BRIEF NOTES ON BALANTA MIGRATION IN GUINEA BISSAU

According to Ttchogue Rith, 2013, In Balanta ethnicity, there are two large chains called Kentohé and Nhacra. Balanta Kentohé is on the right bank of the Mansoa River crossing Guinea-Bissau from central to west. Balanta Nhacra is located on the left bank of the Mansoa River.

Balanta-Nhacra concentrate on the southern part of the country specifically in the Tombali region which has four major sectors (Catió ′′ Capital ", Cacine, Bedanda and Quebo), with most of the Balanta population because they emigrate from north to west and west to south .... The primordial factor of emigration from Balanta Nhacra to the south of the country is due to the demand for better soil for rice farming. Balantas were the largest rice producers in Guinea-Bissau.

That doesn't mean the Kuntoes don't migrate. In fact, they migrate less in relation to the Nhacras. The Kuntoes concentrate on the northern part of the country along with other peoples belonging to other ethnicities (Mandingas, Manhaws, etc) and practice the same farming activity as Balanta or Nhacras.

Within the Balantas group, in general, there are other branches called Balanta Pache and Nagha. The origin of Balanta Pache may be related to a tabanka (village) whose name is Pache, but they do not only reside in this village like the Nagha. By oral tradition, they live among the Balantas of the Nhacra region, saying they descended from a link between women roles with Beafada men carried out in the localities of Dugal and Nague, primitive settlements of the territory. And indeed, Dugal means in Beafada, ′′ guest "; whereas the word ′′ Beafada ", in Balanta language, designates the brother, the son of the same father. (SIMES, londerset. Black Babel, Port Trade: 1935).

Source: RITH, Ttchoge; 2013. Balantas Intellectual Blog in Diaspora SIMOES, Landerset., 1935. Black Babel: Ethnography, Art and Culture of Indigenous Guinea.

Back in May of 2020, BBHAGSIA and BAMFABA conducted a survey of Balanta Villages throughout the country. Here are some of the results:

Jornada de Quintino Medi para descobrir a Mãe Fula de Amílcar Cabral na Guiné-Bissau

A 8 de julho de 2021, o Presidente da República da Guiné-Bissau, Umaro Sissocó Embaló, fez uma visita de estado a Cabo Verde. No dia seguinte, o Presidente Embaló depositou uma coroa de flores no Memorial Amílcar Cabral, na Praia, afirmando:

“Cabral é cabo-verdiano, valorizamos os nossos lutadores e são os cabo-verdianos que sabem se valorizam ou não um filho cabo-verdiano digno. . . . Ele também é cabo-verdiano e guineense. . . “

Para alguns, a declaração do presidente Embaló apenas agravou o mistério e a confusão em torno da ancestralidade de Amílcar Cabral. Por que o Presidente da Guiné-Bissau não reivindicaria o maior herói da Guiné-Bissau?

Para ter certeza, a entrada de Amilcar Cabral na Wikipedia afirma,

“Cabral nasceu a 12 de setembro de 1924 em Bafatá, Guiné-Bissau, filho de pais cabo-verdianos Juvenal Antònio Lopes da Costa Cabral e Iva Pinhel Évora, ambos de Santiago, Cabo Verde. Seu pai veio de uma família rica de proprietários de terras. Sua mãe era dona de uma loja e trabalhadora de hotelaria para sustentar sua família, especialmente depois que ela se separou do pai de Amílcar em 1929. Sua família não era rica, então ele não pôde cursar o ensino superior. Amílcar Cabral foi educado no Liceu (Escola Secundária) Gil Eanes na cidade de Mindelo, Cabo Verde, e posteriormente no Instituto Superior de Agronomia, em Lisboa, Portugal. . . . “

Ficaria assim a impressão de que Amílcar Cabral era, sim, filho de pais cabo-verdianos, embora na região de Bafatá, na Guiné-Bissau.

Sempre admirei e me inspirei no Amílcar Cabral. Então, quando meu bom amigo Quintino Medi foi recentemente a Bafatá para visitar a casa de Amilcar Cabral, fiquei muito interessado. Como descendente de Balanta que sofreu oito gerações de etnocídio nos Estados Unidos e recentemente redescobriu minhas próprias raízes na Guiné-Bissau, achei curioso que ninguém pudesse me dizer a origem étnica do herói e filho mais famoso da Guiné-Bissau. Ouvimos rumores de que Amílcar Cabral era um Balanta, mas aprendemos que não era verdade - Amílcar Cabral era associado a Balanta porque eles compartilhavam o mesmo espírito de luta e amor pela liberdade, e Cabral trabalhou em estreita colaboração com os Balanta para vencer a luta pela independência contra o portugues.

Agora, pela primeira vez, meu amigo Quintino Medi esclarece o mistério das raízes de Amílcar Cabral na Guiné-Bissau.

Quintino Discusses Amilcar Cabral_s Fula Mother

“Pude visitar o museu Amílcar Cabral e a sua cidade natal, a casa onde nasceu e muitas coisas. Em primeiro lugar, uma vez em Bafata, foi a minha primeira vez. Sempre ouvi falar do lugar desde que nasci, mas foi a primeira vez que pude visitá-lo. Chegando lá, na entrada, passei por um grande arrozal e a cidade está assentada no alto de um morro. Para você, é possível ver a cidade inteira de uma vez. É muito bonita e dá a impressão de ser uma cidade moderna.

Assim que você entra na cidade de Bafata, você vê que é uma grande cidade com infraestrutura…. Essa é a primeira impressão e imediatamente você reconhece que no passado foi uma bela cidade projetada pela colônia portuguesa. Infelizmente, está em baixa por falta de manutenção da infraestrutura. Também visitei o centro da cidade, caminhando de um lado para o outro do centro. No meio está a estátua do Amílcar Cabral e tirei algumas fotos.

Terminei a minha visita no Museu Amílcar Cabral. É o lugar onde morou com sua família. Disseram-me que o lugar era propriedade de um libanês que o deu ao pai de Amílcar Cabral. Eles moraram lá. Tentei imaginar o tipo de ambiente em que ele viveu e em que cresceu. Você pode ver uma extensão de um campo de arroz em casca. Imediatamente imaginei que fosse uma das razões porque Amílcar Cabral escolheu ser agrônomo. Porque todo dia, quando ele acorda e sai de casa, a primeira coisa que vê, além das casas, é esse arrozal. Eu posso imaginar em uma idade muito jovem, ele viu este campo de arroz em casca todos os dias. Outra coisa que pode ter influenciado Cabral na escolha da agronomia, é que ao entrar em Bafata, a primeira coisa que se vê é o grande arrozal. E quando ele acorda, a primeira coisa que vê é esta extensão de arroz em casca. E sempre que ele sai da cidade, ele passa por outro campo de arroz em casca. Então talvez todo esse ambiente tenha influenciado Amílcar Cabral a estudar agronomia na Universidade. Foi o que pensei enquanto estava ali e vendo o que Amílcar Cabral deve ter visto todos os dias.

O Museu Amílcar Cabral encontra-se em bom estado de conservação no interior. O exterior está um pouco sujo, mas o interior está reabilitado com pintura nova e mosaico no chão. Segundo o diretor, foi reformado em 2012. Dá para ver, de imediato, uma biblioteca com diversos livros sobre Amílcar Cabral e alguns escritos por ele. Na parte principal do museu encontram-se diversas fotografias de Amílcar Cabral. Há fotos de Cabral aos sete anos e na adolescência, além de fotos depois da faculdade e antes de sua morte. Há um trecho com a cama de Amílcar Cabral também. Eu queria deitar sobre ele, mas o Diretor disse que é muito frágil e que posso quebrá-lo! Tirei algumas fotos e fiquei muito próximo do Amílcar Cabral.

Eu fazia várias perguntas e uma das coisas que me impressionou foi sobre a mãe de Amílcar Cabral. O Diretor me disse que a mãe “oficial” Amílcar Cabral de que se fala é apenas uma mãe adotiva. Não é sua mãe verdadeira. A mulher adotou Amílcar Cabral. Segundo o diretor, o pai de Amílcar Cabral, Juvenal, foi para Bafata. Ele foi enviado como professor. Colocaram o povo cabo-verdiano da época, que tinha privilégio educacional mais do que o guineense ... Com esse privilégio foi educado e mandado para Bafata para ser professor. Ele foi enviado um pouco para fora da cidade de Bafata. É uma aldeia Fula. Quando Juvenal esteve nesta aldeia, conheceu uma rapariga Fula e essa rapariga Fula e Juvenal apaixonam-se. Depois de algum tempo, a menina engravidou e, como sabem, naquela época na Guiné-Bissau, é como um crime engravidar fora da própria tribo. Imagine um cabo-verdiano para engravidar uma menina Fula. É como uma humilhação para a família.

Quando a família soube que Juvenal havia engravidado a menina, foi uma pena para a família. Após o nascimento, poucos dias depois, a família obrigou a menina a dar o bebê a Juvenal porque Juvenal não podia ficar ali porque não eram casados ​​e ele não era Fula. Então foi uma pena e depois de alguns dias, deram o bebê para o Juvenal e ele o levou. Juvenal também amava outra mulher cabo-verdiana e essa mulher aceitou receber o menino Amílcar Cabral e educou-o até todos os dias, até que ele foi para a Universidade.

Quando o Diretor me disse isso, fiquei um pouco surpreso porque isso é algo que nós (guineenses) não aprendemos. Aprendemos que o Amílcar Cabral nasceu da mulher cabo-verdiana. Agora, quando você vê que a pele de Juvenal é um pouco clara em comparação com a pele de Amilcar. E a mãe adotiva é uma mulher de pele MUITO clara. Amilcar tem a pele mais escura do que o pai. E isso me fez acreditar mais nessa história porque se a história oficial fosse verdadeira, provavelmente Amílcar Cabral seria muito mais leve. Então, para mim, isso foi uma prova de que a história da mãe Fula de Amílcar Cabral é verdadeiro.

No final, de tudo, perguntei ao Diretor que compromisso o governo tem com o Museu. O diretor disse que, infelizmente, o governo não faz nada em particular para manter o museu. Está um pouco abandonado e foi só em 2012, depois de muita pressão, que o governo fez alguma coisa. Eles não prestam atenção a isso. Mesmo para obter eletricidade, às vezes não há energia. Às vezes, o diretor tem que pagar seu próprio dinheiro para manter o lugar. Ele próprio não recebe há muitos meses, atrevo-me a dizer, há anos, não recebe. Portanto, é difícil manter o museu. Mas ele tenta fazer o seu melhor e continua comunicando ao governo central a necessidade de manter o museu e pagar a ele. Porque um lugar muito importante como aquele, o governo deve mantê-lo para todas as gerações, porque todas as gerações precisam saber sobre Amílcar Cabral, o fundador deste país. Então isso me deixou um pouco triste ... Depois disso, eu saí daquele lugar. ”

Quintino Medi's Journey to Discover Amilcar Cabral's Fula Mother in Guinea Bissau

On July 8, 2021 The President of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissocó Embaló, made a state visit to Cape Verde. The following day, President Embaló layed down a wreath at the Amílcar Cabral Memorial in Praia, stating,

“Cabral is Cape Verdean, we value our fighters and it is Cape Verdeans who know whether or not they value a worthy Cape Verdean son. . . . He is Cape Verdean and Guinean, too . . . “

For some, President Embaló’s statement only compounded the mystery and confusion surrounding Amilcar Cabral’s ancestry. Why would the President of Guinea Bissau not claim Guinea Bissau’s greatest hero?

To be sure, the entry for Amilcar Cabral in Wikipedia states,

“Cabral was born on 12 September 1924 in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, to Cape Verdean parents, Juvenal Antònio Lopes da Costa Cabral and Iva Pinhel Évora, both from Santiago, Cape Verde. His father came from a wealthy land-owning family. His mother was a shop owner and hotel worker in order to support her family, especially after she separated from Amílcar's father by 1929. Her family was not well off, so he was unable to pursue higher education. Amílcar Cabral was educated at Liceu (Secondary School) Gil Eanes in the town of Mindelo, Cape Verde, and later at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia, in Lisbon, Portugal. . . . “

Thus, one would get the impression that Amilcar Cabral was, indeed, born of Cape Verdean parents, albeit in the Bafatá region of Guinea Bissau.

I have always admired and been inspired by Amilcar Cabral. So when my good friend, Quintino Medi recently went to Bafatá to visit Amilcar Cabral’s home, I was very interested. As a Balanta descendant who suffered eight generations of ethnocide in the United States and recently re-discovered my own roots in Guinea Bissau, I found it curious that no one could tell me the ethnic origin of Guinea Bissau’s hero and most famous son. We heard rumors that Amilcar Cabral was a Balanta, but we learned this wasn’t true - Amilcar Cabral was associated with Balanta because they shared the same fighting spirit and love of freedom, and Cabral worked closely with the Balanta to win the independence struggle against the Portuguese.

Now, for the first time, my friend Quintino Medi clears up the mystery of Amilcar Cabral’s roots in Guinea Bissau.

Quintino Discusses Amilcar Cabral_s Fula Mother

“I was able to visit Amilcar Cabral museum and his birth city, the house where he was born, and many things. First of all, once in Bafata, that was my first time. I have always heard of the place since I was born, but this was the first time I was able to visit. When I reach there, by the entrance, I passed a big paddy rice field and the city is seated on the top of a hill. Your view is that it is possible to see the entire city at once. It is very beautiful and it gives the impression of being a modern city.

As soon as you enter the city of Bafata, you see its a big like city with infrastructure…. That’s the first impression and immediately you recognize that in the past it was a beautiful city designed by the Portuguese colony. Unfortunately, it is down because of the lack of maintenance of the infrastructure. I also visited the downtown, walking from one side through the center to the other. In the middle is the statue of Amilcar Cabral and I took some pictures.

I ended my visit at the Amilcar Cabral Museum. It is the place where he lived with his family. I was told that the place was owned by a Lebanese man who gave it to Amilcar Cabral’s father. They lived there. I tried to imagine the kind of environment he lived in and in which he grew. You can see an extension of a paddy rice field. I immediately imagined it is one of the reason’s Amilcar Cabral chose to be an agronomist. Because everyday, when he wakes up and goes outside of this house, the first thing to see, apart from houses, is this paddy rice field. I can imagine at a very young age, he saw this paddy rice field everyday. Another thing that could have influenced Cabral to choose agronomy, is that when you enter Bafata, the first thing you see is the big paddy rice field. And when he wakes up, the first thing he sees is this paddy rice extension. And whenever he leaves the city, he passes another paddy rice field. So maybe all of this environment is what influenced Amilcar Cabral to study agronomy at the University. This was my thinking while standing there and seeing what Amilcar Cabral must have seen everyday.

The Amilcar Cabral Museum is in good condition inside. The outside is a bit dirty, but the inside is rehabilitated with new paint and mosaic tile on the ground. According to the Director, it was renovated in 2012. You can see, immediately, there is a library with different books about Amilcar Cabral and some that were written by him. In the main part of the museum are different pictures of Amilcar Cabral. There are pictures of Cabral at seven years of age and in his teenage years, as well as pictures after university and before his death. There is a section with Amilcar Cabral’s bed, too. I wanted to lay down on it, but the Director said it is too fragile and that I might break it! I took some pictures and it made me feel very close to Amilcar Cabral.

I was asking different questions, and one of the things that impressed me was about Amilcar Cabral’s mother. The Director told me that the “official” Amilcar Cabral mother now that people talk about is just an adopted mother. It is not his real mother. The woman adopted Amilcar Cabral. According to the Director, Amilcar Cabral’s father, Juvenal, went to Bafata. He was sent as a teacher. They put the Cape Verdean people at that time, who had educational privilege more than the Bissau Guinean….. With that privilege he was educated and sent to Bafata to be a teacher. He was sent a little bit outside the Bafata city. It is a Fula village. When Juvenal was in this village, he met a Fula girl and that Fula girl and Juvenal fall in love. After some time, the girl got pregnant, and as you know, at that time in Guinea Bissau, it is like a crime to get pregnant outside your own tribe. Imagine a Cape Verdean guy to impregnate a Fula girl. It is like a humiliation for the family.

When the family knew that Juvenal had impregnated the girl, it was a shame for the family. After the birth, a few days later, the family obliged the girl to give the baby to Juvenal because Juvenal could not stay there because they were not married and he was not Fula. So it was a big shame and after some days, they gave the baby to Juvenal and he took him. Juvenal also loved another woman from Cape Verde and that woman accepted to receive the infant Amilcar Cabral and raised him up until all of his days until he went to the University.

When the Director told me that, I was a bit surprised because that is something we (Bissau Guineans) are not taught. We are taught the Amilcar Cabral was born of the Cape Verdean woman. Now, when you see that Juvenal’s skin is a bit light compared to Amilcar’s skin. And the adoptive mother is a VERY light skinned woman. Amilcar is darker skinned when compared to his father. And this made me to believe more about this history because if the official story were true, Amilcar Cabral would likely be much lighter. So to me, this was evidence that the story of Amilcar Cabral’s Fula mother is true.

At the end, of it all, I asked the Director what commitment the government has made to the Museum. The Director said that, unfortunately, the government doesn’t do anything in particular to maintain the museum. Its a bit abandoned and it was only in 2012, after huge pressure, that the government did anything. They don’t pay attention to it. Even to get electricity, there is sometimes no power. Sometimes the Director has to pay his own money to maintain the place. He himself has not been paid for many months, I dare to say, years, he has not been paid. So it is difficult to keep the museum. But he tries to do his best and he keeps communicating to the central government the need to maintain the museum and pay him. Because a very important place like that, the government should maintain it for all generations because all generations need to know about Amilcar Cabral, the founder of this country. So it made me a bit sad…… After that, I came out from that place.”

Space and Time in the African Worldview: Excerpt from Remembering the Dismembered Continent by Ayi Kwei Armah

The following is an excerpt from one of Africa’s greatest intellectuals and writers today, Ayi Kwe Armah.. In his essay, COUNTERSTATEMENTS, PSEUDOSTATEMENTS, AND STATEMENTS: ARTICULATING AN AFRICAN WORLDVIEW, Armah writes the following concerning a discussion of Wole Soyinka’s Myth, Literature and the African World:

SOYINKA: ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION

Armah writes,

“According to Soyinka, African time-structuring is not bi-polar. It is not polar at all, since it is not linear but cyclical. Nor is it static, as Mbiti implies; it is dynamic. Strictly speaking, it is so dynamic that it has no terminal. Contrary to Mbiti’s misinformation, it is neither unidirectional nor reactionary. Its direction is a reversible cycle. Such a directional pattern has literally limitless potential for innovation - positive as well as negative. For those who can understand insights only when they are stated in political terms, this means the African worldview is neither inherently revolutionary nor inherently reactionary. It contains both of these opposite terms, and everything between and beyond them.

Such a worldview, philosophically far removed from deterministic schemata, puts a premium on the rational examination of issues involving destiny, compulsion and choice.

In place of poles, Soyinka’s description of African time structure posits connected arcs of a reversible cycle. Of these arcs the best known, and the most commonly discussed, are three: past, present and future, flowing into each other. Less well known, and seldom talked about, is the time dimension Soyinka calls the fourth dimension. This sounds arcane, but a little concentrated thinking suffices to make its rationality plain.

The fourth dimension of time is that special area of confluence where ideas and images from the past (fetched from the study of as much history as an intellectual has intelligence to grasp) interact with dreams and hopes of future time, thus inspiring persons living in present time to plan, to undertake, and to achieve projects capable of drawing the human future closer than hitherto imagined.

To summarize, then: the past is the arc of the dead, who in the African worldview are never just dead, since their ideas remain available; the present is the arc of the living; the future is the arc of those not yet born. As for the fourth dimension, it has to be the arc of dreamers who, though living, can connect with ancestral ideas, mix them with present energy, and from the alchemy of hope create new realities tomorrow. That’s where creative artists, visionaries and philosophers live, seemingly out of it as far as those content with the three conventional dimensions of time are concerned.

The African community, say Soyinka, is not one arc but all three, the whole unending cycle, plus the fourth dimension. There is, he implies, no real possibility of creativity, within African reality until would-be creators understand this, integrate it into their thinking, and live it.

In principle, no one arc dominates the others. As for dwellers in the fourth dimension, typically they are even reluctant to live visibly inside the more conventional arcs. Circumstances differ, and with them the ascendant arc. The instructions of the dead (provided the living are literate enough to read them), the pressing needs of the living, and the interests of the unborn, all intersect in constant interaction, not in a frozen hierarchy. To illustrate this hetarchy, Soyinka gives a brief example of an elder owing respect to a child within this scheme of things, and the example is apt. In a society organized in age groups, such a system could be infinitely amenable to development.

When Soyinka discusses the organization of space within the African worldview, his concept of space is both external and internal. (In a text not under discussion here, Soyinka state the African attitude to physical space briefly and adequately:

Space belongs to the community in its entirety, dead, living and unborn.

When land or sea is worked to produce a yield, the yield belongs to those who worked that land or that sea. such ideas, when they appear in the western world, are called new and communistic. In Africa they are old and common. . . . )

In its organization of psychic space, Soyinka says, the African universe is humanocentric. Nonhuman phenomena exist and are adequately acknowledged. But beyond that, the African psyche, in its attempts to harmonize the external universe with its internal needs, populates the external cosmos with projections from within itself. These various projections from the human psyche make up the different combinations of gods, goddesses, spirits and demons of the exoteric African world.

The method and product of such psychic projections is myth, and the African mythopoetic universe is misunderstood. if it is assumed that all Africans, the initiated and the uninitiated, believe that the gods, goddesses, spirits and demons have a literal existence. They do have a real existence, in the sense that in the African worldview ideas are as much a part of reality as matter and artifacts. Some individuals are literal believers, some are not. Some understand proverbs, some need lengthy explications. the quality of belief depends on intelligence, education, training, experience and credulity.

What Soyinka makes clear is that at its most mature levels, African society acknowledges that gods and spirits are human made fictions, projections of the human psyche.

There are angry gods, peaceable gods, creative gods, destructive gods, dictatorial gods, democratic gods, honest, dependable gods, and hustling, trickster gods. All are arcs of the African psyche, facets of the African mind. So if the productions of the African mind are to be understood, the searcher will do well to study the myths of the African people.

The gods, then, says Soyinka, were made by human beings. . . . Here again what we have is not a linear, unidirectional relationship, but a reversible cycle. Human beings make gods; the gods reciprocate by helping beings become more human. This may sound mystifying, but only to readers who forget Soyinka’s explanation of the African attitude to gods and spirits. According to this explanation, the gods are ideas and ideals clothed in mythic form. That there are persons ready to take the mythic forms for fact is only natural, just as natural as the existence of persons who see through myths and know that at the origin of every myth lies human ideation. The African universe of thought is inclusive; it contains the believer, the agnostic, and the atheist.

The human consciousness that projects itself in the form of gods and goddesses and spirits has a purpose that these gods and spirits are designed to serve.

The purpose behind these projections is to enable the self-actualization and self-development of the originating consciousness.

That is to say, the African consciousness, if it is free, creates and then projects those ideas and ideals necessary to its own development. Gods are growth goals, markers, stations of the mind in motion toward achievement. Demons are growth obstacles, to be confronted or accommodated, fought or evaded. The paraphernalia of mythopoetic culture in Africa contain key reference points necessary to the self-orientation of the African consciousness, necessary to the elaboration of the African worldview. . . .

But in the still colonized world that is intellectual Africa today, colonized minds have not only remained ignorant of the best cultural reference points created by the African people throughout the millennia; they have grown actively hostile to the very idea of recognizing, studying, possessing and developing those cultural assets.

So disoriented African intellectuals adopt alien gods, myths, thought systems and ideals thinking they can make them their own, believing they will work for them.

What such disoriented African intellectuals do not know is that Africa possesses its own ideal projections, and they cover the entire range of human possibility. In Soyinka’s words, the possibilities range from the saintly, agonistic nonviolence of the Obatala ideal, all the way to the assertive, aggressive innovativeness - creative, destructive, scientific, technological, artistic - of the Ogun ideal. Intellectually disoriented Africans, in their inertia, remain ignorant of the fact that the ideational resources required in war and peace, reaction and revolution, stagnation and dynamic growth, are in fact present in the original lodes of African culture and history, awaiting only rediscovery and reuse by thinking Africans.”

For further study:

The Eurocentric projection of Christianity and the Disoriented African Christian Mental Slavery

https://vivisxn.com/afrofuturism-otherworldliness-and-dope-digital-art-from-manzel-bowman-taj-francis-paracosm-and-more/