Saturday, September 3, 2016

My visit at St.Helena Island Beaufort

It was a blessing for me to visit and meet with with the Executive Director of the Penn Center where the first school for freed slaves took place in the Unites States in 1862.


Most fascinating I met Gullah people for the first time ever. Had lunch in a Gullah restaurant and been offered a Gullah Music CD. These people were so kind and had so much love for me. Seeing someone coming from the motherland warmed their hearts and I was so happy I made them happy. They are entrepreneurs, they are historians, they are artists, they are chefs but they all have a common goal which is to preserve their culture!



For your information:

'The Gullah are the descendants of enslaved Africans who lived in the Lowcountry regions of Georgia and South Carolina, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands.

Because of a period of relative isolation in rural areas, the Gullah developed a culture that has preserved much of the African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples, as well as absorbed new influences from the region. The Gullah people speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and influenced by African languages in grammar and sentence structure.'

If you get a chance, please visit this Island where Dr Martin Luther King would stay and write most of his speeches!



Mandela Washignton Fellow 2016
diopkeyna@yahoo.com

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