aaduna in exile 2021-2022 - Uckfield
Not Knowing...Knowing...
It started in the winter of 1967…my exposure to things, words,
music and an intriguing aspect of global Black culture that was foreign to me
prior to college. Fêtes, goat water, baked green plantains, fungee, pepperpot,
curried goat, jerk chicken, ganja, patois, ackee, ska, calypso, and reggae,
numerous jump-ups, jumbies…all invaded and challenged my inability {and truth
be told, unwillingness} to even try to understand the English that was spoken
to me, the hand gestures and other mannerisms directed my way. I knew I had to
allow myself to be flooded with cultural aspects that had the potential to
embolden my spirit and expand my perspectives on being “Black.”
Simply, every “foreign” nuance was lumped and
termed Jamaican or West Indian while my ignorance
of the diversity of distinct countries was simplified and coalesced in generic
phraseology. And when I decided to bust open my isolated homogeneity sense of
“blackness,” I started to understand and eventually embrace the diversity of
countries and cultures that were home to many black immigrants who settled in
New York City’s Brooklyn, Harlem, Queens, the Bronx, and other welcoming
neighborhoods throughout the United States. I started to learn about Rastafari
that by the late Sixties was a significant religious movement and cultural
phenomenon dating back to the 1930s.
With a learned understanding of Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey fueled by reggae and calypso music, as well as liberation national politics, I opened myself to be engulfed in an expanding sense of American soul culture. My ability to “hear” and effectively communicate with residents from island nations left me wondering what took me so long. And then came Bob Marley and the Wailers and other reggae pioneers who paved the way for Marley’s global presence and cultural influence into mainstream non-black cultural mores.
Clive Uckfield writes from the perspective of Rastafari and the
dynamics associated with that cultural attribute. A former aaduna contributor,
his previous story “Empire of the
White Rastas” was published in aaduna in 2020. “Rasta Jesus” is the second part of his
‘Rasta Empire Trilogy,’ which win finished will form a book he hopes to
publish. Here is the opening excerpt from “Rasta Jesus.”
It had been a quiet COVID working from home sort of morning when
the mail crashed through my letterbox like waves breaking on a beach.
Mesmerised by my computer screen I had been woken from a seemingly hypnotic
trance, relieved only by the chance of a change of scene.
What had caught my eye most of all about ‘the’ letter was that it
was postmarked 4th March 2020 exactly a year to the day before its arrival. Its
battered state providing enough evidence for a conviction in any decent Court
of law. I remember sitting down in my spacious dining room looking out across
the fields which surrounded my house. My life on the surface looked like a
rural idyllic existence yet it hid like a plaster a frustrated lonely carbuncle
of a life. My grandfather clock stealing away the hours left of my three score
years and ten.
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| Clive Uckfield (photo provided) |
Clive Uckfield is married with two wonderful sons. He has travelled to many
places around the world and lived all over the UK. He enjoys bringing happiness
to others through his stories, poems, and photography.
aaduna - an online adventure with words and images - a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.
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