by Maya Angelou
Mr. Adadevo spoke to me quietly, “That’s the way we mourn.”
The woman let her arms fall and stepping up to me, spoke and took my hand, pulling me gently away. Mr. Adadevo said, “She wants you to go with her. We will follow.” The girls and the driver had climbed the stairs and we entered the crowded market. I allowed myself to be tugged forward by the big woman who was a little taller than I and twice my size.
She stopped at the first stall and addressed a woman who must have been the proprietor. In the spate of words, I heard “American Negro.” The woman looked at me disbelieving and came around the corner of her counter to have a better look. She shook her head and, lifting her arms, placed her hands on her head, rocking from side to side.
My companions were standing just behind me as the vendor leaned over the shelf where tomatoes, onions, and peppers were arranged in an artistic display. She began speaking, and raking the produce toward the edge.
Mr. Adadevo said something to the driver who came forward and placed each vegetable carefully into his basket. My host said, “She is giving this to you. She says she has more if you want it.”
I went to the woman to thank her, but as I approached she looked at me and groaned, and cried, and put her hands on her head. The big woman was crying too. Their distress was contagious, and my lack of understanding made it especially so. I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know what I would ask pardon for.
I turned to Mr. Adadevo and asked if they thought I looked like someone who had died.
He answered and his voice was sad, “The first woman thought you were the daughter of a friend. But now you remind them of someone, but not anyone they knew personally.”
My guide now pulled me through a press of bodies until we came to a stall where the owner sold yams, cassava and other tubers. Her wares were stacked on the ground in front of the stall and rose in piles around the stool she occupied. My escort began her litany to the saleswoman. Somewhere in the ritual she said “American Negro” and the woman repeated the first stall owner’s behavior. Freida began putting yams and cocoa yams and cassava into her basket. The two women were rocking and moaning.
I said, “Mr. Adadevo, you must tell me what’s happening.”
He said, “This is a very sad story and I can’t tell it all or tell it well.” I waited while he looked around. He began again, “During the slavery period Keta was a good sized village. It was hit very hard by the slave trade. Very hard. In fact, at one point every inhabitant was either killed or taken. The only escapees were children who ran away and hid in the bush. Many of them watched from their hiding places as their parents were beaten and put into chains. They saw the slaves set fire to the village. They saw mothers and fathers take infants by their feet and bash their heads against tree trunks rather than see them sold into slavery. What they saw they remembered and all that they remembered they told over and over.
“The children were taken in by nearby villagers and grew to maturity. They married and had children and rebuilt Keta. They told the tale to their offspring. These women are the descendants of those orphaned children. They have heard the stories often, and the deeds are still as fresh as if they happened during their lifetimes. And you, Sister, you look so much like them, even the tone of your voice is like theirs. They are sure you are descended from those stolen mothers and fathers. That is why they mourn. Not for you but for their lost people.”
A sadness descended on me, simultaneously somber and wonderful. I had not consciously come to Ghana to find the roots of my beginnings, but I had continually and accidentally tripped over them or fallen upon them in my everyday life. Once I had been taken for Bambara, and cared for by other Africans as they would care for a Bambara woman. Nana’s family of Ahantas claimed me, crediting my resemblance to a relative as proof of my Ahanta background. And here in my last days in Africa, descendants of a pillaged past saw their history in my face and heard their ancestors speak through my voice.
The first woman continued leading me from stall to stall, introducing me. Each time the merchant would disbelieve the statement that I was an American Negro, and each time she would gasp and mourn, moan and offer me her goods.
The women wept and I wept. I too cried for the lost people, their ancestors and mine. But I was also weeping with a curious joy. Despite the murders, rapes and suicides, we had survived. The middle passage and the auction block had not erased us. Not humiliations nor lynchings, individual cruelties nor collective oppression had been able to eradicate us from the earth. We had come through despite our own ignorance and gullibility, and the ignorance and rapacious greed of our assailants.
There was much to cry for, much to mourn, but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to celebrate. Although separated from our languages, our families and customs, we had dared to continue to live. We had crossed the unknowable oceans in chains and had written its mystery into “Deep River, my home is over Jordan.” Through the centuries of despair and dislocation, we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope.
A few days later at Accra’s airport I was surrounded by family and friends. Guy stood, looking like a young lord of summer, straight, sure among his Ghanaian companions. Kwesi Brew, T. D. Bafoo and their wives were there to bid me farewell. Efua and her children, Nana’s brood of six, Grace Nuamah and other colleagues from Legon, Sheikhali and Mamali, and some Nigerian acquaintances milled through the crowd. Julian hugged me, “Be strong, girl. Be very strong.” Nana’s car appeared on the tarmac, and coming through a private door he joined the well-wishers. I drank with each party, and gave and received generous embraces, but I was not sad departing Ghana.
Many years earlier I, or rather someone very like me and certainly related to me, had been taken from Africa by force. This second leave-taking would not be so onerous, for now I knew my people had never completely left Africa. We had sung it in our blues, shouted it in our gospel and danced the continent in our breakdowns. As we carried it to Philadelphia, Boston and Birmingham we had changed its color, modified its rhythms, yet it was Africa which rode in the bulges of our high calves, shook in our protruding behinds and crackled in our wide open laughter.
I could nearly hear the old ones chuckling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maya Angelou, author of the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name and Heart of a Woman, has also written four collections of poetry: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, And Still I Rise and Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? In theater, she produced, directed and starred in Cabaret for Freedom, in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York’s Village Gate, starred in Genet’s The Blacks at the St. Mark’s Playhouse and adapted Sophocles’ Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. In film and television, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film, Georgia, Georgia and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 Maya Angelou received the Ladies’ Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in Communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees, was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, and was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few woman members of the Directors Guild, Maya Angelou is author of the television screenplays I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Most recently, she wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love, and was both host and writer for a series of documentaries, Maya Angelou’s America: A Journey of the Heart, along with Guy Johnson. Maya Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Vintage Books Edition, June 1991
Copyr
ight © 1986 by Maya Angelou
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Random House, Inc., in hardcover in 1986.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Angelou, Maya.
All God’s children need traveling shoes.
1. Angelou, Maya—Biography. 2. Authors,
American—20th century—Biography.
3. Entertainers—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
PS3551.N464Z463 1987 818′.5409 [B] 90-55700
eISBN: 978-0-307-43478-4
v3.0