Thought for the Day, 26 March 2007

Kwame Kwei-Armah

Good morning. Three weeks ago I was in a dark dank dungeon twenty feet beneath the ground . I could hear the sound of the sea crashing against the exterior walls and though there were only three of us in a space probably twenty feet by twenty feet, this cell was constructed to house up to three hundred people. As you may have realised by now I was in the slave dungeons of cape coast castle Ghana.

As I walked out through the tunnel, mindful of the precarious stone steps beneath me, it was not the bright light of the midday sun that was blinding me, but the hate cursing through my veins. A useless emotion I thought I had long negotiated with - had long defeated and confined to the waste bin of human experiences.

As I paced around the huge courtyard of this massive monument to man's inhumanity, I overheard a Ghanian teacher speaking to a group of local school children. "We do not keep this to open old wounds" he said- "but to help heal them". As I turned and looked out onto the Atlantic sea knowing the pain, humiliation, and deculturalisation that millions of Africans would face on the other side of it, for centuries, I almost wanted to scream at him- What do you know of my pain? What do you know?

I stayed in that mood, much to the annoyance of my companions for a few days after. Then suddenly something happened- we, as a racially diverse group began to talk about it, not as a reflex action but honest thoughtful contemplation. As we negotiated our way through white guilt alleviation, and Black naive notions of Africans non complicity, to the acceptance of the true size of what was global scale injustice, never seen or organised like this before or since, the huge weight I'd been carrying began to fall from my shoulders. The simple exercise of honest conversation, of truthful recognition, began to do the work that two days earlier I did not believe could be done. It soothed my pain. And thus defeated that most harmful negativity.

Yesterday was the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Many may wonder why we need to commemorate it on such a scale - Services at the Abbey, Marches and events up and down the land. My answer lies in the words of a prayer I found on the wall of that slave dungeon in Ghana "As we remember the anguish of our ancestors, may those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetuate such injustice against humanity. We, the living, vow to uphold this.

It is a powerful prayer but for me it also testifies to the truth of the Ghanian teachers words to his school party. We do not keep this to open old wounds, but to help heal them". And it's a way of contributing to a lasting and binding healing, for all of us.