On Taylor Swift's Colonial Era Fantasy "Wildest Dreams"

Can someone get Taylor Swift a textbook on cultural sensitivity? When Twitter and culture critics across the country recently schooled the superstar on the meaning of intersectional feminism, Taylor rightly apologized. But less than a month later, Taylor yet again finds herself in hot water. This time, she has drawn the ire of the Twitter-verse for her ill-advised, bizarre new video “Wildest Dreams.” 

“Wildest Dreams” appears like a strange white settler fantasy with echoes of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen’s 1937 memoir that was made into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

 

The video recalls the sharp satire of Binyavanga Wainaina’s famous Granta essay, “How to Write About Africa”:


“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions…. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular."

As a Kenyan, I find myself particularly uncomfortable with this peculiar brand of colonial era nostalgia. Images of white settlement in colonial Kenya are full of safaris and picturesque rolling green fields, but this cocoon of privilege and wealth came at the expense of native Kenyans who were robbed of their land. James Fox’s true crime story, White Mischief, which I am currently reading, details this culture of exploitative excess well: 

“The British aristocracy in Kenya, subjected to a tropical climate and a high altitude, suspended between English traditions and African customs, [was] answerable, more or less, only to themselves. These British colonials remained aloof, always on guard, determined that Africa conform to their needs, and accept without question an imported, heightened ideal of privilege, with all its rules and etiquette and yearning for service and luxury…. The Africans responded to this invasion with infinite patience, often to the fury of the memsahibs, who mistook their attitude for sullenness and even stupidity.” 

White settlement in Kenya not only restricted the nomadic movement of Kenya’s Maasai, but also deprived the Kikuyu of their ancestral homeland at the base of Mount Kenya and that of the Nandi and Lumbwa. The land disputes created during white settlement are the root of many of the economic and social problems that plague Kenya to the present day. 

Out-of-Africa.jpg

Taylor Swift’s portrayal of Africa as an idyllic playground devoid of its native black inhabitants obscures the brutality of colonial settlement. She has the right to use any location as a background for a music video, but by enmeshing the African savannah and old Hollywood glamour, she harkens back to a time when the characters of “Wildest Dreams” were brutally exploited. Times weren't so glamorous for those folks. 

The ending message of the video seems to indicate that Taylor’s team anticipated this backlash. The video concludes with the following: ““All of Taylor’s proceeds from this video will be donated to wild animal conservation efforts through the African Parks Foundation of America.” 

But really, Taylor… what’s good? Even I could have seen this one coming. 

The Quest for Cleanliness in Ghana

Osu, Accra’s commercial hub, is often called the “Times Square of Accra.” As a hub of activity and nightlife, it’s an apt label, but it also resonates in a few other ways —as a hub of poor sanitation and noise.  Instead of being pickpocketed, a night on town in Osu brings the more pressing danger of falling in an open gutter. Taking a tumble in one of Accra’s gutters could be lethal with the possibility of exposure to a variety of vermin and diseases.

Despite the beautiful leafy Cantonments avenues or stately mansions of East Legon, Accra is one of the dirtiest cities in Africa. In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ranked Ghana the fourth most unsanitary country in Africa and the second dirtiest out of 15 West African countries. More recently, the WHO declared Ghana the 7th dirtiest country in the world. 

Following the floods of June 2015, the city’s beaches were littered with trash. Residents living on the Accra shore will recognize the regular sight of people squatting on the beach to relieve themselves. From dawn to dusk, men urinate on the roadside in plain view of traffic. I, myself, had the extremely unfortunate (and somewhat traumatic experience) of witnessing someone defecate in front of me on a city street.  

Not only does poor sanitation affect health, but it also affects the national economy. Aside from obvious effects on tourism, poor sanitation reduces Ghana’s capacity to export goods. Products made in Ghana often find it difficult to enter EU markets because of a failure to meet minimum quality assurance standards and requirements. Many Ghanaian exports are frequently labeled as “unsanitary” or “uncompetitive.” With a high import-export ratio, Ghanaian citizens – quite literally  – suffer the price. Unable to export their own goods and forced to import many commodities, the cost of living in Accra is quickly rising while local salaries are unable to keep pace.

An article written by staff at Brand Ghana, a non-partisan organization established under the Atta Mills administration, notes the following:

Charity, they say, begins at home and cleanliness is next to godliness. While public officials fail in discharging their duties, the evolving Ghanaian drop-as-you-go attitude has exasperated the already nauseating level of dirt in the city. We seem to lose all sense of the virtue of keeping our surroundings clean as we litter the streets without a wince. The sense of community and self-help spirit has given way to an I-don’t-care spirit. This problem goes beyond the unavailability of trash cans. We simply lack the mind-set of carrying our trash along till we find the next receptacle.

A visit to the University of Ghana Campus for example is enough to buttress this point. Students who are expected to know better about the implications of unsanitary conditions drop litter anywhere even in the full glare of available trash cans. We throw rubbish anywhere, turn around and make all the noise that someone needed to clean up Accra. Really? Truly, the core problem of our dirty and unkempt city environment is behavioural constraints. We cannot run away from this under any pretexts.

With these conditions, it is no surprise that Ghana has experienced cholera outbreaks roughly every 5 years since the 1970s. In 2014, Ghana experienced its severest cholera epidemic in three decades, registering 28,975 cases and 243 deaths. In 2015, over 6,000 cases have been reported. Cholera is an easily preventable disease if proper sanitation practices are observed.

Since November 2014, the first Saturday of every month in Ghana has been marked as National Sanitation Day, but this call to action (in my view) appears to be poorly respected. Ghana could learn from the example of The Gambia and Rwanda where respect for sanitation is viewed as a civic duty.

In The Gambia, the government has established the practice of “Set Settal” (also known as “Clean the Nation”).  Each Saturday, between 9am and 1pm, all activities are halted as people are encouraged to clean trash around their compounds and public areas. Set Settal is taken so seriously that you cannot drive between 9am – 1pm without risking arrest. Originally a monthly event, Set Settal is now bi-monthly.

Rwanda is a notoriously clean African country. Kigali, its capital, is regularly ranked as “Africa’s cleanest city.” To those who have visited the Land of a Thousands Hills, the label should come as no surprise. Enter Kigali airport with a plastic bag and you’ll soon find yourself slapped with a nasty fine; plastic bags are banned across the country. Rwandans practice “Umuganda,” which roughly translates to “working together." Since the 1990s, Rwandan citizens have participated in Umuganda on the last Saturday of every month when they come together to clean and maintain the community. Activities include everything from basic cleaning to weeding and planting as well as building structures like homes and bridges. During the Umuganda hours, circulation of traffic is stopped for non-essential movement. Close to 80 percent of Rwandans take part in monthly community work.

That being said, environmental cleanliness is admittedly the joint responsibility of government and citizens. On the government-side, poor sanitation is partially due to low levels of access to toilet facilities. Across Ghana, access to toilets has only risen from 6 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2013. According to Julis Debrah, former Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, 5 percent of urban dwellers in Ghana patronize public toilets and a whopping 23 percent of the population defecates in the open.

Slow progress is being made to improve access to toilet facilities. In April 2015, the World Bank signed a $4.85 million grant agreement with the Ghana government to provide sustainable toilet facilities in low-income areas of Greater Accra. However, aside from the mere provision of public toilets, the government must enforce residential permits mandating that houses and apartments have washroom facilities. In effort to squeeze a few more cedis from tenants, many landlords have converted household toilets into bedrooms. Such practices cannot continue — building regulations must be enforced and existing units converted to adhere to common standards. Moreover, the nation must address its waste management woes, stemming from poor collection practices and the shrinking available to safe landfill sites. Further reading on Ghana’s waste management triumphs and woes via the Pulitzer Center.

As a country that calls itself the “Gateway to Africa, “ Ghana must take the lead in leading Africa into a century of better sanitation and healthcare.

Historical Amnesia and the Case for Reparations in the 21st Century: The Herero Genocide and Its Afterlives

The following blog post is excerpted from a paper that I wrote during my time at Yale as a final essay for a class on the Rwandan Genocide in Comparative Perspective. The course was taught by phenomenal lecturer David Simon, the Director of Yale's Genocide Studies Program and an expert in the politics of development assistance and post-conflict situations. If you have any interest in reading the essay in full, please reach out via the Contact page on this website. I am publishing this here because of recent reports that German authorities are moving towards recognizing these horrific events as "genocide." Talks with Namibia on a joint declaration about the events of the early 20th century are ongoing.


The Holocaust has been the central preoccupation of fields such as Judaic Studies and Genocide Studies, however our comprehension of how such unspeakable evil came to be is incomplete without an understanding of the atrocities committed in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) under the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the beginning of the 20th century. As the indigenous Herero tribe attempted to rebel against the German colonial administration’s campaign and oppression, they were met with a brutal response that decimated almost 80% of their population. Although the Holocaust may garner the most attention, the Herero genocide is almost universally acknowledged as first genocide of the 20st century. Moreover, the events of 1904 - 1908 laid the groundwork for many Nazi philosophies and extermination tactics. In 2001, the Herero People’s Reparation Corporation sued the German government and several German companies for $2 billion in reparations. Although the Namibian government and the German government have rejected the legitimacy of this claim, the examination of the nature of the genocide as well as its pernicious legacy in modern Namibian society have important implications about how abuses under the colonial era should be addressed today and the role of reparations as a part of reconciliation. Despite claims that the genocide took place outside of the purview of current international humanitarian law, numerous historical treaties undermine the argument that Germany’s actions did not violate the jurisprudence of the colonial era and a growing contemporary consensus on human rights and post-conflict reparations legitimate the Herero’s right to compensation. 

In the idyllic town of Swakopound, on the coast of Namibia, German and English tourists often frolic on the beach or explore the desert dunes unaware of the mass graveyards that lie forgotten just next to the century-old railroad line.[1] In Namibia, there are no memorials of the victims of the Herero genocide. Rather, there are memorials to the oppressors, the soldiers from the Second Reich who waged a war of annihilation on the Herero people. Despite the lack of acknowledgment of these events, the deliberate nature of the violence is undeniable. Before the war, the Herero population stood at 80,000. By the end of General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha’s vicious campaign, there were only 15,130 Herero in Namibia.[2] Over 80% of Herero were killed during the genocide and their land was re-distributed among various German settlers by the German government. Initial attempts at extermination took brutal forms such as death by bullets and clubs, hanging, burning of huts and forced starvation or ingestion of poisoned water.[3] However, even after the extermination order was lifted, the Herero continued to be killed in a less conspicuous fashion through de facto concentration camps. The tales of starving Herero who were given smaller rations than prisoners from other communities bear an eerie resemblance to events that would take place only 30 years later in the Holocaust.

In hindsight, the genocide was an easy way to mitigate the overpopulation in Germany’s major cities that created an atmosphere of misery in Deutschland. To alleviate this suffering, the Kaiser’s government encouraged settlement in the German territories of Africa, especially German South West Africa (GWSA). Although indigenous peoples already occupied these territories, the Germans were prepared to take the land by force if necessary. “The issue of who was to own the land created huge tensions between the German settlers and the Africans, but what also began to push the two groups towards conflict was that many settlers were so convinced of their racial supremacy that they began to treat the Africans with impunity.”[4] With no legal resource to fight their abuse and objectification, the Herero began to rebel. While the Germans had legitimate reasons to quell the rebellion, they responded with a disproportionate level of violence. The Herero rebellion finally gave them a pretext to take over the land. Their method of choice would be ethnic cleansing of all Herero, regardless of their level of participation in the rebellion. Correspondence from that era reveals that the merciless nature of the genocide was the explicit design of its architect, General von Trotha. His reputation for cruelty was widely known in the Germany’s other African colonies. “Between 1894 and 1897, von Trotha had been a commander in German East Africa and had forged a reputation for ruthlessness. During the Wahehe uprising, von Trotha had unflinchingly ordered mass hangings and summary executions of prisoners of war. He had burned down entire villages, sometimes with their inhabitants still inside.[5] His reputation for violence would follow him to German South West Africa.  

Von Trotha adopted these same tactics in his war against the Herero. His brutality is unsurprising in light of the fact that he “described [the Herero] in his diary as Unmenschen – non-humans”[6] and wrote that the Herero “nation must vanish from the face of the earth.”[7] At the Waterburg Plateau in northeastern Namibia, the von Trotha-led mass extermination of the Herero began when 50,000 Herero men, women and children retreated from the German army in hopes of escaping the violence. As the Germans encircled their encampment, the Herero’s last attempt at an offensive was met with machine gun fire. The survivors were forced into the desert where they died of thirst or exhaustion.  The Waterburg massacre was followed with an official annihilation order on August 2, 1904 when von Trotha proclaimed his intent to kill all Herero within the territory. Although the Kaiser ordered von Trotha to end the campaign in December 1904, the extermination continued unofficially through the establishment of concentration camps that served as “reservoirs of slave labor”[8] as well as a de-facto hell on earth. The most dreaded concentration camp during this era was Shark Island. It inspired such fear in the Herero that after one prisoner was informed that he was to be sent to the camp, he “fell to the ground, bleeding profusely, having drilled his fingers into his own neck in a desperate attempt to commit suicide.”[9] Gruesome postcards from this period show soldiers at the concentration camp posing with the skulls of dead prisoners. By the end of the genocide in 1907, there would be “one corpse for every 100 meters of railway track where enslaved Hereros were forced to participate in infrastructural projects for the colony.”[10]

From explicit nature of the extermination order, there is no mistaking the intent of the von Trotha's orders. He wanted the Herero dead. The 1948 Convention of Genocide defines genocide as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”  By this definition, the events of 1904 – 1908 constitute genocide. However, many Germans as well as those who oppose the idea of reparations for the Herero claim state that, because the Genocide Convention took place after the Herero Genocide, the acts of the Germans were legal at the time. This stance neglects to acknowledge the stipulations of agreements among Western European states at the turn of the century. “At the signing of the General Act of the Berlin Conference in 1885 [which] formalized the partition of Africa between imperial powers…contracting parties undertook ‘to watch over the preservation of native tribes and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being, and to help in suppressing slavery.’”  The 1890 Brussels Conference reinforced these views by prohibiting slave trafficking. Furthermore, arguments that the acts of genocide might be permissible because they occurred in the context of war must also be refuted because the 1899 Hague Conference on the Law of War contains language mandating the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Article 7 of the agreement states that “failing a special agreement between the belligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as regards food, quarters, and clothing, on the same footing as the troops of the Government which has captured them.”  From these three agreements, one can decipher that customary law of the colonial era prohibited slavery and mandated the ethical treatment of Africans.

While some scholars might argue that the Herero Genocide lies outside of the bounds of the Hague Conference because the tribe was not a signatory to the proceedings, the study of the Berlin Conference and the Hague Conference gives strong credence to the idea that an consensus among European states on the treatment of prisoners of war developed pre-genocide, making Germany’s crimes even more reprehensible. Additionally, “these conventions conferred rights on the Hereros through the third-party beneficiary doctrine. The parties to these international agreements intended to confer a distinct set of protections upon indigenous Africans.”  Despite the fact that the term “genocide” may have been an anachronism in 1904, the events of that time period were clearly illegal due to the human rights laws of that period. According to Article 15 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, “if a crime was criminalized under customary law before [any of these treaties] came into effect, it is not limited by the retrospective nature of the operation of the treaty.”   

Considering that Germany paid reparations to individual Jews as well as Israel after World War II, the concept of reparations is neither unrealistic nor misplaced. If the Germans paid reparations from crimes committed a mere thirty years after the Herero genocide, “what is the legal – or moral – distinction between German genocide directed at Jews and German genocide directed at Africans?”  Reparations for the Herero would be a logical step because the precedent of reparations has been set repeatedly throughout the 20th century. “Germany [has] paid some 103 billion DM to victims of Nazi persecution.”  The United States paid reparations to Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps during World War II. In Rwanda, survivors were able to claim compensation against individual perpetrators. “Payment of damages is a symbol of moral condemnation of the abuses that occurred.”  The lapse of time between the genocide and the tribe’s decision to take legal action should not be an impediment to receiving compensation because “if human rights are truly inherent and universal, then they apply not only territorially, but temporally and provide a basis to judge past practices.”  Additionally, in the 2001 UN Articles on the Responsibility for States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, “the state responsible for an internationally wrongful act is under the obligation to make full reparation for the injury caused by it. ‘Injury’ is defined as any damage, material or moral, caused by the act.”  While the Articles state that restitution is the preferred form of reparation, compensation is an acceptable substitute in its absence. 

Was Oscar Wilde right when he said “no man is rich enough to buy back his past” or are reparations capable of repairing some of the damages of the dark side of Namibia’s colonial past? Historical precedent suggests that it may help alleviate old wounds. Reparations are a standard mechanism of making amends for misconduct. In the case of the Herero genocide, this misconduct amounted to genocide, the deliberate killing of an ethnic group. Considering that the Herero genocide laid the foundation for the philosophies underpinning the Holocaust and the Namibian government’s attempts to undermine its legitimacy, reparations would be an effective mechanism for the Herero and Germany to settle their score without engaging the Namibian bureaucracy. Despite the fact that Germany has repeatedly set the precedent of paying reparations for their genocidal acts of the 20th century, they have refused to do so on the grounds that international law in 1904 did not prohibit their acts and because of their substantial development aid contributions for Namibia. However, numerous treaties pre-genocide illuminate European customary law condemning such flagrant abuse of indigenous peoples. Moreover, Namibia’s vast inequality prevents the Herero of reaping the benefits of this aid. 

Morality and a growing international consensus on human rights both compel Germany to shift its position on reparations for the Herero genocide and to make a comprehensive apology that recognizes moral wrongs and legal obligations. 

Recently, the rights of indigenous peoples have risen to the forefront of the international agenda. In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Article 28 of the documents contains a clause that states that “indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution, or when then this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensations, for lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied… which have been confiscated… without their free, prior and informed consent.”  In light of the fact that this resolution was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, a body of which Germany is a member, Germany has a clear diplomatic obligation to provide compensation in order to mitigate the landless status of today’s Herero people. 

 

[1] Namibia - Genocide and the Second Reich, directed by David Adetayo Olusoga, BBC, 2005, accessed April 28, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4OZ7Xc5pWQ

[2] Allan D. Cooper, "Reparations for the Herero Genocide: Defining the Limits of International Litigation," African Affairs 106, no. 442 (January 2007): 114, accessed April 28, 2013, http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/106/422/113.short.

[3] Jeremy Sarkin, Colonial genocide and reparations claims in the 21st century(Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), [Page #], accessed April 28, 2013, http://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=10451248.

[4] Namibia - Genocide and the Second Reich.

[5] David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism (London, UK: Faber & Faber, Limited, 2010)s, 138.

[6] Olusoga and Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, 40.

[7] Olusoga and Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, 40.

[8] Namibia - Genocide and the Second Reich.

[9] Olusoga and Erichsen, The Kaiser’s Holocaust, 210.

[10] 100 Years of Silence: The Germans in Namibia, directed by Halfdan Muurholm and Casper Erichsen, 2006, accessed April 28, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3P_gvFVuXA.

Dashiki, a New Trend? Hardly.

This morning, I came across an Elle Canada online article labeling the dashiki “the new kaftan” and lauding it as "the new it-item of note." I laughed. The dashiki is hardly a new trend – roam the streets of Accra or any other major West African city and you’ll be confronted with dashikis in various styles in a rainbow of colors from sunshine yellow to cerulean blue.

Nor is the dashiki “tribal."  Vlisco textile designer Toon van der Manakker designed the iconic motif based on a 19th century Ethiopian noblewoman's tunic. The print was originally known as “Angelina.” While the design is often copied, Vlisco produces the true original.

Production of the "Angelina" fabric in a Vlisco factory. Photo credit to Vlisco. Click through for access to image and history on the Vlisco website. 

Production of the "Angelina" fabric in a Vlisco factory. Photo credit to Vlisco. Click through for access to image and history on the Vlisco website. 

While I object to the characterization of the dashiki as a “trend,” I hesitate to call its popularization cultural appropriation, the buzzword du jour. In the vein of Magritte’s treachery of images, African fabric (i.e. wax print) isn’t necessarily entirely African. The “African print” that we often see on the streets of West Africa and that experienced has a renaissance in the diaspora, is known by a wide variety of names including “ankara” and “Dutch hollandais.” What we know as wax print or ankara was introduced to Africa by the Dutch, who popularized the Javanese batik following their colonization of Indonesia. The van Vlissingers, a Dutch merchant family, brought the fabric to the masses when they established Vlisco in 1846. During the 19th century, Africans embraced these designs as a form of self-expression. Today, Vlisco continues to be the marker of high-quality batik. The Vlisco Group also owns more affordable African textile brands Uniwax, Woodin and GTP. What is often called "African fabric" is based on an Indonesian design that was commercialized by the Dutch. 

The Dashiki as a symbol of African-American history

In the United States, four young businessmen popularized the design when they formed a company called New Breed in 1967. During this era, the black power and white counterculture movements in the United States embraced the dashiki as a symbol of affirmation and “Black in Beautiful.”

The name dashiki originates from the Yoruba word “dan shiki,” which refers to a work shirt typically worn by men. The Yoruba adopted the word from the Hausa “dan chiki.”

The late Gil Scott Heron, a popular African-American musician and spoken word poet in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote in his 1970 novel The Vulture:

'You rilly like them African clothes that N’Bala sells? I mean, the shirts like the one you got on. What’choo call ‘um?'

'It’s called a dashiki, brother. I think they’re better than the white man’s shirts.'
Beyoncé in a dashiki

Beyoncé in a dashiki

As he mobilized people during the civil rights movement, Marion Barry, who would later become mayor of Washington, D.C. (a city that once bore the affectionate moniker “Chocolate City”), famously wore dashikis.

With this long history, it would be reductionist to merely label the dashiki a “trend.” Celebrities rocking the style are merely late to the party. 

A Brief History of The Gambia's Aku

I've always found the history of the Aku, my mother's people, particularly fascinating because it underscores The Gambia's cultural diversity and shines a light on an under-told part of the slave trade. 

The Akus (also known as Krios) are a minority Gambian ethnic group that migrated to the Senegambia region from Sierra Leone during the 19th Century. They comprise 2 - 5% of the Gambian population, are primarily Christian, and speak Aku (Krio), a language similar to the English-based Sierra Leonean Krio.

The Aku are a mixture of recently freed slaves who were liberated on the high seas by the British in West Africa and freed slaves returning from the diaspora from such places as the US, the Caribbean and Nova Scotia. Many of the freed slaves were of Yoruba descent, which is why it is common to find Aku with Yoruba names — like many people in my mother's family.

You can also see the direct link to the Aku's Nigerian ancestry through the word ashobie. In Krio, ashobie is a word used to describe group outfits worn on special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Among the Yoruba, who also engage in the practice of ashobie, the word is aso ebi.  The pouring of libations to recognize ancestors is another Aku tradition that stems from Yoruba culture.

In March 1807, the British abolished the slave trade, but illegal slave traders continued to smuggle slaves to the British West Indies and other countries. Because of the harsh conditions in the New World plantations, slaves often died, so plantations were in frequent need of new workers. Despite the inherent risk involved, illegal traders who could evade capture by the British navy made a huge profit. During this period, the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron patrolled the seas liberating around 150,000 enslaved Africans and returning them to Sierra Leone.

Some of the liberated people returned to their hometown of Abeokuta, Nigeria, in Ogun State, a traditional part of Yorubaland. The name Abeokuta means "underneath the rock" or "refuge among rocks" and was used as a place of refuge from slave hunters from Dahomey. There, the Krio returnees became prominent businessmen and traders. 

According to Godfrey Mwakikagile, during the 1830s, the British began moving many of the Aku who remained in Sierra Leone to The Gambia. As one of the first African groups to be exposed to a Western education, the Aku had skills the local Gambian tribes did not, giving them a privileged status in the colonial hierarchy. Many Aku have English surnames adopted from the merchants they trained under. In some ways, the relationship between the Aku and other ethnic groups resembled the relationship between Americo-Liberians and other ethnic groups in Liberia where the new arrivals began to dominate local politics. In an ironic twist, the Aku  played a pivotal role in pushing for Gambian independence.

———

Many thanks to my Aunt Dayo Forster, who helped supplement some of the historical details of this blog post.