Katibo Yeye: Suriname Meets Ghana

[How Sway?]

a 2-part clip from the documentary Katibo Yeye about a guy from Suriname who traced his ancestry to the Kromanti of coastal Ghana. he documents his journey going to the community and learning about the people first-hand. i think the Ghanaian brother made an excellent point when asked if he’d read anything on Suriname. he replied that he hadn’t due to the fact that the resources available to him were largely focused on European countries and not much on the diaspora regions (probably more so non-US diasporic communities) and that the type of connections happening between he and the filmmaker were necessary for unity.

Part 1

Part 2


the part that stood out to me the most was how the Man from Ghana and the Maroon Man from Suriname were still able to communicate at the end of part 2

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

I'll be back.....

 

[theworldismine13]

Yo I just saw this on Facebook and was googling it to find out more about the movie and this thread comes up lol

Anybody found a way or where to watch the whole thing?

 

[Menelik II]

i know ghanian people who said he ain't speaking any twi or ghanian lingo

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

i know ghanian people who said he ain't speaking any twi or ghanian lingo

Depends if the posters knew all Ghanaian languages

 

[get these nets]

*The full documentary is up on YT now.


I wasn't on the forum when this thread went up, but since then I remember a segment from a Wode Maya about this.

In NYC, he is met by a subscriber with multiple continent & diaspora ancestries, one of which was Suriname. He asks Wode about his visit to Suriname.


* excerpt from 2024 video called

48 hours In New York City America!​

=============================

Also, in terms of the Ghanaian man referenced in OP, and what he knew about Suriname, that was largely a language issue. He speaks English, his country was colonized by England. He would be familiar with history and news of England & other former colonies of England, in Africa and in the diaspora. He would be aware of Jamaica for example, and possibly about their maroon societies.

Same as if he lived in Portuguese or French speaking Africa.

===================
Thanks for making me aware of this doc. (for my archives) and glad that Wode is picking up the torch and educating us all about our cultural ties.

 

[How Sway?]

i know ghanian people who said he ain't speaking any twi or ghanian lingo

Quiet as kept, A lot of Ghanaians themselves (particularly the younger cohirt) arent even aware of the many languages that existed before twi. Some still exist but many have phased out due to war or incorporation into larger groups.

The Language the Suriname man was speak is closer to one of those old/ancient dialects.

 

[ReasonableMatic]

*The full documentary is up on YT now.


I wasn't on the forum when this thread went up, but since then I remember a segment from a Wode Maya about this.

In NYC, he is met by a subscriber with multiple continent & diaspora ancestries, one of which was Suriname. He asks Wode about his visit to Suriname.


* excerpt from 2024 video called

48 hours In New York City America!​

=============================

Also, in terms of the Ghanaian man referenced in OP, and what he knew about Suriname, that was largely a language issue. He speaks English, his country was colonized by England. He would be familiar with history and news of England & other former colonies of England, in Africa and in the diaspora. He would be aware of Jamaica for example, and possibly about their maroon societies.

Same as if he lived in Portuguese or French speaking Africa.

===================
Thanks for making me aware of this doc. (for my archives) and glad that Wode is picking up the torch and educating us all about our cultural ties.

Wode is making one mistake.
He’s looking for Africanisms through the lense of Africa’s countryside aesthetic, opposed to what they are at its core on an anthropological and linguistic level.

That leads him to think that the African cultures he mentions don’t exist on the coast because the setting is Urban.

A common mistake Africans frequently make when they observe
Afro-Diasporians and they compare rural Maroon communities
vs Plantation communities that adapted to Urban life.

The reason why he thinks it’s only the Maroons that preserved the African culture he thinks of, is because Maroons live isolated deep in the forest and are on land they own with no one to police them socially with stigmas.

Those didn’t have to adapt to an Urban aesthetic and multi-ethnic community with anti-Black stigmas and laws making things forbidden and having to be done in secret.

Whereas the Afro-Surinamese on the Coast are surrounded by other ethnicities and adapted to that environment.

This leads to bias and blind spots when you look and expect overt rural African aesthetics in Urban settings in the Diaspora.
When this isn’t even the case in Africa neither bc of colonialism.

Because one look at videos below and you can easily see the African cultures that he says he found in Maroons expression,
also expressed at the coast in Coastal Afro-Surinamese ppl.





Afro-Surinamese ppl from the Coast and Maroon communities also share an Ancestral traditional spiritual system called Winti.

It’s the only Diasporian ATR that didn’t syncretize or was influenced with Christianity and remained purely African with Indigenous elements.

In that ATR Winti, they share 3 ritual languages.
A Gbe, KiKongo and Akan one, the most ritual languages in the Diaspora.

And they share their traditional folk music you saw up top.

Surinamese Creole languages are among the most radical English-based Creole languages in the Diaspora.

Meaning they have the most Africanisms.

For instance, down below when we don’t even take the African lexicon and syntax into consideration and purely focus English-derived Creole words, you can see the African cultural retention
in the open-syllable structure and vowel harmony across the board.

So it’s great that Wode traveled there as an African shedding light on Surinam and its African descendants.

I love that the African Diaspora can see and learn about eachother.

but spreading misinformation and commiting erasure like that is actually damaging and irresponsible, because it causes divisiveness among those 2 ethnic groups by giving one group credit for African cultural retentions and not crediting another, despite them sharing and expressing them parallel just in different ways and conditions.

It’s just one expressing one-self African from a Maroon experience with autonomy vs the other expressing one-self African from a Plantation experience adapted to City Urban life at the source of systematic oppression in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society.

To summarize,
Wode needs to do better and be more knowledgeable about what Africanisms truly are.
What they mean and look like in historical, geographical, linguistic
and social context beyond the lazy approach of rural aesthetic.

The better the African Diaspora learns to do this correctly,
the better we’ll be able to recognize and see African expressions.
Pan-Africanism >>>>>>

 

[Ziploc]

My culture has never lost their connection with its regional African origin,my father was a Maroon descendant,my mother's family descendant from the city/plantation. We as Surinamese are pretty unique in that sense from our direct neighbors. Winti is a foundational part of my upbringing and because the oral tradition is stil strong with us,I have stories from ancestors still being told today. The diaspora as a whole needs to safeguard their origin stories and indigenous culture as much as possible,it's who we are.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

I remember Wode Maya doing a video on Suriname and its connection to Ghana. I wonder if he'll do one on Gullah-Geechee some in the future.