JAMAICA
Kamau Braithwaite Speech Cont.
What I am suggesting, as the Governor General had done, is that in our reading, in our educating ourselves, in our curriculum we have to begin to understand these things, to internalise, to recognize that at the very core of the African survival, that spirit nam expressed itself in religious expression, that santeria, that orisha, that kumina; these are the centres of black culture. Bedward's church in August Town is an example of that nam-like situation where a man who was supposed to be ignorant - he didn't go to Harvard or Yale or Oxford; he wasn't the archbishop of Canterbury. All of these people are simple people, Bogle, Garvey, and still they had the magic of charisma, which you have to explain. Even if they are betrayed later on, they do have the magic of charisma, and their magic of charisma resides in their acquisition of nam, so that I will end as I began with this statement: first ten then twenty - I think you could begin to see the difference now - first twenty then two hundred, first two hundred then two thousand, first two thousand then two hundred thousand, Africans, slaves, lucumi, tears; two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand, a million, a million, tears, tears, lucumi, a million, two million, three million, five million, materialism, building hotels, plantation houses, brothels, ten million, twenty million, twenty-five and thirty million, flight, flight, fuel, tears, tears, tears.
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