THE coastal sand flats of South Carolina are a tranquil place. A local newspaper carries a front-page story about a mother and daughter who bit each other. But controversy over development is stirring the calm waters. Developers from Florida want to build a supermarket on St Helena, one of the Sea Islands that dot the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Many locals object. Last year they mounted a letter-writing campaign against another proposed supermarket, and that one backed off. They worry that a big chain would imperil the region’s distinctive black culture, called Gullah or Geechee.
The white planters who settled the Sea Islands imported thousands of slaves from West Africa, and in the comparative isolation of the islands they developed a culture that retains a strong African influence. Patricia Jones-Jackson, a linguist who spent much of the 1970s among the Gullah people, found a transatlantic connection in everything from the islanders’ basket-weaving to their belief in a tripartite soul.
The ABS translation of the NT into Gullah is a lot of fun. It has to be read aloud. You can get it on Amazon along with Gullah cookbooks, etc.
If you want to know what developers can do to ruin things, go to Cape Cod or Half Moon Bay in California. I don’t blame the folks on the Sea Islands for not wanting development there. I’ve been to those islands, and they’re a very special place…..a place to be treasured and preserved!
No place is special, no place is respected as long as a dollar MIGHT be earned. 🙁
[url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=71]Not the first time an island culture clashed with a supermarket.[/url]