Wedaeli Chibelushi and Gemma Handy (BBC News) on Pan-Africanism in the Caribbean, citing examples from Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Lucia. [Read full article at BBC News.]
Augustine Ogbu works as a doctor, treating patients in clinics across the striking Caribbean island of St Lucia. When he returns to his home in the coastal town of Rodney Bay, he clocks in for his second job – as the owner and solo chef of a Nigerian takeaway. “Egusi soup and fufu, that’s more popular… they love jollof rice too,” Dr Ogbu says, reeling off a list of his customers’ favourite dishes.
The 29-year-old hails from Nigeria – population 230 million – but crossed the Atlantic for St Lucia – population 180,000 – to train as a doctor in 2016. He set up his home-based takeaway, named Africana Chops, in 2022, after being incessantly asked by his St Lucian friends for Nigerian fare.
The takeaway is now thriving, Dr Ogbu tells the BBC, and not just because his island customers think the food is tasty. “They know that we all have the same ancestral origin. So most of the time, they want to get in touch with that,” Dr Ogbu explains, adding that interest in African culture has grown “tremendously” since he arrived almost a decade ago.
St Lucia is not alone in this phenomenon.
Across the Caribbean, the desire to reconnect with the population’sAfrican heritage appears to have strengthened over the past few years. People across the Caribbean have been expressing African pride through cultural means, such as food, clothing and travel, while governments and institutions from both sides of the Atlantic have been meeting to forge economic ties. [. . .]
One thing that separates this wave of African pride from the ones that came before is social media.
Dennis Howard, an entertainment and cultural enterprise lecturer at the University of the West Indies, says a “significant” amount of Jamaicans are connecting with Africa through platforms such as TikTok. “People are learning more about black history beyond slavery,” he tells the BBC from his home in the Jamaican capital, Kingston.
Mr Howard also points to the global rise of Afrobeats, a musical genre from Nigeria and Ghana. He feels that in Jamaica specifically, the popularity of Afrobeats is partly down to a desire to reconnect with the continent. “Through the music videos, [Jamaicans] are seeing certain parts of Africa are similar to Jamaica and are developed. We had a concept of Africa as this place where it is backward and it’s pure dirt road… the music is changing that.”
Asked about the view of some Jamaican commenters online – that islanders do not need to reclaim their African heritage as they have an equally valid, hard-won Jamaican heritage of their own – Mr Howard stresses that the two are not distinct. “Our whole culture is African, with a little sprinkling of Indian and European and Chinese. But for the most part it is African-derived. It is the most dominant part of our culture,” he says.
Those leaning into their African heritage are not just consuming the culture but actually getting on flights and exploring the continent first-hand. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxyw4w440vo
[Photo above by EPA: Trinidad and Tobago pays tribute to the nation’s Afro-descendant community on Emancipation Day, which marks the ending of slavery throughout the British Empire.]