YeKengalé

“The past is never passed” is a myth. Only the remembered past is ever-present. And so memory, foundational as it is to human identity, values and choice (in that order) is master key to both imagination and intellect and therefore all human creativity. Memory is at the heart of Christianity (hence the central communion ritual and recitation of creeds) and in fact, every religion is preserved and presented to the generation it serves through the modalities of whatever liturgical rituals and recorded texts preserve the essential thought forms and value propositions of that faith’s ancestral progenitors.

If forgetting did not have such lethal consequences for identity and behavior, such fervor for Remembrance Rituals would be superfluous. If I listen to a person’s angles long enough (perspectives), I can usually assess where they are coming from (what (hi)stories moor their identity), and as such what core values are likely to shape their opinions and actions (where they are going to).

The past is both teacher and springboard, not limit and burden of hindrance to the future, although those whose historical moorings are shallow seem to think so. Their problem is not so much forgetting the past as it is becoming unhinged from the certain parts of it that have fascinated their imagination so that they can embrace the more that there is to remember.

This past week, I learned that another mind-warrior (that special breed of historian that directly engages mental slave masters) has transitioned to past permanent – Runoko Rashidi, the man who most inherited Guyanese-born Ivan Van-Sertima’s (of They came before Columbus fame) mantle – to place the scattered and estranged African diaspora throughout the Americas and indeed the rest of the world, mentally back at home.

Runoko was a tremendous resource to me, a mentor, teacher, and inspiration. It was an honor to host him at my home and to be asked by him to serve as co-facilitator for his international communion of students of the Global African Presence, a treasure trove of academic reference for the entranced mind of the African descendent emerging from the kind of apoplectic stupor mentioned in Queenie Gyal that accounts for the present cultural malaise in Black communities yet unassimilated into the dominant culture, whether deeply situated in the Bible Belt of Christian Fundamentalism, USA or on the periphery of post-modern, post-Christian Europe.

It’s good to remember how our most traumatic experiences eventually become (should we choose to survive them) our fondest anecdotes. It makes life that less ominous a journey in the present moment, regardless of what is happening…or not happening). I recently experienced the joy that comes with every retelling of my favorite Runoko episode:

Runoko had probably one of the most famous travelogues on the net at that time (certainly one of the most provocative), given as he was to travelling to every continent, country and people group on the planet that he could accomplish within one lifespan, and researching the original African Presence in that area, giving academic legs and historical credibility to the already established genetical truth – that the original ‘race’ /complexion/type of man was negroid, and should you look sufficiently backwards in time anywhere on the planet, not just Africa, India and Australia, but so-called pure-blooded Europe, Japan, China, even up to Antarctica, you will find that original dark-skinned civilization having left its remnant signature.

So naturally, when he came to Jamaica, on his menu for visitation and conversation was both the Windward and Leeward Maroon communities. As his island-host, I took him east and introduced him to the Portland Maroons, Nanny’s children. But on the occasion for visiting the Accompong maroons, I had a scheduling conflict and had to make arrangements for a third-party host and guide.

…long story short, in spite of my meticulous due diligence, disaster struck. Runoko was captured and kidnapped by a lunatic pair on the fringe of Marronage. Basically, that which I greatest feared was visited on me (… actually …. much more so on Runoko.)

There I was listening in disbelief to his captors demanding ransom before release over the phone wandering how on earth could this be happening. I hung up the phone and called the most powerful person in Jamaica I knew to intervene.

“Mom! They’ve kidnapped Runoko!” Many have made the mistake in thinking that the weight of the throne is who sits on it. But I understood over the years of studying my mother of blessed memory, it’s what and who you don’t see that matters most. 119 (or any other call) would have been a colossal waste of time. Less than fifteen minutes after I hung up the phone, helicopters were circling the skies of Trelawney like sharks in the sea. In less than two hours, Runoko was back on his way to Kingston and those imbeciles were on their way to jail.

The Jamaica Tourist Board, having heard of his ordeal chipped in to make the rest of his stay as pleasantly memorable as possible, so he was whisked away from the apparently dangerous ambit of my humble mountain habitation, to the luxurious security of Kingston’s most expensive hotel to be wined and dined towards a positive opinion about Jamaica before putting pen to paper in his travel journal. But as far as the several hostilities and difficulties Runoko faced in his super adventurous lifestyle, Jamaica was probably not even among the top ten of his travel stories.

Runoko it was that helped me understand several aspects of comparative chronology that allowed me to develop depth of perspective in the evolution of religious thought in human society. It was also his illumination of the 18th Dynasty Shekemu or Kings of Ancient Egypt, particularly Akhenaten (Amenhotep 4th) and his tussle with the priesthood of Amen, that helped me see it for what it was – what was shallowly conceived by European scholars as a religious struggle between polytheism and monotheism was in essence a complex political and class struggle in ancient Egypt expressed (as always) in the vocabulary of religious doctrine.

Thank you Runoko, for giving me a lamp, and for embracing me and my potential through the eyes of love. I salute your eternal spirit. Warrior-scholar. Emancipator. Honorable Sheps.