Later that day we visited the village of a Chief. Was walked in and these old women where sitting there in traditional garb watching soap operas on a labtop. It was a really ironic picture. The chief comes out and his cell phone rings. Apparently their tribe has bee around for about 800 years and even defeated the Ashente, a great war tribe know through out the diaspora. They told us they were the first to have contact with the Europeans when they first landed. Their strong tire to their culture lasted through the ordeal of slavery, people sent to Jamaican colonies kept their African names and passed them down, they even named towns after the places they grew up in in Africa. I learned about his a while back. The Maroons of Jamaica were members of the Ashente tribe that were solid into slavery and joined together once they got the the colony. They ended up running away and forming their own societies in the jungles where they resumed life as if they were still in Africa. This actually happened alot in the Caribbean and in Brazil...it just so happed that the Jamaican Maroons were from the Ashente..
We when out side of the chiefs palace after pouring the libations and talking with everyone. The children gather every where to make fun of us. I was the only one to break from the group, kneel down and talk to the kids while everyone else just stood at a distance at took pictures like we were at a zoo. I met a young girl names Sarah who was in charge of the children, she a had a stern face as if she had been around for years and held ages of wisdom for a girl so young. She was 13 and carried her younger sister on her back and whipped all the younger kids into place.
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