rhythm language.
Several threads are coming together for me as I embark on this journey of ancestral and personal discovery. The seminal of which is my newly deepening connection to an African woman of great strength, wisdom, Calling, and connectedness. Her name is JACKY YENGA and she, through her work as an artist and educator, is bringing Village Wisdom to Blacks here in Canada and around the world. Originally from Cameroon and later educated in France, she now seeks to take the wealth of traditional practice that serves and guides traditional village peoples, and offer it as healing balm to Black souls here in Canada.
It is nothing short of a miracle that I am now connected to this woman.
Yesterday, while on a spontaneous trip to the big city of Vancouver, I had the utter surprise of arriving in town just as Jacky was holding a Blessing Ceremony for local black women. I couldn’t believe my luck and signed up immediately. While there, I was once again immersed in the all too rare experience of being surrounded by black women, exclusively. Together, with Jacky’s detailed guidance, we poured libation to the Ancestors, greeting them and welcoming them. We danced traditional dances staking our lives in the Earth, in Trust, in Remembrance of Death, and in guidance toward greater Harmony and Well Being. We listened to the pounding rhythms of traditional drums and lay upon the floor to feel their vibrations enter our bodies and our souls. The whole experience left me shaking with profound gratitude for the perfection of the unexpected.
Yes, I am very intentionally a woman of the countryside. But once again in the city, by chance, by serendipity, I have been thrust into a moment of reconnection that in truth (sight unseen) crossed land and sea and ground me down into the soil of my Africa.
Jacky is an Elder in my life. A guidepost toward soulful, soul-led work into what it is to bare the blood and skin that I am in while making my way on a land that is not my own.
Jacky has taught me that rhythm and vibration is the language of the Ancestors. She is teaching me to be open to the Ancestors for they are here to guide me (us!) into greater harmony within ourselves, with one another, with the natural world and with the Spirit world- regardless of whether I can pin point exactly where in African they lived and breathed. She is teaching me to pay attention to their rhythms. To their beat resonating around me and to follow, follow, follow, until my soul is saturated with their rhythm.
These lessons speak to me, here in my small Canadian town. My heart is open to their rhythm. To their vibration. Trusting that they will be carried across land and sea, to reach me here, in this land, a land that is not my own. I trust that guidance will come, flowing through the winds and over the waters, to me, to me.
Painting by Faith Ringgold
