- WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
Amina Blackwood-Meeks grabs the attention of children in a storytelling session at Liberty Hall, King Street, last Friday.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE HEAT of the afternoon conceded defeat to the constant breeze going across the open-sided top floor of Marcus Garvey's Liberty Hall, 76 King Street, downtown Kingston, on Friday afternoon.
The wind cooled the children and few adults who gathered to hear stories from Amina Blackwood-Meeks, caressing their rapt silence and carrying their laughter high over the clatter of city life.
They may have come to listen, but from the opening 'crick', to which a chorus of 'crack' was required, to the closing 'me no choose none' to her Jack Mandora, as well as singing refrains in between, the audience was much a part of the telling of the tale as Blackwood-Meeks. And she alternated the strike, requiring that persons from the audience tell stories in between hers, which they did.
Blackwood-Meeks explained how Anansi, that smart fellow who uses his brain to overcome adversaries much brawnier than himself, got all stories named after him by capturing Snake and presenting him to Tiger.
The audience was involved in the trick that Anansi used to nab Snake, a contest to see if he was taller than a piece of bamboo.
Onika Whyte from Tarrant High told the story of Brer Anansi and Brer Cow, Blackwood-Meeks returning to speak of how Anansi's children, See Trouble, Road Builder, River Drinker, Game Skiner, Stone Thrower and Cushion, combined to save their father. The moral was explained after, that "sometimes them tell we we cyaan cooperate, but remember the story of how Anansi six children work together to save him".
Jasmine Wilson of Mel Natahn Prep took her turn with the story of Anansi and Alligator's eggs and how Anansi escaped over the river when he translated Alligator's demand to 'bring him back' to "row faster, the storm is coming" to the persons manning the boat he was in.
Blackwood-Meeks picked up on the river theme in telling the story of two sisters, a kind one who "me no membah har name" and Dorah, who was so mean that "not even prayers she gi whe".
Song was involved in this story and, as the sisters encountered a singing stream on their way back from picking ackee, which crooned "if yu no gi me one ackee yu naa pass ya/..dry river a go come dung an' wash yu whey".
SING ALONG
The audience picked up the words easily and sang along, even as the kind sister encouraged in song also "gi him one Dorah gi him one". Dorah did not and eventually drowned.
"Dat happen to mean people," Blackwood-Meeks concluded, to laughter.
Blackwood-Meeks ended with a story that required the audience to go home and "tell your parents and your neighbours, and see how you can finish it".
Before she left, however, she was the delighted recipient of a verbal gift by a girl who quoted Marcus Garvey to her that, "a people without knowledge of their past, history and culture are like a tree without roots".
