but yet we are all really one generation!
By Mutryce A. Williams
Over the years we have heard the cries, “We need more African history taught in our schools. Enough with this European, colonial system thing I say. What good does learning about Christopher Columbus, De Poincey and Sir Thomas Warner do? It is an insult to us as a people, to continue teaching this to our children.” We lament, “We need to know where we came from.” We have even started movements with the objective of getting our voices heard on this matter. We have asked for repatriation, chanting “Back to Africa, back to Africa we demand to go”. We have quoted the many songs of Brother Bob, “In this bright future you can’t forget your past.” We have parroted the great scholars, “A society that does not know its past will perish. It can never prosper in the future.” Over the years there have also been cries to teach our children regional and local history. We want them to learn more about the West Indian luminaries, the trade unionists, those who have changed the West Indian landscape, and those who have made the West Indian archipelago one steeped rich in visionaries and Nobel Laureates. We want our children to become more nationalistic and more civic minded. Do you know what? I duly support this. Over the years there have been studies conducted by the various historical societies across the region to map our African lineage. If one has the time he or she may even investigate which tribe in Africa his or her people were descended from, as records of this have been unearthed. We have also invested heavily in historical archives and museums in order to preserve our nation’s history. I applaud these efforts. They are actually quite fascinating.
Do you know what I find quite perplexing? With all of the efforts to learn so much about our history as a people, many of us are still quite ignorant of our immediate familial history? I know that there are mothers who would implore the fathers of their children to tell those children who their siblings are so that they would not grow up to ‘friend’ or get involved with their own brother or sister. I am not only referring to this linkage. I am discussing family linkages as a whole. There are some of us who have such limited knowledge of our ancestry. As we move more towards the nuclear family and single family headed households some of the benefits of having that extended family have been diluted. There are no great-grandmothers, grandmothers or Tanties who would sit and map out our family tree with us, and even if there are we have grown so individualistic that we no longer see the need for such information. For whatever reason, maybe because family members ‘had a falling out’ years ago, maybe family members migrated overseas or even migrated within St. Kitts and Nevis and as a result the family connections got ‘watered down’ or even lost, these linkages are not communicated. It may even be a case of people assuming that these family truths are common knowledge, so there is no need for discussion when in fact they really are not.
As we migrate to other villages, towns, regionally and internationally those family linkages may become weakened. Our children and our children’s children may have no idea of the origins of their family. Do you remember that “once ago,” you would visit or take an outing to see your grandmother’s sister and her family who lived in Tabernacle or Mansion? The relatives who had moved to Basseterre would return on the weekend or on a holiday to visit. Do you remember when parents used to send their children to visit their families in the country-side or Nevis for Christmas, Easter or summer break? I often wonder. Is this practice still prevalent? This was done not only to show the children how you grew up but to also to maintain the family linkages. I schooled with individuals whose parents were ‘from country’, but trust me they could not tell you who their families were ‘from Adam’. I can recall being in the same class with a girl, with whom I shared the same maternal great grandmother. Our grandparents were siblings, raised by and derived from the same mother’s womb. Our parents were first cousins, blood inked from the same lineage, yet neither of us knew this. It was only after my mother saw her and mentioned, then I told her and her response was a naïve but age appropriate one, “But you from country and I am from town.”
I have seen and heard of this happening with other family members and friends. The sad thing however is that some of them learnt this information just by stumbling upon it. Too often you hear, “I didn’t know that he was my brother, she was my sister, uncle, aunty, grandmother, grandfather or I didn’t even know that them there was something to us.” Isn’t this a travesty? Some people may tend to equate this to the matriarchal society that we live in, thinking that this is something that is only akin to paternal or father’s side of the family. It can be said that family linkages by one’s mother’s side are stronger and much easier traced than those by the father’s side. This may be attributed to the composition of the society we live in, where more households are headed by a female. Although this is true, lack of knowledge of one’s ancestry is becoming more prevalent on the mother’s side as well. Both parents are guilty of not revealing family linkages to the younger generation. It was only recently that I heard of an incident where two young men were involved in an incident. It resulted in the death of one of the young men. The elderly lady with whom I was having a conversation lamented in anguish, “Massa God, look me sin and trouble ya? Them there is one generation, it can’t wash out, and them young neagre don’t even self know it. Them there mother and father is two sister children that you know, look there the boy life gone now, this ya just like Cain kill Abel.” Who knows, maybe if they had known of this linkage that fatality could have been prevented.
Conversations that I have had over the years have sparked my interest in this issue. A few years ago in a conversation with my caretaker/adopted Aunt Pearlita (Baby) Francis, she began mapping out her family history for me. I must admit, I knew who her brothers and sisters were but the many linkages that there were and the connections that she had with other families in the village were astounding. I became quite engrossed in the conversation, as she also began to relay other family linkages in the village. I sat in awe. I exclaimed, “Oh but I didn’t know I just thought that they were good friends. I didn’t know that they were brother and sister, aunt or uncle, cousin. I didn’t know that they were something to each other me arm.” The issue came up again recently when I was ‘old talking’ with my friend Benrick Francis who hails from the same village, and he began to trace his family linkages. Again, I was in awe. I know these people but for the most part I thought that they just got along very well. His sisters are great friends with this lady and I thought that that was all to the relationship. I did not know that they were all sisters who shared the same father. I thought, “Well isn’t that something!” There is a lot that can be learnt from these linkages that may assist in our present and future relationships. After having my son, my interest in this issue grew tenfold because some day I would have to sit and trace his family tree with him. Both of his parents are from the same village. His maternal grandmother and his paternal grandparents are also from the same village. In reflecting on my conversation with Pearlita, who I discovered is his relative, I began tracing those linkages and I was totally in awe. When I was finished, I took a deep breath and exclaimed, “No matter how you turn it, my child has a linkage to almost every family in this village.” What I found interesting however is that I relayed some of these linkages to his father, and I realized that he too was ignorant to a lot of this information.
The thing that alarms me however is that with many of the older heads passing on to the great beyond, and with this widening gap between that generation and ours, this bit of our very important history is being lost. There is nothing wrong with learning about European, African, West Indian or national history. If we really want to know who we are or from whence we came we should really put some effort into tracing our immediate history. If we take the time to trace our ancestry we will discover that there is really just the illusion of a watered down society. We are really one people, one blood, and one generation.
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