Gunpowder and Tea Cakes: My Journey with Felicity

Dinah tells Felicity and me to follow her. Felicity and I exchange a wide-eyed look. She doesn’t know what Dinah’s thinking either. But we follow her to the edge of the quarter.

She stops behind a cabin where we’re hidden in the shadows. I peek around the corner and see a group of black people gathered in the dirt lane between two cabins. Torches have been thrust into the ground, and in the flickering light I see women and men of all ages, from a baby to an old man who leans on canes.

A woman shakes a gourd that makes a rattling sound and two men pound on homemade drums. Another man taps a stick on the jawbone of a deer. People clap their hands and stamp their feet. Then, several people begin to dance. The dancers keep time to the drums beating faster and faster. The sound charges through the night like electricity. The woman closest to me closes her eyes, as if she’s letting the music carry her away.

I understand now. I would’ve imagined the field workers would be too exhausted, and maybe angry and bitter, to do anything except eat and sleep. But these people haven’t given into wariness and hard times. They’re remembering where they came from.

Dinah whispers that they may seem like they have nothing, but their heads and hearts are full. And they teach the young ones born here what it means to be African.

I know I’ll never come close to understanding what their lives are like, but I’m glad Dinah allowed Felicity and me to glimpse this moment. It makes me want to cry and sing, both at the same time.