ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702170040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN CELEBRATION Saturday was geared toward helping blacks latch onto their cultural roots, and a long-lost sense of place.
``Habari Gani?" goes the African expression.
It means, "What's happening?" or "What's the news?"
The news at the Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Roanoke Saturday afternoon was that black Americans are "part of a richer heritage."
That's the message Pastor Andrea Cornett-Scott tried to get across at her church's third annual African Diaspora Celebration and Tea. The African Diaspora concerns cultures of African descent, but not living on the continent.
The gathering was designed to be a reminder that African culture can be found all over the planet, Cornett-Scott said, and proof that the slave trade that brought blacks to America and the Caribbean did not wipe out their culture.
"We are taught we are people without a country," Cornett-Scott said, "but that's not true."
Her husband, Edward Scott, also a pastor and a philosophy professor at Mary Baldwin College, said African culture remained more intact in the Caribbean, because of the way the slave trade was practiced there.
African slaves continued to arrive in the Caribbean for years after slave owners in North America began breeding slaves. So while the Caribbean continued to get an infusion of people who practiced African ways, those ways were slowly forgotten in North America.
About 150 people - few of whom were church members, according to Cornett-Scott - came to the church Saturday to learn more about their African heritage.
The day started with a series of lectures on topics such as substance abuse in the black family and Peace Corps work in Africa.
Signs and maps in the church basement represented not just African countries such as Kenya, but also Panama, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. People scooped up foods, including coconut bread and black beans and rice, from each of the countries represented.
"Dunamic Malachi," five teenage girls from William Fleming High School and William Ruffner Middle School, danced in leotards and bare feet. The group's name means "powerful messengers of God," they explained.
Harun Najashi Abdur-Rasheed, 18, came all the way from Baltimore to play drums for about 10 minutes.
Edward Scott told a traditional Haitian tale about a mother and her four daughters. The mother loves three, but neglects the other. In the end, the neglected daughter becomes a queen and loves her mother anyway.
"Sometimes you have to love people against their will," Scott said, citing drug addicts as an example.
That hit close to home for Stonewall Williamson, a resident of the Hegira House substance abuse program. As soon as he gets a job, he can leave the program and begin being a father to a 17-year-old son he's had little to do with in 10 years.
He said the positive nature of Saturday's events gave him an extra boost of pride, one that will make him work harder to be a good father.
He liked the dancing and drumming, he said. They are positive interests that can keep youths out of the pitfalls that often plague them.
The food and fellowship weren't bad either, he said.
"It was just like those big church gatherings I used to go to out in the country."
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON STAFF. 1. Ebony Jordan, 11, looks overby CNBsome African books and artifacts at Saturday's Diaspora celebration
at Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Roanoke. color. 2. Harun Najashi Abdur-
Rasheed, 18, performs a solo on the congas. He is from Baltimore.