BELIZE CITY, Wed. Aug. 1, 2018– Today is Emancipation Day, marking an end to the institution of slavery in the British Caribbean on August 1, 1834. While the day is observed throughout many of the Caribbean nation states, it had been largely ignored by authorities in Belize until the United Black Association for Development Education Foundation (UEF) began observing and celebrating it with a number of activities seven years ago.
This year’s 180th Emancipation Day culminated with a “Community Talk” at the Gateway Youth Center by Haitian history professor Bayyinah Bello, who focused her talk on freedom.
Professor Bello was introduced by the UEF chairperson, YaYa Marin Coleman, who has been instrumental in organizing the event.
As Professor Bello stepped forward to the microphone, she noticed several children in the audience and she immediately went up to them and tried to engage them, saying that they are the future and they are the ones who will have to do what needs to be done 20, 30, 40 years from now. They will decide the future of our countries, she said.
“Everything that exists has a purpose,” Professor Bello explained as she began her talk.
The audience was treated to about a half an hour of pulsating African drumming, and in her talk, Professor Bellow explained that the drummers were all important in the past. It was the drummers who signaled when anything of consequence was happening.
She continued to explain that people who were born in the period of 1807-1820 were better informed than people today.
“What you say has to be in harmony with what you think. When you’re saying something and doing something else, you can never be a powerful person. In the oral tradition, people believed that their word was sacred”, said Professor Bello. She continued by saying that, “many of us have mouths that speak with nothing. Once it comes out of your mouth, you are tied to it. In our culture, thoughts and action are harmonized.”
“Each one of us has the ability to develop the divine power that is within us,” Professor Bellow stressed. “But we have to create harmony between our thoughts, our words and our actions,” she said.