2019 African Day we prepare for October Maafa Awareness Month

Maafa is a Kiswahili term for disaster, calamity or terrible occurrence. This term has been used to describe the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade/Middle Passage or Pan African Holocaust.

People of Pan African ancestry from throughout the diaspora are invited to spend the month of October in a sacred space that honors our ancestors who suffered through the middle passage, spent generations as chattel enslaved humans and many continue to live as compromised human beings due to systemic institutional racism and oppression. Events, commemorations and study will honoring our past, acknowledge our present and prepare for our future.

People of Pan African ancestry are asked to work, study and pray about this special 400 year commemoration, 1619-2019, remembering a very difficult voyage from along the Kwanza River in KiKongo to the Gulf of Mexico and finally along the James River in the British Colony of Virginia.

October 2019, will be a very special time of gathering, remembering as a critical first step in our personal and collective healing process. We ask that our supporters of African people who are not of Pan African descent themselves respect our desires about this sacred time of reflecting, mourning and healing.