On Monday, Emancipation day, I stood on a relative’s veranda in Hopetown watching a group of young and not so young people making their way home, through the rain, after a night of frolic at the annual ‘swari’. I wondered how many of them knew, remembered or cared that they were celebrating the fact that 178 years ago the British parliament passed the Act of Emancipation but because the ensuing four years were more “the last stage of slavery rather than the first stage of freedom”, real emancipation day is regarded as August 1,1838 when ‘full freedom’ came. I also wondered whether they were aware that we were two thirds through the Year for People of African Descent. That the year 2011
