By Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa
The discovery of DNA denoted to man a change in a lot of things. Finally criminal cases could be solved as evidence became more certain where there was a match. It also brought people together who were otherwise unbeknown to themselves blood relations. In some cases would be by chance or as is the case most recently by tracing ones’ ancestry through it.
The word discovery has often been misused. For instance to mention that DNA was discovered could to some mean it did not exist before yet others would know the word implies that it had always been there undiscovered. DNA has always been there in humanity and this can be proved for example through what people in the past believed which was that leaders of any kind are born as such. Meaning leadership is always inherited which exbibits itself through ones physical appearance. Science proves otherwise on this.
Based on the aforesaid, it is strongly agreeable that whatever we do has traits of behaviours of our parents, grandparent and all those before them. In faith cycles the word inheritance and on the negative side family curse are often used with on the later people being edged to break any such negative DNA traits. It is all real and one has to keep their eyes open and indeed break the chains of all that would be their negative inheritance. It is all possible and it can be done. Things can turn around and with a strong will power, a person can cross bridges and jump higher up to the top level status more than their ancestors has done ever before.
The quotes this week are a continuation extraction from a book that in keeping with the spirit of the month, May as a period of recalling the contributions and journeys of African people. It narrates the experience of women in one of the regions where emancipation became an important word. I am sure the selected few quotations listed below will enlighten you to one or two life lessons, read and enjoy:
THE WOMEN OF RENDEZVOUS by Jenny Shaw
“………….. For enslaved people, the death of an enslaver connoted the specter of family separation, while the passing of someone from within their own ranks – be it a family member, friend, workmate, or stranger – broke ties and brought community members together in collective acts of commemoration. These familial rites of passage demonstrate the insidious ways that empire was reproduced in Barbados as well as the limitations of that reproduction.”
“As with other important life events, funerals were also marked by a lavish feast at the home of the deceased. For elites, the quantity and quality of the refreshments underscored the departed’s high status, as did the widow’s mourning clothes and loved ones’ jewelry and other adornments. Wills often made specific provision for such outward expressions of grief, bequeathing money directed to the purchase of ‘mourning rings.’ Benjamin’s will identified thirteen people who were to receive ‘a mourning ring of forty shillings price.’ …………”
“If legal proceedings were not always definitive about an African person’s status, physical and prominent markers of bondage – like the collars – made clear in truth what was obscurred or murky in law: enslavement was a very real experience for people of African descent in England. The collars meant that everyone – old, young, rich, poor, Black, White, women, men – who saw a boy with such a device around his neck knew that this child was not free, nor had the expectation of ever being so. In a country where some African-descended people were free, the collars are evidence that for many enslavement was precisely the norm.”
“A kitchen was cacophonous space-multiple people would have worked in it, and it is possible that even Dorothy spent some time there. Despite their suffocating atmosphere, kitchens were ‘spaces in which elite women and their servants socialized, laughed, and exchanged secrets and gossip,’ although whether such camaraderie occurred at Streatham is unknown.”
