Their names might roll clumsily off your tongues, but at the end of 90 minutes and time added on, the words “Medaase pii me abusua!” poured from my lips. If the team with the black star, wearing the same colours, black, gold, green and red, does not look like a regular Jamaican Premier league team or a local based squad of the Reggae Boyz to you; then you are either lying or wilfully blinding yourself.
On Tuesday, they fought, with the spirit of the Ewe, Ga, and the Akan people, in particular the Ashanti, and held the colonial masters, England to a draw.
In fact, some pundits, who know the game of football much better than me, truly believe that had it not been for questionable decisions by the referee, there would have been a historic victory for the African nation.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this commentary the results of the game against Croatia was unknown. However, it is hoped that the Black Stars would have also stripped the wrapping affectionately associated with a very popular hardough bread.
As a matter of trivia, hardough bread is ethnically Jamaican and although relatively popular in West Africa, it was first produced here and introduced into West Africa by a Jamaican. Therefore, the game yesterday represented us in many ways.
As we get into this hysteria of showing unmitigated support for European and South American teams, it should be natural that Jamaica look enthusiastically at Ghana as a proxy and feel a sense of great pride, as they implicitly represent us.
It is not simply that the majority of Jamaicans have ancestry traceable to Ghana. It is not even that they have recognised that the transatlantic slave trade was one of the worst crimes against humanity, and also, that Ghana has apologised for its role in this genocide and has initiated some remediation. Rather, Ghana has been a centrepiece of Pan-Africanism.
Now, be not mistaken, this is not a case of choosing a place of ancestral origin over one’s country. Thus, if the Reggae Boyz comprised only Chinese Jamaicans; there would be no conflict whatsoever. Indeed, since my teens I oftentimes clashed with my Rastafarian bredren, who always chanted Africa instead of ‘I land’.
Indeed, another source of dissonance during that period were my Jamaican Indian friends, who cheered for the Indian team against the West Indies cricket team … when we were good.
While I will not fly another country’s flag, my emotional backing of African teams is based on my unambiguous recognition that I am 100 per cent African and 100 per cent Jamaican. For good measure, Nigerians are also 100 per cent Nigerian and 100 per cent African as well. Doubtless, the advancement of Cote D’Ivoire to the knockout stage, for the first time, is another feather in my cap. While the wanton expulsion of undocumented Africans from South Africa over the past few months has disqualified them from my cheering, they are not unique in intra-continental xenophobic purges. Nigeria, is getting a bit of comeuppance. In the early 1980s, it carried out a major expulsion of Ghanaians. It was such a monumental process, that the typified deportee had a bag, somewhat like our branded supermarket types. These bags to date are called ‘Go Ghana’.
Ghana also had its own red mark, where it put out Nigerians in the 1960s during growing concerns over poverty and unemployment.
What makes the current stance of South Africa most repulsive, is that just over 30 years ago, while living under a repressive regime of apartheid, many South Africans found refuge in other African nations, including Nigeria. As a matter of fact, we hosted a few here too. Just less than half of the current population was alive back then and at least 40 per cent of South Africans actually remember what being treated inhumanely feels like. But ‘hurt people, hurt people.’
But, back to Ghana. In previous columns I outlined many of the cultural retention from that piece of the continent. These include; Anansi and Tukuma, dukunoo, esam (asham), corn cooked on coal stoves on the roadside and served with coconut stored in salt water. Only Alice is missing.
Susuwa (susumba), ka(ta) to balance loads, grave digging rituals and biting of fingers after we point on graves or funerals, and entering our homes backwards to avoid spirits following us inside, are all Ghanaian too. Avoiding ‘dutty’ ‘poto’, and being a ‘mumu’ are as Akan as they are Jamaican.
And yes, the ‘obeyifo’, practitioner of ‘obeyi’ or obeah is in two places at the same time
Call it gimmicks or show, but the blowing of white powder as the ‘witch doctor’ did during the England match, is not uniquely Ghanaian. The difference is that we sprinkle it quietly, because violent Jamaicans are quick to repel these spiritual attacks with physical force. Still, we will put it in your shoes.
Yet, even with all the similitude with our ancestral kin, the relationship is not unidirectional. That black star which adorns the flag of Ghana and displayed on the chest of the jerseys, that resemble the Reggae boyz’ kit, is actually Jamaican in origin. Yes, the black star is derived from Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line and is central to the Pan-African identity which he sought to forge.
Osagyefo, Kwame Nkrumah was a Garveyite and deeply inspired by him. So Jamaica, the Ghanaian black star is Jamaican in origin. Therefore, in a strange circle, Ghana, is representing the people whom it exported too.
By the way which sounds more plausible “Gya ma ya ka ha?” (pronounced ‘jia mai ka ha’), ‘Are we stuck here?” Or Xaymaca, land of wood and water?
Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.
