When Jamaica’s native son Marcus Garvey shouted for Global Africans to return to Africa, many chanted Haile Selassie I & found home & Rastafari roots in Ethiopia while many others celebrated Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah & found freedom in Ghana. Today’s Ghana boast a significant Jamaican community brought & empowered by Rita Marley & the memory & foundation of Bob Marley & Marcus Garvey. Jamaicans & native Ghanaian Rastas have created their own governing & financial empowerment council that boasts a credit union called the black star line catering to the financial empowerment needs of Rastafarians in Ghana.
When you walk around Ghana you see Jamaica, from reggae music, to dreadlocks & the culture of Rastafari. I had heard about the Kromanti/Kramanti language in Jamaica which was supposed to sound similar to the Akan languages of Ghana, but I became a true believer when I heard it spoken & found many similar words in Ghanaian Akan languages. Jamaicans like Brazilians have never denied their African roots, but have rather embraced it & used it as a sense of power in knowing who they are & where they came from beyond Jamaica’s sugar cane plantations.
The Maroons of Jamaica have been able to keep their identity & autonomy not only from their former slave masters, but also within Jamaica even til today. The Maroons’ largest town Accompong even has a similar name to Ghana’s Akropong-which is home to one of Ghana’s oldest tribes, the Akuapims & both are ironically located in the hills/mountains of their individual nations.
A LITTLE-KNOWN fact of Jamaican church history is that the Presbyterian Church in Ghana owes much of its origins to descendants of Jamaican families who went to that African nation a few years after slavery was abolished here.
On February 8, 1843, 25 West Indians of whom 24 were Jamaicans, set sail to Ghana (known then as the Gold Coast) to do missionary work. They arrived on April 17, 1843. They never returned to the Caribbean.
Their story is cited in the (B)International Review of Mission, Vol.87, No 344, January 1998.(P) The article was written by the Rev. Dr. Daniel J. Antwi, then principal of the Trinity Theological College, Legon, Ghana. The Rev. Dr. Antwi is at present the Dean of Graduate Studies at the Institute for Theological and Leadership Development - the main theological training arm of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
