There is a book I haven't written. I haven't forgotten about it --I'd like to write it when I think I can do it well.
In research for this phantom book, I have been learning about the Kingdoms of Xwéda and Dahomey (in modern-day Benin). We in the United States are not raised to know much about African history, even though our histories are closely related. It seems a great loss, to only know pieces of your history.
There was a practice that occurred in a place called Ouidah, along the coast there. In the practice, captives were sold as slaves and branded with the mark of the purchaser. These captives came from different areas of Africa --it is said that captives were taken from as far away as Ethiopia. These captives --men, women, and children --were burned with the mark of the person who bought them with the goal of selling them. History is difficult, which may be why it has a tendency to repeat itself. We don't talk about the hard stuff.
In the practice, the captives were put through a ritual to make them forget their homes. It wasn't enough to enslave them or scar them; they were also expected to forget home. All of them --men, women, and children --were led around the Tree of Forgetting. Men walked more times than the women and children. Perhaps their memories were felt to be stronger? It's hard to say.
The captives walked around this tree before they were loaded on longships and then onto larger ships and sailed off to the New World to serve the rest of their natural lives as slaves. The slaves from Ouidah were said to go to Brazil and Suriname --at least in my research so far, that is how it seems. The slaves who were shipped from other areas of West Africa ended up elsewhere in the New World, including what is now the modern-day U.S.
Did the captives who were forced into this circular march forget their homes?
The poet in me says no. They could no more forget their homes than the tree could forget its roots.
The psychologist in me says no. The ritual designed to make them forget would solidify the memory, much as our minds wander to places we specifically tell it not to go.
The anthropologist in me says no. Cultures in contact are creoles --even if there is a dominant culture, other cultures survive in ways we may not immediately see.
The tree is gone now. Is it forgotten? There are murals near the original location of the Tree of Forgetting in Benin that commemorate people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The human in me says no, it's gone but not forgotten, and thank goodness for that.