Sunday June 23^rd 2013

On Thursday, during the meditation in the development session the facilitator said he could see a woman wrapped in a maroon cloak standing behind me holding an umbrella made of cane over my head. See the full story here.

I deduced from this that I was being told that there is a connection between me and the Maroons of Jamaica. I also wondered if I was being given a message to look at the link between Cameroon and the Maroons.

First I checked out the meaning of the colour maroon. There were two main meanings:

1)      It is symbolic of courage, bravery, heroism and strength.

2)      The colour is red-brown, like that obtained from clay and is associated with healing and power to repel malevolent spirits.

The Maroons in Jamaica represents all of the above. They were the runaway slaves who fought the British for their freedom 100 years before the official abolition of slavery.  They were, and still are, a very spiritual people. The current Maroon community in Jamaica still carries out a ritual in which they speak to the ancestors using MSL – Maroon Spirit Language.

But it wasn’t till I typed in ‘link between Maroons in Jamaica and Cameroon’ that I got the information that the original Maroons were made up of slaves taken from what is modern day Ghana and modern day Cameroon.

I just sat and stared at the screen. Not so much flabbergasted by the connections but by the means that I’d been made aware of them.

When I spoke to my sister-in-law tonight she said there is a Maroon community in Clarendon, which is where my mom is from.

I feel a trip to Jamaica to make connections with the Maroons coming on very shortly after my return from Cameroon.