Consequence of Diaspora

I spoke with a best friend today and we talked of the three hurricanes that have passed through Florida in the last 3 weeks in quick succession, and we both were amazed as to the quickness and destruction all of them seemed to have. She mentioned that a friend of hers spoke of hurricanes forming off the coast of West Africa, starting off as thunderstorms, garnering speed within the confines of the Caribbean, and then unleashing their fury, fully formed into hurricanes, unto such states as Florida and North Carolina. He believed in the possibility that these hurricanes are a consequence of the African slave market.

I was intrigued by this notion that the souls of those African slaves who were often captured thousands and thousands of miles inland and brought to the western coast of Africa to be shipped to Florida may have conjured hurricanes with their perpetual cries of injustice. Florida was the closest point from the west coast of Africa to which slaves could be transported, and therefore served as the gateway from which these slaves were then dispersed to other states in Colonial times. Florida has a history that bleeds the blood of those who made the passage from their homeland of Africa to a place unknown to them, snatched for chattel, to provide free labor for masters who paid pittances for them on the docks of Florida. These slaves were then transported by their new masters to places like Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina, places that have had the most torturous hurricanes in history come upon them.

The intrigue of hurricanes precipitated by the anguish of those stolen from their homeland in which they were once ensconced makes for sad thoughts. If true, the pain has become so palpable that it manifests itself into horrendous rains that pummel the land and people it encounters centuries after the pain was inflicted. The pain is living on and has become tangible. That the pain at the land point, when there was no return to the homeland for those newly enslaved, exhibits as hurricanes years later, is a lot to ponder. It is sad to ponder.

The consequence of the diaspora, perhaps theoretical, appearing as hurricanes continues the legacy of pain for the souls of the past and presents pain to those who live in the path of the hurricanes.