossing a bridge into neighboring counties to seek shelter. They were held back by a line of policeman from that county. Present day Ma'afa. Children separated from parents because there was no more room on a helicopter or on a bus (when they did finally arrive). We have been scattered again. Sent to Arkansas, Houston, and as far away as Utah. Scattered into shelters in towns and cities where the poor now have to compete with the poor.

So as Rita comes, I prepare for whatever is to come next.