The African Tradition of the Matriarch Queen

A True Matriarch. Image

The African-derived religions of our childhood in Panama, the religion we Westindians referred to as Beji-Nite, in particular, I would later encounter in my research of extracts of religions practised in ancient times in certain regions of Central Africa. It would then be safe for me to conclude that it is an ancient African tradition for women to take on the role of intermediary with the Spirits for the protection of their family, the clan, and, in fact, the general environment.

With this in mind I can’t help but feel doubly blessed to have partaken at a crucial time in my life of some of those remarkable ceremonies. This unique experience with Beji-Nite ceremonies would, in fact, help me reach my lifelong dream of attaining a college education and returning to Panama a man of substance.

In essence, the presence and care of those women –mothers-matriarchs-queens- was an answer to what I had, in secret, been wishing and praying to see in my own family of females, my mother, grandmothers, aunts and every Panamanian Westindian female I’d had the opportunity to meet in childhood. Since early childhood I had often daydreamed about the qualities I was looking for in the “woman of my dreams” and I had only glimpsed these qualities in the figures of these venerable women who led congregations sometimes numbering in the hundreds.

It would take me a lifetime for it all to become clear that what I was seeking- apart from a lover and a wife- was a comrade, partner and a true “help-meet.” Sadly enough I never personally found such traits as loyalty, love of community, or dedication to the cause of remembering our ancestors’ love and devotion amongst girls of my age grade who were descended from Panamanian Westindians.

“What bad luck I have inherited!” was my desperate cry since I saw that for us descendants of the admirable, indeed, venerable “Silver Men and Women,” there is little to pass on to our future generations. Bitterly I complained to my God that I felt tremendously cheated for not having time to bond with our cultural heritage on the Black Canal Zone, in Panama or in the U.S. Life for me became a real “Puckatery” as I tried to peer into the soul of “every black woman” seeking that Spirit of the Matriarch/ Queen. Although my expectations were naively conceived, my experience would spell a literal “spit in the face.”

At every turn in life it seemed to be the same story replayed over and over until in my search for answers I would make it a duty to visit our dead at what was formerly the American Corozal Cemetery segregated “Silver” section. The shock of those visits led me to start visiting all the cemeteries where pioneer Silver Men, Women and their families had been interred. One cannot really call him/herself a real descendant of the Panamanian Westindians without first visiting the very few remaining cemeteries on the banks of the Panama Canal, the only historic evidence that we Black Westindians were ever a part of anything to do with the Panama Canal. But first one’s heart must be prepared to do so to cherish the Spirit of our beloved ancestors. The state of those historic sites has made even me, a grown man, cry tears of shame, my shame included since I too was a part of the collective abandonment of our forefathers.

For me, all those years of searching had been a period of preparation in which I had been working to fill a vast spiritual void in myself. It was an unrelenting hollow feeling deep inside of having something, a great “something,” missing in my life.

Truly I have felt, in part, that my Spirit had no presence because it had no past worthy of veneration. My past had been filled with phantoms; those spirits that I did not want to represent me in any future Panamanian Westindian society that had definition or form. Until then I had an internal struggle refusing to have events define me and my culture but it wasn’t until the year of 1974 when I made a short pilgrimage, an overland trip to our beloved Panama, our Motherland that still welcomed every race on the face of the earth to her shores except for us, the Panamanian Westindian race.

My problem, in particular, was that I had developed a knack for working to better other people’s condition and cultural heritage only to be rejected later as “not being one of them.” I finally linked my peculiar problem at that time to not being able to settle the issues of having “my own” definite cultural heritage. It also became a problem for me to be able to “serve my people.”

Consequently, I developed a definite aversion to being somewhere in which people did not respect my contributions or me as a member of their community. In fact, the condition of being “employed” was not simply a selfish act or just to benefit myself and my immediate family, but also an act of benefiting the community. This concept began to evolve for me.

The time would come, however, when employment offers in which the pay, on paper, looked good and promising but, looking closer, there was a “hitch,” somehow. The trap was that “taxable income,” health insurance, and all the rest of the “withholdings” that would take one back to the minimum wage level- exactly where I’d started out. It felt too much like the economic trap my Silver forefathers had experienced back in the early 1900’s when they were giving their all at being part of something as momentous as building the Panama Canal.

I just couldn’t see myself continuing to exist in that strange and expensive environment of a very expensive United States at “survival” minimum wage levels, no matter what educational level one attained. I began remembering my many contacts with my Spiritual Matriarchs to assist me in guiding me back to my right place in the universe of things on this planet.

I was blessed to have sought the help of “Madame” (Mother Campbell), my old friend, in that life changing excursion to Panama in 1974. In a prophetic type message she shared with me in a reading, she advised me that I would return to Panama and all would go well. Although I wouldn’t have dared question her at the time, I considered it somewhat far-fetched for me to return to my country. Well, as it turned out, her prophecy for me was absolutely correct. In fact, just about everything she had ever told me had been- correct.

This story will continue.