Kwanzaa
We lost our “UMOJA”, the basic concept and core value of our being “We, therefore, I am”, at the time of our history that began some 300 years ago. We didn’t step on the soil of New World with a dream like many others, but hauled on the ground like a cargo as merchandise. We were each treated individually as a unit but not tied as a family or group bonded together by the same dialect.
Misery was the food we’d been feeding to fill our empty stomach, agony was the water we’d been drinking to quench our thirst, depth of our footmarks were the weights we’d been carrying, our lives were trial after trial of thorny path. No matter how hard we worked, our baskets were empty. No matter how much we labored, returns of our toils were unbearable lashes. No matter how humbly we begged and ardently prayed, God always turned His face away from us.
But all those detestable days are gone as second millennium faded away. Shackles of curse are removed from our neck and wrists. Our burdens are removed from our back. The reward of our day’s of labor is reasonable wage. Why don’t we embrace one another with joy because only thing remain is our determination.
As daybreak sun is rising from yonder horizon, our darkest day has passed; for daybreak light is brighter than ever and pleasant as spring breath, we have good reason to celebrate for a moment. Nevertheless, don’t prolong the time of festival because it may make you stray from reality and to dwell in farfetched world.
As long as you don’t fold the wings but spread wide and keep flapping them, though sometimes encountering high wind, you can fly higher than the highest ridges of a mountain. If you keep swimming upstream, though you may confront falls and rapids, you’ll come to your old home where your parents risked their lives to spawn and enable you to hatch from an egg one day, and rejoice overflowing water in the ocean to gladden your life. If you dart with a swift gallop not abandoning tomorrow’s dream, no matter how immeasurably vast is the wilderness, you’ll reach the horizon before sun sinks into the other side of the world.
It’s the time to restore our “UMOJA” a laudable custom once we lost during our darkest days, recover “UMOJA” our ancestral heritage the good moral standard to sustain “I as us.”
Copyright ©
Su Ben
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