Homecoming: Ancestral Healing Part II

“My Ancestors are from Nigeria.” I can now confidently answer the “Where are your people from?” question that Black People in the United States have been struggling to answer for the past 400 years, thanks to the Atlantic slave trade where millions of Africans were uprooted from their communities and transported across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold as property and used as free labor by White slave owners in the Americas.

I would like to express deep gratitude to the donors who helped fund my  African Ancestry  genetics test last year because they understand that they still benefit from the legacy of slavery. Please see my previous campaign, ““DNA Test: Ancestral Healing” (My Father is Ashanti Mandingo). 

As a result, I have “discovered” that I share genetic ancestry with the Yoruba People in Nigeria and I’ve been able to connect with the online African Ancestry community. While I haven’t met any extended family members in the community yet, I have begun connecting with different members who share the same genetic ancestry and I’ve begun to learn about the rich cultural history and traditions of the Yoruba People. 

I have especially taken an interest to the traditional healing practices of the Yorubas due to my profession as a Health and Wellness Manager at a health foods store cooperative, The Dill Pickle Food Cooperative . In my line of work I have been introduced to the African Shea Trees Parkland Project whose mission is to connect people directly to African Shea Villages undergoing profound transformation because of the Natural Wealth of Shea. Their Solidarity Program managed by Creative Project Intl' has connected me to Team WASSA Pavilion, an international NGO involved in the Shea Project across the Shea belt in West Africa. 

As such, I have been invited by WASSA Pavilion to participate in a cultural and educational internship exchange beginning in Dioïla Cercle, Mali. "600 Miles of Exploration into Yorubaland" is the given name of the Solidarity Internship Program that will allow me to explore Yorubaland using the Shea Network in Nigeria. From July 15th – 31st I will be familiarizing myself with Shea on a cultural and healing level in Yorubaland, where a multitude of semi-domesticated Shea tree processing villages exist. 

Part of my mission will be to participate in an exchange of information, offering my own experiences working at an American consumer cooperative in order help Shea tree cooperatives in Yorubaland develop the skills necessary to build business relationships with consumer cooperatives in the United States. My g oal is to use my past experiences working in a consumer cooperative to create a future dynamic between Africa and the US to help generate wealth between an alternative economy (cooperative economics) and an emerging economy (in Africa) I understand this will be a long term project to fulfill, but as a believer in the cooperative movement as a means to affect change, I am committed to the economic empowerment of marginalized groups.

On a personal level, I am on a mission towards creating a dialogue between Western Herbal Medicine and ancient African Traditional Medicine practices rooted in Yoruba culture, so that I may enrich my understanding of plant based medicine in order to better serve the community I work in. My goal will be to connect with my Yorubic Ancestors, the spirits of the plants my ancestors used to tend to, and regional healers, in order to create a participatory dialogue about the tremendous value and healing powers of Yorubas in Natural Healing using plant based medicine, including the Shea tree. 

Even though I wouldn’t be visiting the country my ancestors are directly from, the experience of physically reconnecting with Yorubic cultural knowledge will help me reclaim a piece of my cultural identity. I am on a spiritual quest to answer my personal and familial narrative, to be able to piece together my cultural history so that I may continue to heal and reconcile the history of American slavery. I am looking to inspire other seekers in the present and future to develop a healing vision of Africa, to share the highest of virtues: the vibrations of Truth and Love. However, I still don’t believe I should be responsible for having to pay for a trip to “return” back to the continent that my ancestors were violently taken from against their will.  

Because it takes a village, on this fifteenth day of Black History Month, 2019, I am asking those who largely benefit from White Privilege to fund my homecoming trip to reconnect with my Yorubic Roots, to help reclaim knowledge of and initiate a dialogue about the healing powers of Traditional African healing practices, and in turn support an economy that has been decimated by the effects of colonization. 

I plan to purchase a plane ticket to Bamako, Mali from July 13th – August 1st. I understand that plane tickets prices vary and as of now, they are fluctuating between $1700 and $2,200 dollars for those determined dates. I am asking for $1,960 which falls roughly in between those two amounts and is coincidentally the year Nigeria regained its independence from British rule. I plan to purchase it as soon as I raise reach my goal, no matter what the cost of the ticket at the time. I’ve included a screen shots of the ticket price as of Feb. 15th, so you can see the cost for yourself.

I will keep funders updated when I purchase the plane ticket, posting photos when I finally purchase it. If I do not raise more than 2/3 of the cost by the end of May, I will cancel the campaign and refund everyone’s donations. 

This project is very exciting and I will update you along the way as I discover new energies during my journey. I will also publicly document my journey to Dioila Cercle, and will be available for dialogue once I return. Please feel free to reach out to me about any questions you might have about the project. 

Also, please feel free to reach out to my mentor Souly from Creative Project Intl’ if you have any questions about the internship at (775) [phone redacted] or via email at [email redacted]

Lastly, if anyone would like a history lesson on why reparations is necessary and why the the average Black family would need 228 years to build the wealth of a White family in United States, please read Ta-Nehesi Coates’ essay on the “Case for Reparations” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/


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