THE GULLAH HOMECOMING 1989
saint helena island 1988
“...And I will just speak krio a little bit just to buttress the point I am making… And in this respect let me say: Mi broda en mi sista dem, me en ol mi pipul dem wey cam to una, hapi tu much for dey ya. I suppose you have followed that…
”
President Momoh of Sierra Leone visited Penn Center, a community organization of the Gullah Geechees on St Helena Island in 1988. While there, Momoh was able to greet the Gullahs in Sierra Leone’s Krio.
INTRODUCTION
Historians have shown that there is a special connection between the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina and Georgia and the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Between about 1756 and 1807, thousands of enslaved African rice farmers were taken from what is now Sierra Leone to the ports of Charleston and Savannah where they were sold to wealthy rice planters. The American planters realized they needed the specialized skills that African rice farmers had developed over many centuries.
In recent years, Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs have taken part in four “homecoming” visits in order to meet with lost family, and see if their similarities in language, culture and foodways are as great as scholars have been reporting. As it turned out, the Gullah Geechee visitors were not disappointed. These family reunions began with a 1988 visit by Sierra Leone’s President Joseph Saidu Momoh to Penn Center, the Gullah community organization on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina.
President Momoh had only recently learned about the “Sierra Leone – Gullah Connection,” and he was clearly delighted at the many similarities he saw between Sierra Leone culture and Gullah culture.
He was especially taken by the Gullah language which is mutually intelligible with Krio,
Sierra Leone’s lingua franca, or common language which is mutually intelligible with Krio, Sierra Leone’s lingua franca or common language. President Momoh was also impressed with Gullah rice dishes, like red rice and okra soup, which are similar to Sierra Leone’s “jollof rice” and “okra soup.”
National Public Radio covered this “Gullah Reunion,” as they called it, and broadcasted a vivid story on the event on Thanksgiving Day, 1988. President Momoh was so impressed by the enduring family ties between Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs that he invited Dr. Emory Campbell, the Director of Penn Center, to lead a homecoming visit to Sierra Leone in 1989. They responded with thirteen community leaders from four states.
THE GULLAH HOMECOMING 1989
sierra leone 1989
The thirteen Gullah leaders on board a ferry in the Sierra Leone River (the Freetown Harbor), the same one their ancestors sailed through on their way to the North American Colonies from Bunce Island; the slave fortress in Sierra Leone that sent thousands of enslaved Africans to South Carolina and Georgia
The “Gullah Homecoming” was in direct response to the invitation President Momoh offered the previous year, and it was a national sensation in Sierra Leone. It was the first time Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs had an opportunity to come together in large numbers and observe their cultural similarities and differences first-hand. Thousands of people took to the streets in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, just to see their Gullah cousins pass by in their tour bus.
The events the Sierra Leone government and US Embassy organized to welcome the Gullahs and explain their family connection were also packed. SCETV in Columbia, South Carolina, produced a documentary, called Family Across the Sea, based on the Reunion and the Homecoming, that played on PBS stations all across the U.S.
Penn Center Grounds, 1988
Rice field! It is a rice thing; others won’t understand. Gullah Geechees visit a rice field during harvest in a village in Sierra Leone