When Drums Traveled Oceans

When you feel like you are in your native land, but you hear Spanish and quickly realize that you are in a country, at the tip of Central America, in the mouth of south America’s Colombia.

When you are grateful to see the same tropical colors reminiscent of your ancestral home

When you are pleased to see people whose cheek bones, lips, noses, body structures resemble yours

When you can play with a little girl’s hair…a girl who could have been you when you were her age

When you can smile and nod at each person in a way that only people who are proud of their blackness recognize

When you taste that rice made over a wooden stove with a chicken combination similar to what your mommy makes

When you can look around and say “Hey, we do that too!”

When you can see how your ancestors once moved their waists and feet to the same Congo drums

When you can pinpoint things that originated from Africa and were carried across oceans into a foreign land now meshing into the land of the foreign

When you can appreciate another culture, because it looks like what you know

When you can look at another person, in a land foreign to you, and see yourself. See your brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins. Then you see just how connected we once were.

Happy Black History Month family!

Pictures from La Feria de Diablos y Congos in Portobelo, Panama. The tradition hails from Afro-Antillean interpretation of tactics used by slaves to rebel against their masters. The devil represents the slave master and the people taunting it represent that African slaves. Women in colorful dresses sing songs of freedom while sway their hips melodically to the beats of the drums. It is said to be a cultural and colorful display of the struggle of good versus evil. The event is held only every two years on the old fort ruins of Portobelo, a town located in the Caribbean province of Colón. I had the pleasure of spending several days there and fell in love with the town for it's slow paced caribbean vibe, freshly cooked food, and abundance of pretty tropical plants. I am a sucker for the vibrant colors of the tropics.

La Feria de Diablos y Congos

nothing like roast meat at an outdoor gathering

djege man...y'all know the type.

diablos from Bocas Del Toro

end the night with a display of fireworks

doesn't this look like Sierra Leone? or Barbados? Or Guyana? Or you name it.