Ciara and the dreams of our ancestors

He Was Only Twelve.

The morning was still when the raiders came, slipping through the trees like shadows. The drums had not warned them. The cattle stood silent. Then, without warning, the calm split like lightning in a black sky. Chaos fell like rain, drenching the village in screams, in fire, in the thunder of boots unfamiliar to this land.

They snatched him before he could run. His eyes widened with fear, his small body twisting,  resisting, reaching for the warmth, the safety, the security of his mother’s arms. His voice echoed through the trees, a desperate cry swallowed by distance, that grew fainter and fainter as he vanished into the darkness. 

His mother’s hands trembled as she reached for a son who was no longer there. She wailed his name into the wind, as if it could carry her voice across oceans.

She wept for weeks, then months, then years. Her face aged before its time. She never quite learned to live with a broken heart. She would see boys in the market, young men in the fields, and wonder “could that be him?” Could he have somehow escaped and returned?

But no answer ever came. No dream confirmed. No sign was given. Only silence.

But every night she dreamed...

Every night he dreamed of home…of warmth…of drums and firelight and his mother’s embrace. But those dreams were his only escape. The ship was foul with sickness, feces, and fear. He was packed below deck. He was chained, starved, and too young to understand why. He cried for days, calling out for his mother, for his father, for the trees and rivers that once cradled him. He became intimately familiar with death. His little heart raced as bodies were thrown into the ocean and the vastness swallowed them. 

He asked God questions that had no answers. Why?  Where was he going?  Who were these pale men? Were they devils? Surely this was hell in all of its wicked splendor, darkness, and torment.  

When they reached Mississippi, he was sold like cattle.

Ten years later, he was muscle and bone, swinging a blade through cotton fields. His back bore the language of whips. His hands harden from labor. His voice barely remembered his name. He no longer cried. What use were tears that changed nothing?  He worked. He slept. He survived. He resigned himself to a corner of hell where his humanity was consumed by the fire.

But every night he dreamed.

And Now We Return

Ciara took a quiet step with profound meaning. When she received her citizenship in Benin, headlines celebrated a star embracing her roots. But beneath the surface…behind the camera flashes…something sacred transpired.

In a single move, she reached across the arch of time…she stretched across the ocean’s tide...across centuries of torment and grabbed that twelve-year-old boy by the hand and placed him in the arms of his mother.

The screams were silenced. The tears were answered. The wound was closed. The dream was fulfilled.

The Dreams of Our Ancestors

Before we were, our names were spoken, in a language we did not know, in a place we had never seen. Our ancestors dreamed of us…they dreamed for us.

We were told to forget Africa...to sever all ties. She was beaten from our remembrance. But the blood holds memory, the gut knows our story.

For generations, returning seemed like a fairy tale. It was too naive, too romantic, too painful.

After finding a comfortable corner in the flames, some said, “Why go back to a place that sold us?” Others said, “Africa is not our home.”

But still, something called to us in our sleep. We heard whispers in our blues, in our soul, in our dance.

Now, in this time, in our brokenness, in our resilience, in our tragedy, in our triumphs, we are finding our way back home. Back to lands we never knew, yet always remembered. Back to unfinished stories. Back to arms that never stopped longing and reaching for us.

The soil recognizes us. The wind knows our scent. The soft, secure squeeze of soil beneath our feet reminds us that we are the children of this land.

We are the dreams made flesh.