Stage V: Heal Broken Stories

How-To Study: Our cultural technologies of healing

Hope

Hope was essential to African survival, resistance, healing, and relationships.

In the 1950s, a scientist named Curt Richter ran an experiment with rats in tanks of water. Rats that were briefly rescued and then put back swam far longer than rats that had never been rescued. Richter said their hope came from believing someone would rescue them. That experiment is often used to show the power of hope, but it pales next to African survival and determination.

Our people’s hope was not based on a belief that white people would rescue us. It was based on something like this:

“I belong to something larger than this condition: to family through Ubuntu, to Ndugu, to Malungu, and therefore to an Afrikan spirit.”

Ubuntu and Ndugu

Ubuntu (isiZulu) and Ndugu (Kiswahili) express Afrikan definitions of family that dwarf the European “nuclear” family of mother, father, and children, and even the “extended” family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu.”

A person is a person through other people. I am a person because we are a people.

“I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.”

John S. Mbiti, describing the African sense of personhood

Unity, family, and collectivity are where Spirit resides. Call and response reflects that in our culture. The historian Sterling Stuckey highlights a special form called the ring shout, where we gathered, danced, drummed, sang, and blended our many African cultures into a renewed one.

This super-extended family survives in expressions like “brother from another mother.” Some scholars call these relationships “fictive kin.” There was nothing fictional about them. They came with us over the water. Back home, these Ubuntu and Ndugu relationships were ingrained over centuries, so when captivity tore our families apart, we made family on the new plantation. That way of being family has been key to our survival on the plantation, through Jim Crow, and in many places, still today.

Malungu: shipmates who became family

Captives from West Central Africa who were taken to Brazil and other parts of the Americas used the word malungu (or malungo) for the bond formed on the slave ship. Its meaning grew from “ship,” to “shipmate” or “companion,” to something like “brother or sister in suffering.” These relationships carried the weight of kinship, and they reshaped who counted as family and as a people.

“We passed through this together. Therefore, there is now a family, a relationship, and a responsibility between us.”

These bonds countered the captor’s claim of ownership. No matter the bondage or brutality, we belonged to our homeland, our culture, and to each other, and to Uqobo, a spirituality that comes from our oneness.

The speech was unpublished. It was witnessed by Wekesa O. Madzimoyo, Co-Director of AYA Educational Institute, and is consistent with Hilliard’s teachings. The meetings he described match the Capon Springs Conferences (1898–1900), where white philanthropists and Southern segregationists planned an education for Black people built on subservient industrial labor instead of self-determination. Historian William H. Watkins tells that story in The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954 (2001). Hilliard’s papers are held at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Spirit, song, and story

Historians say Africans kept an independent religious life, even under a Christian cover. Scholars call it the “invisible institution,” shaped from African traditions. Spirituals expressed suffering, comfort in community and family, secret messages, rebuttals of racist claims, protest, and visions of liberty.

Our stories treated the plantation as a site of struggle for physical and psychological survival. Our folklore was not simply escapist entertainment. The Brer Rabbit tradition taught friendship, generosity, and obligation toward the most vulnerable members of the community.

Four things our stories do

• Story rememberedThis is who we are.
• Story interpretedThis is what is actually happening to us.
• Story counteredWhat they say about us is not true.
• Story projectedThis condition is not the future.

The healing chart

Each cultural technology answers a wound that captivity and oppression produced on purpose. As you listen to your family, listen for the wounds in the middle column, then listen for, ask about, and note the technologies and what they did.

Some call Ndugu and Malungu relationships “fictive kin.” In this course we honor them as real kin.

Check yourself

Answer each in your head, then open it to compare. Your graded quiz is in GHL.

Family Research: Listening for healing

Go back to the stories you gathered in Stages III and IV, and interview at least one elder again. This time, your questions call for the healing.

Healing questions

1. When our family went through something hard, what got us through?
2. Who in our family was called “Aunt,” “Uncle,” “Cousin,” “Big Mama,” or “Brother” but wasn’t related by blood? How did they become family?
3. Who helped raise children who weren’t their own? Who raised you besides your parents?
4. When people moved away or were separated, how did the family stay connected?
5. What songs were sung in hard times? Who sang them, and what did they do for people?
6. What sayings or stories did elders tell to keep us going, or to tell the truth about what was happening?
7. What did our family laugh about, even when times were bad?
8. How did our family pray or worship together? What did faith give us?
9. How do we remember our ancestors? Whose names do we keep saying?
10. When money or food was short, who helped, and whom did we help?
11. Tell me about a time our family stood together against something unfair.
12. Where did you find hope?

Personal Reflection and Family Discussion

Reflect first

Then, lead a family discussion

This is a teaching time. Your family learns your analysis and shares their own. Many families are surprised to learn that what they did has a name and a history going back to Afrika.

1. Gather two or more family members for 20 to 30 minutes.
2. Share the idea: our people answered the wounds of captivity with cultural technologies of healing. Show them the healing chart.
3. Share two or three stories from your healing log, and how you interpreted each one.
4. Ask: “Do you agree? What would you add? What did I miss?” Expect agreement and disagreement. Both are welcome.
5. Ask: “Which of these do we still do? Which ones should we bring back?”
6. Write the summary below while it’s fresh.

Demonstration: A healing story

First, respond to two tellings

Answer before you call. Respond to two tellings from classmates or from the Ancestor Shelf, using the four moves:

• Name itGive the story a temporary name.
• Take itSay one thing it taught you.
• Ask itAsk the teller one question.
• Link itConnect it to your own family or adopted line.

Then, post your telling

Record 2 to 3 minutes of audio or video, or write about 300 words.

1. Introduce yourself: “I am [your name], Djeli-in-Training of the [family name] family.”
2. Tell one healing story from your family.
3. Name the wound it answered and the cultural technology your family used.
4. Say one thing your family said about it in your discussion.

Bring to your weekend session

Bring your healing log and family record. The circle will build one large healing chart from everyone’s families, and may end with a ring shout or a call-and-response song.