The Afrikan[1]/African Sri Lankans: A History of the Resilience and Rejuvenation of People Called ‘Kapiri’ or ‘Kaffirs’
The presence of Afrikans in south Asia in general and on the island now known as Sri Lanka in particular spans thousands of years. This monograph concerns those Afrikans who are present in Sri Lanka in the early twenty-first century. While definitive information on when they came to the Ceylon and where they came from are clouded in the differing oral histories of the Afrikans themselves and the differing written histories of others, their presence, survival, and prosperity are not open to speculation. They are facts. This monograph has the following goals: to provide visual images of the various communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in different parts of the island; to weave together the oral and written evidence and provide alternative explanations for when and where they came from, and to offer their successful continuation as a testament to their resilience. In common with Afrikan peoples wherever they are found, the Afrikan Sri Lankans provide a spiritual centeredness, joy, and kindness that rejuvenate both themselves and those around them.
{All Sources (Footnotes) are found at the end of the Narrative, below}
Acknowledgments
Works of this sort cannot be carried out by a single determined researcher working in isolation. Thanks first to those ancestors who guided each and every person involved in this work, bringing us together and guiding us to the truth. Thanks to the Afrikan Sri Lankans who opened their homes for our visits, their hearts to our questions, and allowed us to photograph them to record their presence. To Z. Ameen Saleh, friend and traveling companion, for translating Sinhala and Tamil conversations into English and for guiding me, a passionate Afrikan American, into the various Sri Lankan cultures in which the Afrikans of Sri Lanka reside. To Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya, who has written more on the Afrikan Sri Lankans than any other single author, for her scholarship. To Asiff Hussein, whose text Zeylanica provided information, insight and context for this work, and whose concern and friendship aided in its completion. To Indika Rosa of the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics for assistance in finding Afrikans in the Eastern Province and for your interest in the project. To the staff and audience at the American Center in Colombo and the American Corner in Jaffna for allowing me to present my preliminary findings and photos and offering advice and support. To students, faculty, and others before whom I lectured on this topic at the Colombo Institute of Research and Psychology, American National College, the University of Colombo, and the University of Kelaniya. To the reporters at the Financial Digest and Ceylon Today newspapers who wrote about this work. to Nirosha Kulasekara, my student and my teacher, and her family, for your research into the language that the Afrikan Sri Lankans sing in Sirambi Adiya and Kalpitiya, and for Translating On Our Travels to Visit the Afrikans. And To those countless persons who offered advice, directions, food for thought and for the spirit along the way. I thank you each and every one.
Overview
Afrikan people have had their cultures, countries, and communities altered by the aggression of outsiders for centuries. One result has been the scattering of Afrikan peoples across the globe as forced servants of merchantile and imperial masters. And while many Afrikans traveled the world as adventurers and explorers, free to roam and settle where they wished for eons earlier in the history of humans, In more recent epochs these people are smaller in number, and their stories are largely lost in the sands of time. As Afrikan-centered scholars continue to research and write of these adventurers, we will all gain a clearer picture of how Afrikans came to be residents in countries around the globe. Similarly, as scholars provide more detail about the forced migrations of Afrikans, we will learn how they got to where they live now, how they survived and prospered, and what they contributed to the locales that they now call home. This is the story of one such group, the Afrikan Sri Lankans. While evolution, intermarriage, and loss of Afrikan cultures and customs may eventually see their descendants disappear into the surrounding Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka, for now they form some distinct communities, and add to the Sri Lankan experience in a number of ways.
To name ourselves or to be named? The Afrikans of Sri Lanka
This term ‘Afrikans’, as noted above, is a new and recent addition to the lexicon. It stands as a statement by Afrikan peoples that we have emerged from the era where all that we were and did was defined by others. It is a statement of identity, of agency, and of the assertion of the right to define ourselves. The term ‘the Afrikans of Sri Lanka’, is also of recent vintage. As with Afrikans the world over, these people have been referred to by many names. Some of these names are complementary while others are cruel. In most cases, the names were ascribed by outsiders and not by the Afrikan people themselves. This term signals the ascension of Afrikan people in this part of the world.
The name most often used when talking about Afrikans in Sri Lanka in the present day is kapiri. This term is a recent vintage. Scholars agree that kapiri is derived from the Arab term, kafir or qafr which means non-believer in Arabic.[2] (I have included the term “Kaffirs” in the title of this monograph so that others can more easily find their way to this monograph and the information and perspective it contains.) This term, in turn, was used when Arabs engaged in the enslaving and selling of people. Early in the history of Islam, Arab traders stayed close to the Islamic dictum that forbade the enslavement[3] of persons who professed the Islamic faith. Hence the term kafir came to be used to designate those who were not practicing Islam, were infidels, and were therefore ‘eligible’ for enslavement.[4] In time, the desire for profit overcame the strict interpretation of this rule, and Afrikans were purchased and enslaved by Arab traders regardless of their religious affiliation as early as the fifteenth century.[5] Arabs began trade with Ceylon in the fifth century of the modern era, before the advent of Islam as a religion. While there is no identifiable historical record of Afrikans being sold in Ceylon during the fifth to fifteenth centuries, one can assume that if there was a need for laborers, craftspeople, maids or soldiers, and Afrikans were available at a good price, that they would have been sold in Ceylon as they were throughout much of the known world. So kafir had a negative connotation in Arabic, a connotation that continued when Europeans captured Ceylon.
During the colonization of Ceylon by the Portuguese and then the Dutch, enslaved Afrikans were imported to Ceylon in large numbers. They were referred to by the Portuguese as kafre or cafre, which the Portuguese inherited from the Arab traders when the Portuguese took over the trade in enslaved persons in southern Asia from the Arabs.[6] The Dutch called them Kaffers.[7] In each case, the term was used to designate those who were enslaved subjects of the Portuguese or Dutch respectively. The British continued the use of this term, anglicizing it to Kaffir.[8] The British also used it in a negative way. One only need ask an Afrikan in Azania (South Afrika) about this term to learn how they despise it.[9] It holds a connotation in Afrika and south Asia similar to the term nigger (a linguistic corruption of the term negro, which means ‘black’ in Portuguese and Spanish) holds in the United States.[10] (In the east of modern Sri Lanka one finds a group called ‘Burghers’, people of mixed Portuguese and either Tamil or Sinhala ancestry. Burghers refer to Afrikans as ‘negro’ in keeping with the Portuguese term for ‘black.’) It is from these versions of the term kafre that the term kapiri was derived. Some speculation exists that kapiri comes from the term karuppu, which means ‘black’ in Tamil, one of the two dominant languages in Sri Lanka.[11] However linguists in Sri Lanka are firm in their belief that kapiri derives from the Arab word kafre[12] One of the Afrikans in the Puttalam area, Peter Louis, said that those who are in their 50s or older are designated as “‘Lanka Caffres’ or ‘Lanka Kapiri’” on their birth records. But on census records, they are designated as “Other.”[13] It is worthy of note that when a group of academics visited Sirambi Adiya in the 1970s to learn about the Afrikans’ use of Portuguese, the researchers did not refer to them by any group name. Rather, they simply described their facial features thus: “More akin to the natives of Angola and Mozambique. Flat lips, bulging eyes, short curly hair, dark complexion.”[14] The most recent Sri Lankan census (2012) was conducted by ascertaining the identity of the male head of the family and defining all who are part of the family on that basis, or categorizing them as “Other.” Hence, in the west of the island, Afrikan Sri Lankans could be defined as Sinhala, since that is the language they speak, and some of the heads of household are Sinhala by marriage. In the east, they speak and may be characterized as Tamil. This leads to the Afrikans ‘disappearing’ from the statistics even though they are alive and well.
Additional challenges are presented by the naming of individual Afrikan Sri Lankans by their parents or those who enslaved or colonized them. The Afrikans I met in this research are largely Catholics, indicating the influence of the Portuguese, part of whose colonial mission was to convert those that they enslaved and/or colonized. This can be seen in the family names of these Afrikans, such as ‘Marceline’ and ‘Alphonso.’ Another challenge is the way the Afrikans present their names. Typically they give their surnames or family names first. So, for example, ‘Marcus Jerome Ameliana’ would be known as ‘Ameliana Jerome Marcus’ in much of the rest of the world.
But how do the Afrikan Sri Lankans describe themselves?
Do they use the term kapiri to identify themselves?
Yes, they do. Some Sri Lankan researchers opine that they do not interpret the term to be insulting.[15] However, that was not the case when this Afrikan-centered author asked the community in Sirambi Adiya about it. Initially they reported that they embraced the term. They believed that it was not a racist term.[16] They know that they are descended from Afrikans and that this term was used to identify them. But when the derogatory history of the term was explained to them by this author, and soon thereafter by representatives of the South Afrikan High Commission to Sri Lanka, they changed their minds. Evidence of this can be found in the photos that accompany this essay. Prior to learning the derivation of the term kapiri, those Afrikans who perform in a musical troupe called their organization ‘Ceylon Kaffir Manja’. After their consciousness had been raised concerning this term and their heritage, they changed the name of the group to ‘Ceylon African Manja’. Note that they did not feel the need to change the name of the country from ‘Ceylon’ to ‘Sri Lanka’, but they did feel the need to change the term used to identify themselves. Other communities of Afrikans in Sri Lanka also identify with the term kapiri until they are educated as to its meaning. They then call themselves ‘Afrikan’. All of these people are proud of their heritage when approached by people who respect them for who they are. They did not object to the term kapiri due to a lack of awareness of its meaning. But more importantly, they wanted to fit in to a society where they are a small numerical minority who has suffered from a legacy of enslavement and discrimination in their current lives. So they tend to be shy, accommodating, and hopeful that they will be treated well or left alone.
From whence did these Afrikan people come?
This seemingly simple question is both complex and hard to answer in a definitive way. Commerce between Sri Lanka (also known as Serendip, Taprobane, and Ceylon) was carried on with societies in east Asia, west Asia, and Africa for thousands of years. Early reports of trade with Egypt and the Roman Empire verify this.[17] Trade by people from the area in and around what is now called the Arabian Peninsula predates the introduction of Islam. Similarly, trade between Abyssinian traders from Afrika (‘Abyssinians’ hailed from the area now known as Ethiopia in east Afrika) goes back to the fifth century of the Common Era (CE, also called AD), when they traded at Matota, a location on the west coast of Ceylon.[18] A monk from Kemet (Egypt), Kosmas Indikopleustes, wrote that Abyssinians from the empire of Aksum were trading with what was called Taprobane (now called Sri Lanka) in the sixth century.[19] One can assume that at least some of these Afrikan traders took up residence in Ceylon. The Italian explorer Marco Polo visited Puttalam, which he called ‘Battelar’ and Ibn Batuta called ‘Battela’, in 1293 CE.[20] Ibn Batuta, an Afrikan traveler from Morocco, noted that the ruler of what is now Colombo had 500 Abyssinians in his garrison. He visited the island in the 1340s CE.[21] A favorable ocean current made travel by sea from the east coast of Africa to Sri Lanka manageable for six months of each year. And an overland trade was made possible by a land ‘bridge’ between India and Sri Lanka in the area of the town of Mannar. That land bridge is now submerged and is called Adams Strait. Hence, whether by land or by sea, the connection between this island and places in east Africa was of long standing. Arab traders moved goods from Sri Lanka to the west, while traders from China, Japan, and the other lands of East Asia moved them to the east.[22] There exists a long history of Arabs enslaving and selling Afrikan people to states in west Asia and on the Indian subcontinent.[23] Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Afrikan people, both free and enslaved, resided in Sri Lanka prior to the expansion by powers from Europe into southern Asia. However, beginning with the Portuguese, and continuing with the Dutch and the British, the nature and purposes for enslaving Afrikan people and bringing them to Sri Lanka changed. Having removed these Afrikan people from their homelands, the colonial powers used them as an occupying force in Ceylon and other colonies. Afrikans were prized because they were good soldiers, they were believed to be loyal to their enslavers, and because they often converted to the religion of their enslavers. It was also believed that they could withstand the ravages of malaria, which was prevalent in tropical locales such as Ceylon.[24]
The historical record reveals that Afrikan people were enslaved and imported from all parts of the Afrikan continent to Sri Lanka. Scholarship on the enslavement of Afrikan people by Arabs and European colonial powers focuses on their movement from east Africa to Arab states and states in southern and eastern Asia.[25] However, the trade in Afrikan people was not as uniform as many histories depict it. During the period that Portugal colonized Ceylon (1505 to 1658), the Portuguese enslaved Afrikan people from areas now known as Brazil, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the Congo, Angola and other sites in in west Afrika, from Mozambique, Madagascar and elsewhere in east Afrika, and from Portugal itself, and brought them to Sri Lanka[26]. Interestingly, the Portuguese distinguished between those Afrikans that they called ‘Abyssinians’ and those they called ‘Kaffirs’ by which part of the Afrikan continent they originated from.[27] Peter Louis, an Afrikan Sri Lankan who lives in the village of Sirambi Adiya near Puttalam, was told by his elders that they came to Sri Lanka from Mozambique in three waves that corresponded to the invasion of Ceylon by the Portuguese (1505) and the British (1815 and 1817).[28] The Portuguese only controlled parts of Ceylon, principally along the coast. The Portuguese had control of the Ceylon taken from them by the Dutch, who colonized Ceylon (actually, Ceylon was colonized by the Dutch East India Company) from 1658 to 1796, again mainly along the coast.[29] Similar to the Portuguese, the Dutch enslaved Afrikans from its colonies in the Congo in West Afrika and from the Cape of Good Hope (now called Azania or South Afrika) in southern Afrika and brought them to Sri Lanka.[30] The Dutch used Afrikans as soldiers and as laborers to grow crops and build forts and other structures. Rapiel Anthony Philip from Kalpitiya said that he can trace his Afrikan ancestry back four generations to a great, great grandfather who came to Ceylon as a soldier. He reckons a ‘generation’ to be 60 to 70 years, so this places that ancestor in Ceylon between 1730 and 1770, during the time of the Dutch control of the coast.[31] The Dutch also enslaved people in Ceylon and brought them to South Africa.[32] Both the Portuguese and the Dutch also purchased enslaved Afrikans from ports in east Afrika as well as from states in west Asia and on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent.[33] Jayasuriya reports that British official Anthony Bertolacci, who served in Ceylon from 1800-1816, said that 9,000 Afrikans were brought by the Portuguese and Dutch to Ceylon.[34] They also moved enslaved Afrikans from their colonial holdings in East Asia, such as Malaysia, to Sri Lanka. The story gets more complex when the British took the island away from the Dutch and colonized Ceylon from 1796 to 1948.[35] From 1796 until 1834, when the British followed the Americans and legally abolished enslavement, the British were also engaged in the enslavement of Afrikan peoples, and brought them to Ceylon. In reality, Afrikans were enslaved in Ceylon for many years thereafter. Enslavement of Afrikans continued in what is now Kenya and Tanzania well into the twentieth century,[36] as well as in various parts of Asia.[37] At one point, British records showed 874 Afrikan soldiers as part of the Third and Fourth British Ceylon Regiments in the early 1800s.[38] According to Sir James Emerson Tennent, British Colonial Secretary to Ceylon from 1845-1850, the Dutch augmented their supply of Afrikans by bringing them from the Cape of Africa (Azania or South Afrika), while the British purchased enslaved Afrikans from Goa. Earlier, Sir Frederick North, first governor of Ceylon under the British (1798-1805), had sent a ship to Mozambique and purchased five hundred Afrikan men and women and enslaved them for service in Ceylon.[39] Once the British government made slavery illegal, the trade continued for a time, though in reduced numbers. Thereafter, while not formally enslaved, Afrikan people were taken as colonial subjects by the British and brought from one colony to another as suited British interests. Historical records show that the British purchased enslaved Afrikans from Goa and Bombay (Mumbai) in what is now India and brought them to Ceylon as soldiers.[40] In many cases, these Afrikans were not ‘freed’ until they had completed their military service.[41] The historical record is replete with stories of Afrikan being employed as soldiers, fishermen, crafts people, maids, labourers, and concubines for the British, as they had been for the Portuguese and the Dutch.[42] Martin Marcus said his ancestors told him that they came to Sri Lanka as part of a battalion of Portuguese speaking east African soldiers under the British after the Boer War.[43] Shortly after World War II concluded, in 1948, the British granted Ceylon its political independence. Some of these colonized Afrikan people, or the descendants of colonized and/or enslaved Afrikans, chose to stay in Ceylon rather than to return to the colony from which they had come.
To complicate matters even further, some Afrikans were moved to Sri Lanka and then were moved away, only to be moved back again at a later date. Such was the case with some Afrikans who were enslaved by the Portuguese. When the Dutch defeated the Portuguese in Sri Lanka, those Portuguese who could afford it, moved their enslaved Afrikans along with their other property to a nearby Portuguese enclave, such as Goa, which is on the west coast of India. Later the Dutch and the British would purchase some of these Afrikans and bring them to Sri Lanka to work.
As is the case for most descendants of enslaved Afrikans, those Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka now no longer know the name of their ancestral nation, their culture, customs, rites, rituals, or religion. Some do have oral histories that add some clarity to this question. These histories also raise questions.
Among the group of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live on the west coast of Sri Lanka, those who have had a history passed down to them have two dominant narratives. One narrative says that their ancestors had been brought to Sri Lanka from Mozambique.[44] Credence is lent to this understanding by the elders in the group, who can converse in a creolized combination of Portuguese and the dominant language in Sri Lanka, Sinhala. However, there is no documentary evidence that the ancestors of these persons were brought directly from Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, to Sri Lanka. They may well have been brought from Goa or some other Portuguese colony by the Dutch or the British.[45] (Goa, Daman and Diu were client states of Portugal until 1963 when India annexed them and made them part of India proper[46]). Another narrative from the Afrikans in western Sri Lanka is that their ancestors were brought to the island by the British either during the Boer War (1899-1902) where the British colonized Azania[47], or during the period before and during World War II, and decided against returning to the country from whence they came to Sri Lanka. Jayasuriya quotes M. J. Elias, who believed that his ancestors had been brought to Ceylon from the island of Kaffa off the coast of Azania, which is why they are called ‘Kaffirs.’[48] It may well be that both narratives are correct. The forebears of these Afrikans may have been brought as enslaved persons or colonial subjects. Some of the Afrikans in the area of the town of Puttalam on the west coast of Sri Lanka can still speak a creolized version of Portuguese mixed with Sinhala terms.[49] They are all Catholic, and worship at churches established by the Portuguese.[50] (The Dutch and the British were Christian but not Catholic during this period[51]). This gives credence to the Portuguese enslavement version. These same persons have British family names, lending credence to the British colonial version. One person in the village of Sirambi Adiya, which is just outside Puttalam proper, told of meeting British soldiers just after World War II who were stationed in Puttalam before being transported off the island around the time of Ceylon’s political independence.[52]
And where did they go?
During the Portuguese colonial period, large numbers of Afrikans were transported to Ceylon. Some were employed as soldiers; others performed a variety of other tasks. When the Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch at the end of the sixteenth century, some of the wealthier Portuguese took their enslaved Afrikans with them when they left the island. Some went to Portuguese enclaves along the coast of India, while others may have returned to Portugal. While the details of what happened to the scores of Afrikan people who lived in Ceylon at that time remain unclear, the record does indicate that many became the property of the Dutch and stayed in Ceylon when the Portuguese left.[53]
The Dutch continued to import Afrikan peoples during the era of their colonization of the island. The Dutch not only imported Afrikan people from their other colonial possessions; they also purchased Afrikan people from the Portuguese states in India and brought them to Sri Lanka.[54] The numbers of Afrikans in Ceylon during Dutch rule grew into the thousands according to Dutch Governor Ven Goyans.[55] A famous event in the history of this period tells of how the Afrikans rebelled against their enslavement, killing some of their enslavers in the process. The rebellion was, however, not totally successful. Once the Dutch regained control, they sequestered all the Afrikans living in Colombo on an island each evening, transporting them by boat. In the morning they were brought back to the mainland to work.[56] This island, which in the present day is a peninsula, is still called ‘Slave Island’ owing to this history. The history also shows that some Afrikans rebelled as the Dutch fought the Kandyan kings for control of the inland areas away from the coast. In fact, many of these Afrikans deserted their enslavers and joined the Kandyan side in the conflict. While Jayasuriya asserts that they simply “swapped masters,”[57] the reality was that leaving the cruelty of European enslavers for the freedom to live and fight alongside the Kandyans was an opportunity not to be missed.[58] One Kandyan king so favored and trusted these Afrikan soldiers that he made them his personal bodyguard.[59] Later in their stewardship of Ceylon, the Dutch passed a law that was designed to grant freedom to enslaved Afrikans when their master and mistress died.[60] This ‘emancipation’ had to have resulted in many Afrikan people being freed of their bondage but it occurred in a land far from their ancestral homes. Like those that were left in Ceylon by the Portuguese, those Afrikans who were freed by their Dutch masters or did not go with their masters or former masters to other colonies or to the Netherlands, remained in Ceylon and eventually married into and blended in with the surrounding populations.
When the British superceded the Dutch in 1796, enslavement of Afrikan people was still law in the British empire and the British profited from the use of enslaved Afrikans as laborers. Some were purchased from the Portuguese state of Goa in western India and brought to Ceylon.[61] The British used Afrikan soldiers in a push that eventually allowed them to conquer the entire island, a feat which had eluded the Portuguese and the Dutch. Spittel writes of Afrikan soldiers stationed by the British in Alutnuwara after a rebellion by the Kandyan people in 1817, shortly after the British had gained control of the entire island. These Afrikans were eventually allowed to settle in the area.[62] While various dates have been put forward for the abolishment of slavery in Ceylon (1833,[63] 1834,[64] 1841 and 1845,[65] 1844[66]), it was probably the case that enslavement continued after it was outlawed. If the trade in enslaved Afrikan people in the western hemisphere is any indication, the abolition of enslavement by colonizer nations such as Great Britain and by receiver nations, such as the United States, did not cease with the passage of laws making the sale of human beings illegal.[67] The profits were too great. Nonetheless, the importation of enslaved Afrikan people by the British eventually slowed and stopped. But enslavement was supplanted by the importation of Afrikan people as colonial subjects to Ceylon, a practice that occurred right up to Ceylon’s declaration of political independence in 1948. Sargent Major D.B. Dissanayake, who is 90 years old at this writing, recalled being in the British Army from 1932 to 1943. During that time he worked with Afrikan soldiers from east Afrika. He spoke some of the Swahili words he learned from these Afrikan soldiers, a few of which were known by this author. Swahili was spoken in a number of east Afrikan British colonies, including the countries now known as Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.[68] In separate interviews, Marceline Alphonso, who lives near Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka, and Williams Mary Elizabeth, who lives in Puttalam on the west coast, told of Afrikan soldiers being marched from Trincomalee to Anuradhapura, in the center of the island, and on to Puttalam after the end of World War II. This version of the narrative fits with that of Ana Miseliya, an elder in Puttalam who has since made her transition, who said that Afrikan soldiers were brought to Trincomalee to help the Europeans in a war.[69] But her son, Marcus Joseph Michael, recalled that his grandparents had told him that his ancestors had been living in this area for five generations.[70] Marcus Joseph Michael would then be a member of the seventh generation in this locale. If by a ‘generation’, he meant a full lifetime, the elders in this Afrikan community often live to be eighty or more years old. If that was true of those in his family, then it is plausible that their ancestors came to Ceylon with the Portuguese in the mid-1600s. But if he meant the more standard definition of a ‘generation’ as being twenty five years, then six generations before Marcus Joseph Michael’s birth in approximately 1940 would be 150 years earlier, or 1790. This was a period of political instability in Ceylon. The Dutch were struggling to maintain control of the coastal areas, resisting attacks by the kings from Kandy inland, and the British via the sea.
In this case, both the oral histories from the Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka today and the historical records indicate that while many of these Afrikans left the island after World War II ended, some stayed and are the forebears of those Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka today. The census records from 1921 list a total of 255 Afrikan Sri Lankans in Ceylon, excluding soldiers and sailors.[71] Today the number of those who identify themselves as Afrikans who were born and living in Sri Lanka is between 200 and 300.
Community or Communities? Sirambi Adiya and Puttalam
Popular history has it that only one community of Afrikan Sri Lankans still exists.[72] That community, concentrated as it is in the village of Sirambi Adiya[73], outside the small city of Puttalam on the west coast of Sri Lanka, is indeed a force. Afrikan soldiers were brought to the area in the mid-1800s. Once the need for soldiers diminished, the fort in Puttalam was abandoned. The Afrikan soldiers who were stationed in Puttalam were given land there by the British in Puttalam when the Third Ceylon regiment was disbanded in 1865.[74] Brohier amplifies this point, noting that the land surveyor who preceded him had plotted out land for the Afrikans in the neighboring village of Sellan Kandal when Ceylon was still a British colony.[75] Benedict Francis Calistis reports that there are no longer any Afrikan Sri Lankans residing in Sellan Kandal.[76] At present, in Sirambi Adiya, they are a small community numbering perhaps fifteen males and twenty five females by their own account.[77] They live in fourteen houses constructed by a German Non-Governmental Organization. It appears that this community was organized on an acre of land given by the British to Marcus Martin when he retired from government service in 1944.[78] Another group of about five families lives about one kilometer away in the same village. George Sherin Alex, the female leader of the Afrikans in Sirambi Adiya, said that their elders had told them that when the Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch, that the Afrikans were sent away from the island. They were told that the same thing occurred when the British supplanted the Dutch. Sherin was the only member of the village to have made it to Ordinary Level in the British educational system. The men did not make it past grade nine before they had to go to work. One of the community elders, Williams Mary Elizabeth, said that Afrikan soldiers who were part of the British army stayed in Puttalam for a short time in 1947 before being shipped elsewhere. She recalls that these men treated the Afrikan Sri Lankans with kindness. Sherin’s mother, Marcus Jerome Ameliana, the current eldest member of the group at age 84, said that her grandparents had told her that their ancestors had come to Ceylon from Mozambique.[79] She went on to say that her ancestors had been in Goa and had been brought to Ceylon as soldiers in 1817. Her husband, the late Leonis George, was the brother of the Afrikan elder, Marceline Alphonso, who lives in Trincomalee (see below). Leonis George and Marcus Jerome Ameliana had eight children, six of them girls. George Sherin Alex is one of their children.
On a later visit to Puttalam, we met a number of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in Puttalam proper, and not in Sirambi Adiya. They are geographically scattered and do not constitute a community. One of them, Sebastian George Gabriel, lives in a section about two Kilometers away from 'Good Shed' in Puttalam. Many others live in the area of Puttalam known as ‘Good Shed’. One of them is Marcus Joseph Elias. He is 78 years old and is one of Ameliana’s brothers. His wife, who also has Afrikan features, was part of the community of Kala Oya, about twenty five kilometers inland from Sirambi Adiya. Two other families of Afrikan Sri Lankans whose members are related to the family of Marcus Joseph Elias live on the same street has he does in the Good Shed section of Puttalam. Another family from this area is that of Benedict Francis Callistis. His father was Peter Benedict Manuel. The Peter family occupies two homes in Sirambi Adiya. Calistis works as a security officer at a local insurance company. His wife is Sinhala. It was he who we met on our first visit to Puttalam in January 2013. He guided us to Sirambi Adiya. His father worked as a driver for the salt company in Puttalam. His mother was Sinhala. He recalls his father telling him that his grandfather came to Puttalam around the time of World War I.[80] In this same area, we met Marceline Alphonso’s brother Ruban in Puttalam. He has two sons, Robinson and Johnson. We met Robinson as well. One will encounter other persons of Afrikan descent in Puttalam town. In the attached photos is a three-wheel driver named Linton, who has two brothers living in Kalpitiya (see below), and a man at the weekly market.
Also in Puttalam we met a vendor named Suberappa Khalil, who was selling radios at the weekly market. He is Muslim by religion. Both his parents are Afrikan Sri Lankans, and they are also Muslims. This raises the question of how many more Muslims in Puttalam, which has a large Muslim population, might also be of Afrikan descent. And it raises the further questions as to whether there exist any practitioners of Buddhism who identify themselves as Afrikan Sri Lankans. Further, other than Alphonso Noel Selvarasia, also known as Kuti, who lives in Jaffna (see below) and professes to be of the Hindu faith (when in Jaffna), are there other Afrikan Sri Lankans who are part of the Hindu faith? These questions remain unanswered at present.
A part of the community in Sirambi Adiya has become prominent in Sri Lankan culture. They have formed a musical group and entertain people around the island and occasionally outside the country as well. This musical tradition was passed down from generation to generation[81], including the language which Jayasuriya calls ‘Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole.’[82] Their unique rendering of Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole lyrics, an Afrikan stylized music known as kaffringha, and a form of dance only found among Afrikans in Sri Lanka, has brought them fame and earned the troupe both money and a solid reputation. One can find them performing on YouTube. Newspaper and internet articles about them usually focus solely on their musical and cultural performances. However, such work does not sustain them economically. Most of the men are laborers, and spend much time away from home. Some families work in the recently reopened saltern (a company that dries salt water in the sun to obtain and sell the salt), while others work in the hospital. Many of the women in Sirambi Adiya can be found at home during the day; the men are seldom available as they are away at work. All are devout Christians. A small church is situated near their homes in Sirambi Adiya. They attend the larger St. Mary’s Church in Puttalam on special occasions, such as Good Friday.
But is that the only group of Afrikans on the island that can be called a community? The answer is a clear “No.” There are communities of Afrikans to be found in the village of Palauttu near the eastern city of Trincomalee, and in Kalpitiya, which is on the ocean side of the Puttalam Lagoon, across from Puttalam. As noted above, a fragmented community exists in Puttalam near Sirambi Adiya and Tabbova, hamlets less than an hour’s journey from Sirambi Adiya. Families of Afrikan descent can also be found at various locations around the island, such as in Jaffna, Mullativu, Negombo, Wattala, and Dehiwela. Many of these Afrikan people are related by marriage and/or descent. This indicates a preference to marry within their racial group.
The community in Sirambi Adiya has no formal structure, though elements found in villages across the Afrikan continent prevail here. Peter Louis has stepped forward into a leadership role, as has George Sherin Alex. They consult each other when issues arise. As the community is small, group consultations occur on matters of import. Jayasuriya reported that the patriarch of the Marcus family, Marcus Martin, had been vice president of the village council from 1946 to 1957.[83] This was a council of all those living in Sirambi Adiya and not just the Afrikan Sri Lankans living there.
I met with about 35 Afrikan Sri Lankans at St. Mary’s church on Good Friday, 2014. From that meeting and prior visits and discussions, I would estimate that there are 70 persons in the Puttalam area, including Sirambi Adiya, who identify themselves as Afrikans, and perhaps another 150 persons who have Afrikan ancestry but do not identify themselves as Afrikans.
Community or Communities? Palauttu, Trincomalee
Another community of Afrikan Sri Lankans live outside the city of Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka. The village in which they live is Palauttu, also spelled Pallutuwa and Palaiyoothu. These Afrikans are also Christians, but their language is Tamil rather than Sinhala. The patriarch of the family is now 90 years old. Marceline Banda Alphoso by name, he is a powerful personality in the area. One need only find anyone in the Trincomalee area and tell them that you are looking for the Afrikan people (kapiri) and they will tell you to “Go and see Alphonso.” The community in Palauttu mainly consists of Alphonso’s siblings and their children. Alphonso himself sired thirteen children.[84] Most of Alphonso’s children and grandchildren can be found in the area around Alphonso’s home.
Alphonso’s brother Marceline Vincent David, and his wife Rosemary, lives less than a kilometer from Alphonso and in the same village. They had five children. All of their children emigrated to Europe and west Asia. Four of his grandchildren live with him. David was a machine operator in the harbor at Trincomalee.
Alphonso told us that his great grandfather, an Afrikan man, came to Sri Lanka as a soldier.[85] He did not know if his great grandfather was enslaved or free and did not know whether he was brought by the British or came some other way. But he was sure that all of his ancestors lived in this same village, Palauttu.[86] His great grandmother was Sri Lankan. His father was named (Marceline, presumably) Tom, but he recalls little else about him. His mother was named Marceline Banda Dora. Alphonso was one of eight children: four girls and four boys. One brother is dead. His brother Ruben lives in Puttalam. Alphonso was a teenager when World War II commenced in the late 1930s. The British saw strategic value in the deep harbor at Trincomalee and determined to defend it from the Japanese.[87] The British built a prison in the jungle near Trincomalee which housed Italian prisoners. Alphonso was initially employed by the Royal (British) Navy to brew and serve tea for British officials there. Later he worked at the prison.[88]
In a more recent interview, Alphonso told me that he is a third generation ‘Kaffir’ Christian. He was a carpenter by trade and worked for the British Navy as a carpenter on ships, in the Air Force, and for a petroleum company. His first wife, by whom he had one child, was Tamil. That wife died, and the child, a daughter named Saroja, lives in Mullativu in the north of Sri Lanka. His second wife, who is now 80 years old, Alphonso Theresa, was a Sinhala Buddhist. She became a Christian and married Alphonso. She bore Alphonso twelve children. Some of those children live near them on a large plot of land that appears to belong to Alphonso. Others have moved to Europe and western Asia to find work. One son lives in the northernmost city in Sri Lanka, Jaffna.
In discussions with members of Alphonso’s family, estimates of Afrikan Sri Lankans from this family living in Palauttu varied from 40 to 55. As there are other persons of Afrikan descent (and who identify themselves as being descended from Afrikans) living in the area but not part of this family, the total Afrikan population in the Trincomalee area is approximately 70.[89]
Community or Communities? Kalpitiya
A third community exists at Kalpitiya, which is across the Puttalam Lagoon from Puttalam in the north western part of the country. This group consists of approximately five families and about 20 individuals. Some members of this community are related to those in Sirambi Adiya, Puttalam, and Palauttu. Solomon Emmanuel, for example, is the brother of Linton, the three-wheel driver in Puttalam. They have another brother living in Kalpitiya who drives a boat that brings kite surfers and wind surfers to the ocean side of the Puttalam Lagoon where the winds are favorable. Members of this community range in age from their late 60s to children of two years. Two of the families, both part of the elder group, consist of an Afrikan husband and wife, proof of their desire to marry within their group where possible. Others are of mixed Afrikan and Sinhala heritage. All are Catholic. Members of this community had been part of the ‘Ceylon African Manja’ musical troupe. Members of this group also display musical and dance talent that is Afrikan in its characteristics. They wish to offer their talents to the larger community of Sri Lanka as do those in Sirambi Adiya. The newest generation is progressing farther than they did educationally. One young man is hoping to go to university in the near future.
Community or Communities? Jaffna
The Afrikan Sri Lankans in Jaffna consist of one family. They are Marceline Aphonso’s son, Alphonso Noel Selvarasia, also known as ‘Kuti’, and his wife and five children. Kuti is the head of a local fishermen’s organization. Kuti has Afrikan features. His wife is of Tamil heritage. His children do not have his curly hair, but one son shares his facial features.[90] During our conversation, Kuti revealed that he is a Tamil Christian when he is with his family in Palauttu, but that he is a Tamil Hindu when he is at home in Jaffna. This is an example of an Afrikan man adapting to his surroundings, both ethnically and religiously, in order to prosper.
Kuti’s eldest sister and Marceline Alphonso’s eldest daughter, Saroja, lives in the Mullativu District, which is also in the north of Sri Lanka. Hers was the only family of Afrkan descent that I have been told about in the district. Her children are the only Afrikans that I know of who currently reside in the area.
Community or Communities? Negombo
A professor of history at the University of Colombo, told me that a group of Afrikans live on Hospital Road in Negombo, a city to the north of Colombo. She said that they work at the hospital. I have yet to verify that claim. Those with whom I have checked said that there are no Afrikan Sri Lankans working at the hospital. This statement illustrates an aspect of this research that is ongoing. Many of those who are Afrikan Sri Lankans have experienced prejudice and discrimination due to their Afrikan ancestry. In such a milieu, it is prudent to deny their ancestry when approached by strangers or persons who appear to have authority or privilege. In short, denying their heritage may make their lives more peaceful. Nonetheless, I have met two families of Afrikan origin in Negombo. Mary Polomino and her family live there. Mary is the daughter of one of Alphonso’s and David’s sisters. Mary said that some of her family members live in Germany. The other family, a brother and sister, are the children of David’s son Vincent David Elmo, who lives in England. His son, David Elmo Frank Daniel, and his sister live in Negombo and attend school in Colombo. They came to Sri Lanka for education.[91]
Community or Communities? Kala Oya and Tabbova
At one time, five Afrikan Sri Lankan families lived in Kala Oya near Our Lady of Lourdes Church. According to Father Girard, the priest at the church, a flood in 1957 destroyed the church. Soon thereafter the families dispersed. Most moved to the nearby village of Tabbova. One Afrikan Sri Lankan man remains in Kala Oya. His name is Martino Francis Miranda. He said that the families that had lived in Kala Oya had originally moved from Puttalam to Kala Oya.[92] The village of Kala Oya is on the road from Anuradhapura to Puttalam (now designated as Highway A12). The oral histories indicate that Afrikan soldiers were marched from Trincomalee via Anuradhapura and on to Puttalam before being transported off the island after World War II and once independence was declared in Ceylon in 1948. One might well have thought that some of these Afrikans decided to settle in Kala Oya. This village has a Catholic church, and a river (‘Oya’ means ‘river’), two items of import to the Catholic Afrikan population in Sri Lanka.
Community or Communities? The Batticaloa Myth
Saldin is not the only writer who professes that there are Afrikan people living in Batticaloa district.[93] Jayasuriya also writes that there are Afrikans there,[94] and one finds a reference to them on YouTube and in the work of Kenneth David Jackson.[95] An article published in 1999 reports Census Department officials saying that Afrikans lived in Batticaloa at that time.[96] But the Census Department listed no Afrikans in the Batticaloa District in their 2007 report.[97] If they were included, they were listed as “Other”, along with the Burgher population of that district. I visited the district four times. I inquired about Afrikans living in the area from doctors, civic leaders, librarians, cab (three-wheel) drivers, restaurant owners and employees, businessmen, and leaders in the Burgher community. I found no Afrikans there. Those Afrikans referenced on the internet as being from Batticaloa were not resident there. Rather they were members of the musical troupe ‘Ceylon African Manja’ from Sirambi Adiya who performed there.
Stories of other Communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans
It is impossible to follow up every lead to see if communities of Afrikans are to be found. Reference in the text Zeylanica to settlements on a street in Colombo now known as Kosala Lane (see below) and to Adimunai near Trincomalee may have been true at one time but they proved to be false in the present day.[98] Similarly, many persons have indicated that relatives of the Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in Puttalam now live in the Kotahena section of the metropolis of Colombo. Kotahena is a densely populated area. I have been unable to find any Afrikans in this area. One of the Afrikans we met in Puttalam, Benedict Francis Callistis, reports that his brother lives in Dehiwela, a suburb just south of Colombo proper. Hettiaratchi (1969) reported a conversation with Daniel Bruno, an Afrikan Sri Lankan resident of Kala Oya, who said that an Afrikan regiment had come to Galle in southern Ceylon from Madagascar at the time of the Boer War between the whites of Azania (South Africa) and the British (1899-1902). Their descendants could be found in Kundasale, a town near the city of Kandy, which was the center of the Kandyan kingdom, in Kurunegala in the North Western Province, and in Nuwara Eliya, in the hills of the Central Province.[99] A friend suggested that I check in Boussa, a town in the south which was the site of a prison erected by the British that was said to be controlled at least in part, by Afrikan soldiers. Others suggested Mannar, the city closest to the Indian subcontinent.[100] The only “Afrikans” I found in Mannar were some baobab trees (one of which is more than 700 years old), which are the variety indigenous to Afrika. The popular story is that the seeds of the baobab were imported by Arab traders.[101]
In many cases, these reports of Afrikans living in these locales come from the stories that elders told their children. They may have been true; I simply have not been able to verify them or find Afrikan Sri Lankans in these places now.
The Myth of Afrikan Sri Lankans as Cannibals
As the Afrikans disappear into the surrounding population, the stories about them grow from history into myth. During this research, I have heard a tale told many times by many Sri Lankans, young and old. The tale is of Afrikan soldiers working for the British who lived in the Kandy area. They were, so the tale goes, cannibals. So dangerous were they to the ordinary citizens of the area that a contraption was built to lock their mouths and jaws shut when they were in public. I have not been able to find any further information on this story. But whether it is true or a myth, it served an excellent colonial purpose. It kept the Afrikans separated from those who they were charged by the British with controlling- the local population. In minimized social interaction between the Afrikans and members of the local population by generating fear. And it presented the British as ‘civilized’ by comparison. Further, it is hard to fathom why the British would capture and bring Afrikans to Ceylon, knowing (this is assuming that they were cannibals) that these cannibals might kill and eat the British. Finally, why would Afrikan soldiers who were trained and fed by the British, prefer eating humans to eating the food provided by their employers? Cannibalism occurs only out of the necessity to survive, or to fulfill a ritual function. Neither of these situations appear to be relevant to the situation in Ceylon.
Evidence of the Past Remains
The discerning eye will find other evidence of this Afrikan past in Sri Lanka. It is commonly known in modern Sri Lanka that Sinhalas and Tamils alike took Portuguese, Dutch, or English surnames (family names) and first names to enhance their chances for advancement under each colonial regime. Similarly, some took Christian first names when they converted to Catholicism. Afrikan people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere did the same thing. That is why the majority of names encountered above in this essay appear to have Portuguese, Dutch, or English roots. Similarly, Afrikans who converted to Islam took Muslim names.[102] For example, in Colombo, the large metropolis in Sri Lanka, there exists a street named “Abdul Caffoor Mawatha” (“Mawatha” means ‘street’). But who was ‘Abdul Caffoor’? As the name implies, this person was a man, probably Muslim, named ‘Abdul’, and he was probably of Afrikan descent- hence the name ‘Caffoor’ which is pronounced much like ‘Kaffir’. He was a prominent gem dealer in Ceylon.
As one enters the financial hub of Colombo, you will find yourself on the peninsula named “Slave Island”. After a rebellion by enslaved Afrikans was quelled by the Dutch in the early 1800s (see above), all enslaved Afrikans were to be brought to an island in Beira Lake at night and brought back to the mainland in the morning to maintain the security of the Dutch. That island has become known as Slave Island. A street near where they got on the boats was known as Kapiri Mudukkuwa, loosely translated as ‘Kaffir Alley’. It became known as one of the most dangerous streets in the city of Colombo.[103] That street’s name was later changed to ‘Kosala Patumaga’, or ‘Kosala Lane’.[104] One cannot find any Afrikans living on the street, but the residents know the story that Afrikans had lived there in the past.
The presence of these Afrikan Sri Lankans was exploited again in the 1980s when film director John Derek employed them to play ‘primitive’ Afrikans in his movie “Tarzan the Ape Man.”[105] Derek recruited Marceline Alphonso, who in turn invited Afrikans from the Puttalam area to join the cast.[106] Rapiel Edward Marcus of Kalpitiya said that four of those present when we met with them, three men and one lady, had been part of the Tarzan movie filming. He noted that the men in Palauttu had to cut their hair because it was straight, whereas those from the Puttalam area, including Kalpitiya, did not as their hair is spirally.[107] Each person thus employed received 300 rupees per day for up to three days’ work. They were clad in costumes provided by Derek and supposedly representing the dress of Afrikans. Derek’s purpose was to distinguish the ‘civilized’ Tarzan and Jane from the ‘primitive’ Afrikans. Unfortunately, those thus employed believed that the garb they wore and the roles they played were accurate representations of Afrikan life and culture.[108] They were not.
Assimilation and Rejuvenation- or Resilience?
The question of the intermarriage of Afrikan Sri Lankans to Sinhala and/or Tamil spouses deserves some comment. Much has been made of the children of these Afrikans possessing less of the physical features that distinguish them as Afrikans- curly hair, distinctive skin color, thick lips, broad noses, and the like. Similar discussions are occurring elsewhere in the world where Afrikans were enslaved and who now form small minority populations in those countries. For example, Afrikans in modern-day Turkey are intermarrying with Turks and gradually disappearing as a distinct minority. Afrikan Sri Lankans are also intermarrying and their offspring sometimes do not retain the hair, nose, lips, and other physical features that distinguishes them as Afrikans.[109] Also like the Afrikans in Turkey, these physical are the only signs linking them to an Afrikan past features (along with the music and dance, in the case of those Afrikan Sri Lankans) who are members of Ceylon African Manja. And like the Afrikans in Turkey, many of whom were enslaved and used as soldiers (and harem women) for centuries during the ascendency of the Ottoman Empire, Afrikans were brought to Ceylon as soldiers, maids, et cetera, in service of their enslavers. Jayasuriya asserts that what distinguishes the Afrikan Sri Lankans from other Sri Lankans is their curly hair.[110] Hussein writes that they are distinguished by their “dark skin and woolly hair,” but later confines the distinction to “curly or woolly hair.[111] Whether they live in the eastern or the western parts of the country, these Afrikans have lost their native languages, customs, cultures, and most of their rituals. They have lacked control over who interprets and writes about their history. However, the retention of a distinctive style of playing music, of dancing, and of singing are evidence of enduring aspects of Afrikan culture that no amount of enslavement or cultural imposition has been able to remove.[112] Bynum[113] argues persuasively that there exists a collective Afrikan essence in all persons of Afrikan descent, no matter where they are found. It is seen in these Afrikans in their music, dance, the way they adjust the Sinhala or Tamil languages, modifying them to fit their understanding of life, their easy smiles, their joys, the depth of their faith, et cetera. This view stands in stark contrast to the view that these Afrikans are assimilating because they were marginalized and victimized by the society surrounding them.[114] Similarly, when asked about their pride in being Afrikan and intermarrying, many will respond as did one person in Palauttu that their goal is to live and be happy.[115] There exist but a small number of Afrikan families in Sri Lanka. They are separated by many miles and have scant resources. George Leonis, who was an Afrikan from Palauttu and brother of Marceline Aphonso, and Marcus Jerome Ameliana, who is from Sirambi Adiya, married. This union demonstrated that these Afrikan people are conscious of their ancestry and, where possible, wish to preserve it. But if there are no Afrikan people who are not their relatives to marry, then they marry those who live near them and are known to them. Ana Miseliya, Marcus Jerome Ameliana’s mother, said that in the late 1990s, only one marriage of two Afrikan Sri Lankans was about to occur.[116] George Sherin Alex of Sirambi Adiya confirmed that her marriage in 1999 was the last such marriage that she knows of in Sirambi Adiya.[117] In such a situation where eligible marriage partners are not available within the group and marriages occur outside the group, that circumstance does not demonstrate assimilation. It demonstrates resilience- the resilience that requires survival first and then prosperity. It is worth noting that the majority of Afrikan Sri Lankans I have met are devout Catholics. This is not just, as many speculate, because their ancestors were enslaved by the Portuguese, who are Catholics. It is also an indication of the strong spiritual connection found in Afrikan communities around the world. This is one aspect of their resilience.
These Afrikans have become victims of this externally derived history. For example, Peter Louis, self-proclaimed ‘chief’ of the Afrikans in Sirambi Adiya, is quoted as having said that they are losing their language.[118] In so doing, he echoes the thoughts of anthropologist Karunasena Dias Paranavithana, who said the same thing.[119] The truth is that these Afrikans have lost their native language long ago. The language that is disappearing now is the Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole, which is not, and never was, an Afrikan language. When asked by academics and researchers (who represent sources of power and influence), the responses of the Afrikans demonstrate their desire to avoid conflict and appear happy with their lot. If one looks up the phrase ‘Sri Lanka Kaffirs’ in Wikipedia, you will read that: “The Sri Lankan Kaffirs are an ethnic group In Sri Lanka who are partially descended from 16th Century Portuguese traders and the Afrikan Slaves who were brought by them to work as labourers and soldiers to fight against the Sri Lankan Kings.”[120] It may be true that some of the Afrikans brought to Ceylon had Portuguese ancestors, as the quote suggests. But to imply that all of the Afrikans were brought to Ceylon and did not come on their own, and that all those enslaved or colonized Afrikans who were brought to Ceylon were descended from the Portuguese is misleading, if not totally false.
The Afrikans in Sri Lanka have prospered in the face of a lack of support from government and the stigmata attached to them by colonial powers and the citizens of Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Those who write about the Afrikan Sri Lankans add to the challenges. An example is found in the title of an article about them- “Sri Lanka’s African Slave Families Fade Away.”[121] Slavery was legally abolished in Ceylon by the British in the mid-nineteenth century, by 1850. The current Afrikans have never been enslaved; their families are not ‘slave families.’ As noted above, the language to which he is referring is called ‘Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole’ by Jayasuriya and others.[122] It is also known as ‘Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon.’[123] This language is not an Afrikan language; it is a combination of Portuguese and Sinhala words that was used as a communication tool in southern Asia after Portugal colonized parts of Ceylon, India, and east Afrika. The Afrikan languages that were spoken by the ancestors of Peter Louis and the other Afrikans in Sri Lanka have long been lost. And the academics do not help. For instance, one Sri Lankan historian and professor is quoted as believing that because these Afrikans were not educated, they lost interest in sustaining their language and culture.[124] As has already been noted, their cultures (recall, these Afrikans may come from many different Afrikan nations with many languages and many cultures) and languages were lost not due to a lack of interest, but due to the forced imposition of foreign religions, cultures, and languages as part of the enslavement and colonization process. And when Gunasekera asserts that “The Kaffirs were originally Muslims,”[125] he is creating a generalization and a history for which I have found no evidence. A similar confusion is found at this article’s conclusion when Jayasuriya states that the Afrikans were powerful when Ceylon was colonized, but that they lost their power when the British left Ceylon in 1948.[126] Afrikans employed as soldiers, maids, and labourers were not persons with power. Rather, they were colonial subjects just as was the rest of the population of Ceylon. The colonial situation was one where groups were pitted against each other so that a small contingent of British administrators, military, and business people could maintain control of a much larger population of colonized people. Read the history of British colonialism in India for a regional comparison. Similarly, when Jayasuriya asserts that Afrikan peoples suffered lesser discrimination in south Asia than elsewhere[127], one might well ask the point of comparing oppressions to see which was worse. Oppression is oppression. It is never to be desired or appreciated. In the face of such obstacles and discrimination which continues to this day, these Afrikans should be admired for their resilience. As an Afrikan American, I am rejuvenated and inspired each time I meet them. An example of such insults is one that has upset Afrikan Americans for decades- white performers who make a career of imitating Afrikans in a racist, stereotyped fashion by painting their faces black and adding big lips and other insulting caricatures of Afrikan physical features.[128] Jayasuriya notes a similar occurrence in Sri Lanka in the 1950s: “Alex van Arkadie, who now works at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome, and whose father was a close friend of Bastianz recalls the kaffrinha dance in the 1950s performed by Burghers who disguised themselves as Kaffirs by blackening their faces.”[129] Jayasuriya later elaborated on this practice as follows: “The most popular item in the variety entertainment performance was the Kaffrinha, performed by a Burgher couple disguised as Africans by blackening their faces right down to the neck. Fingers were encased in white hand gloves to cover their paler skin…. The woman wore a wig of raven black hair in a mass of fine curls bunched together in tassels to hang from under a neatly draped bandanna….”[130]
Looking Forward
The complexion of most Afrikans does not differ from that of the Sinhala and Tamil peoples of Sri Lanka, so it was not difficult for Afrikans to blend in with those around them physically. “They themselves predict that their African physiognomy will disappear but that their talents in music and dance will be inherited by their African descendants.”[131] However, “The problem of cultural survival is a complicated one. Only with the greatest difficulty could even the symbols of an African culture survive the destructiveness of slavery.”[132] Just as my son would have not looked Afrikan if I had not married an identifiable Afrikan woman, the futures of identifiable Afrikans is in question.
Sri Lanka is a caste society. In such an environment, differences such as those of skin complexion and the like are used to elevate or lower one’s status. By this measure, Afrikan Sri Lankans, who were not from one of the favored castes, would be the objects of discrimination. On the other hand, Europeans, who also were not part of the caste system, were favored, largely due to their colonizer status and their fair skin, one of the symbols of high caste status in India and in Sri Lanka.[133] Add to this the widespread myth of Afrikans as cannibals, and the stigma associated with being Afrikan deepens. In such an environment, it would be expected that many Afrikan Sri Lankans would deny their heritage when I would ask them from whom they had inherited their spirally hair. Doing so makes them appear to be shy, when their real object appears to be to avoid discrimination and other problems related to being different and blend in with the communities of people who live around them. The exceptions to this conclusion are found in Sirambi Adiya, in Palauttu, and in Kalpitiya. These are the three largest communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans that I have located to date. In each place, being Afrikan is a badge of pride.
Today one finds ‘new’ Afrikans coming to Sri Lanka. These ‘new’ Afrikans are mostly students enrolling in Sri Lanka’s public and private colleges and universities. Or they are the spouses of Sri Lankans who worked in Afrika or elsewhere, married to Afrikans, who reside in Sri Lanka. They are the employees of the high commissions and embassies of Afrikan countries as well as of countries elsewhere in the world. They all come free to partake in the abundance of Sri Lankan society.
May the history of the Afrikan Sri Lankans, chronicled here, always be honored, and may Afrikan Sri Lankans prosper and live in peace.
Source Notes
[1] The spelling of ‘Afrikan’ with a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’ is purposeful. It indicates that the author is part of a cultural and intellectual movement to reclaim the history of Afrikan peoples by viewing those histories from the perspectives of Afrikan peoples and not from the perspectives of those who conquered, colonized, enslaved or otherwise treated them in less than honorable ways. It is acknowledged that the proper name for the continent is ‘Afruaka/Afruaitkait’, as revealed in the script of ancient Egypt (known at KMT). The current pronunciation derives from these roots (http://www.odwirafo.com/AFURAKA-AFURAITKAIT_The_Origin_of_the_Term_Africa.pdf)
[2] Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company. 1974. See also “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[3] This document will refrain from the use of the term ‘slaves’. Its use is deemed repulsive by those Afrikans who are the descendants of those enslaved by Europeans and treated as property rather than as people. As these victims of the enslavement process were people first and foremost, they will be referred to as such. Their situation (as enslaved people) will not be equated with who they were, which the term “slave” implies.
[4] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[5] Levtzion, Nehemia. History of Islam in Africa. Columbus, OH, Ohio University Press. 2000.
[6] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[7] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[8] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[9] Hughes, Geoffrey. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. 2006.
[10] Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. New York: Knopf Doubleday. 2008.
[11] Personal conversation with Z. Ameen Saleh, January 2014.
[12] Personal conversations with Asiff Hussein, January and February 2014.
[13] Interview with Peter Louis, February 2014. See also, “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011.
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[14] Goonatilleka, M.H. ‘Report of an Interview with the Portuguese Speaking Community in Puttalam. 10 August 1974.’ Unpublished. Made available by Prof. K.D. Paranavithana at the National Archive of Sri Lanka August 2014. Note: Afrikan people from such wide geographical expanses as the areas now known as Angola and Mozambique vary widely in their physical features, making such characterizations speculative at best.
[15] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008: 61.
[16] “Where ‘Kaffir’ is no Insult”. Gunasekera, Mel. The Telegraph. United Kingdom. November 20, 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/6613354/Where-kaffir-is-no-insult.html. See also “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[17] Schoff, W.H. Ed., The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century. London, Bombay & Calcutta (1912). http://www.und.ac.za/und/classics/india/periplus.htm
[18] ‘Abyssinians’ refers to those peoples who live on the east coast of Afrika in what now would be known as Eretria and Ethiopia. In earlier times it was the site of great empires, such as Punt and Axum (Aksum). See Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[19] Indicopleustes, Kosmas. The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. Newcastle. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
[20] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 31 (quoting Rahasinha 1950: 122).
[21] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007). Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 30.
[22] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[23] http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/east-indies/east-african-slave-trade/
[24] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[25] “The Arab slave trade: 200 million non-Muslim slaves from all colors and nationalities”. https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-arab-slave-trade-and-200-million-non-muslim-slaves-of-all-skin-colors/. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
[26] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007). Ali, Omar H. “The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World: South Asia.” http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/essay-south-asia.php
[27] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 253.
[28] Interview with Peter Louis, February 2014.
[29] http://www.sri-lanka-tour.com/history/dutch-colonization.htm. Retrieved March 31, 2014.
[30] Selkirk, James. Recollections of Ceylon, After a Residence of Nearly Thirteen Years. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle. 2009.
[31] Interview with Rapiel Anthony Philip in August 2014.
[32] Frederickson, George M. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History. New York: Oxford University Press. 1981.
[33] Vink, Markus. “The World’s Oldest Trade”: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 131–77. http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/support/reading_14_2.pdf Retrieved on April 3, 2014.
[34] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. pp. 7-36.
[35] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/kaffirs.htm. See also Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[36] “On the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean Region” by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya & Richard Pankhurst. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. pp. 7-17.
[37] Harris, Joseph E. The African Presence in Asia. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 1971.
[38] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[39] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. pp. 7-36.
[40] Cordiner, James. A Description of Ceylon. London: Longman. 1807.
[41] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[42] Wickramasinghe, Chandima S. M. “Coloured Slavery in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)”. http://www.srilankasouthindiaheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Coloured-Slavery-in-Ceylon-Sri-Lanka.pdf
[43] Goonatilleka, M.H. ‘Report of an Interview with the Portuguese Speaking Community in Puttalam. 10 August 1974.’ Unpublished. Made available by Prof. K.D. Paranavithana at the National Archive of Sri Lanka August 2014.
[44] Marcus Joseph Elias, who is now approaching 80 years old, spoke of his parents telling him that his ancestors were brought from Mozambique in chains to build the railroad to Puttalam from Colombo. Paldano, Jennifer, “These Others, Called Kaffirs.” The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) May 4, 1997. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/970504/plusm.html. His sister, Marcus Jerome Ameliana, age 83, told me the same hitory when we visited in 2013. [NOTE: Surnames are given first and first names are given last by the Afrikan Sri Lankans. See also: “Sri Lanka: Voiceless Ethnic Groups Fade into Oblivion.” Samath, Feizal. Inter Press Service. January 8, 1999. http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/01/religious-bulletin-sri-lanka-voiceless-ethnic-groups-fade-into-oblivion/
[45] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288, p. 272.
[46] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Tagus to Taprobane (Portuguese Impact on the Socio-Culture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD). Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo. 2001.
[47] ‘Azania’ is a term used by progressive Afrikans to describe the country known as ‘South Afrika’. See, for example, the comment made by Afrikan Sri Lankan B.M. Raphael in- Paldano, Jennifer, “These Others, Called Kaffirs.” The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) May 4, 1997. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/970504/plusm.html. See also, Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990, p. 78.
[48] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 273.
[49] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006, 25-41, p. 27.
[50] Interviews with the residents of Sirambi Adiya, February 2013, and with Marceline Alphonso, April, 2013.
[51] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 60. Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 7-36, pp. 19-20.
[52] Personal conversation with Mary Elizabeth Williams, April 2013 (she spoke in English).
[53] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[54] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006. 25-41: 31.
[55] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[56] “On A Road Less Traveled.” Frederick Medis talks with Kumudini Hettiarachchi, The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), September 9, 2012. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120909/plus/on-a-road-less-travelled-11156.html
[57] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 75.
[58] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[59] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, pp. 74-75.
[60] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[61] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[62] Spittel, R. L. Wild Ceylon. Sooriya Publishers. Colombo 10, Sri Lanka. 1925/2003: 176.
[63] Clarke, John Henrik, Ed. and Amy Jacques Garvey. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage. 1995: 27.
[64] “On the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean Region” by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya & Richard Pankhurst. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 7-17: 12-13.
[65] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009: 62.
[66] Wickramasinghe, Chandima S. M. “Coloured Slavery in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)”. http://www.srilankasouthindiaheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Coloured-Slavery-in-Ceylon-Sri-Lanka.pdf
[67] Clarke, John Henrik, Ed. and Amy Jacques Garvey. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage. 1995: 27.
[68] Interview with Sargent Major D.B. Dissanayake, in Matale, Sri Lanka, October 2013.
[69] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[70] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006. pp. 25-41.
[71] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 167.
[72] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008: 62. Elsewhere Jayasuriya states that this is other communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans may exist in Sri Lanka, but this is the only one she mentions directly.
[73] Spelling of Sinhala and Tamil words in English vary. This is the most common spelling for this village. It is also spelled ‘Sirambiady’.
[74] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html. See also Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[75] Brohier, R.L. Discovering Ceylon. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sooriya Publishers. 1973/2002: 40-42.
[76] Interview with Benedict Francis Calistis, April, 2014.
[77] This information was gleaned from community members during our second visit with them in April 2013.
[78] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 161.
[79] Third interview with the Afrikan Sri Lankans in Sirambi Adiya in October 2013.
[80] Interview with Benedict Francis Callistis in February 2013.
[81] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[82] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008, p. 29.
[83] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 161.
[84] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, April 2013.
[85] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, October 2013.
[86] Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[87] “Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.” http://www.lanka.com/sri-lanka/trincomalee-sri-lanka-930.html
[88] Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp. Interview with Marceline Alphonso in April 2013.
[89] In conversation with Dr. Navam and S. Sivarooban, manager of the Tokyo Cement Company in Batticaloa, we learned of an Afrikan Sri Lankan employee of the company who works and lives in Trincomalee. His father hails from Puttalam.
[90] Interview with Alphonso Noel Selvarasia at his home in Jaffna, November 2013.
[91] Interviews with Mary Polomino and her family, and with David Elmo Frank Daniel, conducted in November 2013 at their respective homes.
[92] Interview with Martino Francis Miranda in February 2014.
[93] “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[94] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170: 162.
[95] Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990. Jackson only refers to Afrikans possibly in Batticaloa during the beginning of the Portuguese occupation of Ceylon in the 1600s.
[96] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away.” Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[97] Basic Population Information of Batticaloa District 2007. http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/Preliminary%20Reports%20Special%20Enumeration%202007/Basic%20Population%20Information%20of%20Batticaloa%20District%202007.pdf
[98] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, p. 445, note 15.
[99] Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990, pp. 77-78, quoting Hettiaratchi, D.E. Linguistics in Ceylon. (1969), p. 747.
[100] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288, p. 272.
[101] http://www.govisitsrilanka.com/baobab-tree-at-mannar/attractions-details/19/
[102] Pankhurst, Richard. “The Ethiopian Diaspora to India: The Role of Habshis and Sidis from Medieval Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003, pp. 189-221.
[103] “On A Road Less Traveled.” Frederick Medis talks with Kumudini Hettiarachchi, The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), September 9, 2012. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120909/plus/on-a-road-less-travelled-11156.html “Life in the Heart of Fort.” Mohamed, Ranee. The Sunday Leader, June 30, 2002. http://www.thesundayleader.lk/archive/20020630/review.htm
[104] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, p. 445, note 15.
[105] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[106] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, October, 2013.
[107] Interview with Rapiel Edward Marcus, August, 2014.
[108] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[109] “Blacks in Europe- The Fate of the Afro-Turks.” Guzeldere, Ekrem E. AfricanGlobe, January 27, 2013, http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/blacks-europe-fate-afro-turks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+africanglobe%2FQfoi+%28WWW.AFRICANGLOBE.NET%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
[110] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 9.
[111] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, pp. 441, 445.
[112] “Festival of Folk Music for the Hearts and Souls to Mingle.” Passion Parade. June 1, 2011. The author rightly notes that the music and dance of their group ‘Ceylon African Manja’ is a direct link to their Afrikan past. http://passionparade.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html
[113] Bynum, Edward Bruce. The African Unconscious: Roots of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Psychology. (1999). New York: Teachers College.
[114] “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[115] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[116] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 273-274.
[117] Interview with George Sherin Alex, April 2014.
[118] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[119] “Sri Lanka: Voiceless Ethnic Groups Fade into Oblivion.” Samath, Feizal. Inter Press Service. January 8, 1999.
http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/01/religious-bulletin-sri-lanka-voiceless-ethnic-groups-fade-into-oblivion/
[120] “Sri Lanka Kaffirs”. Wikipedia. Retreived on March 29, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka_Kaffirs
[121] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away.” Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[122] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Tagus to Taprobane (Portuguese Impact on the Socio-Culture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD). Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo. 2001.
[123] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 258.
[124] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[125] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[126] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[127] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[128] For an example of a white man in blackface, see Al Jolson singing ‘Mammy’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaj7FNHnjQ . Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface .
[129] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008. Pages 59-60. Bastianz popularized the musical form known as baila in Sri Lanka. Jayasuriya explains: “Kaffrinha is often confused with baila, the most popular form of music that caught the pulse of the post colonial nation. Kaffrinha (Kaffir + nha (which is the Portuguese diminutive)) is associated with the Kaffirs (an ethnonym for people of African descent in Sri Lanka) and the Portuguese….Baila is a Sri Lankan composition with incorporated elements from Portuguese and African music.” Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009. pp. 92-93. Elsewhere Jayasuriya notes: “In Sri Lanka, there are three forms of music which have African elements: Kaffrinha, Baila and Manha.” Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. 2010. P. 195. ‘Manha’ is the term that the Sirambi Adiya musical troupe uses in their name, ‘Ceylon African Manja.’
[130] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Post-Colonial Innovations in Sri Lankan Popular Music: Dynamics of Kaffrinhas and Bailas.” International Journal of Ethnic and Social Studies. Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2013. pp. 1-29: p. 13.
[131] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007), 240.
[132] Harris, Joseph E. The African Presence in Asia. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 1971. p. 120.
[133] Hussein, Asiff. Caste System in Sri Lanka: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Battamarulla, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications Ltd., 2013.
The presence of Afrikans in south Asia in general and on the island now known as Sri Lanka in particular spans thousands of years. This monograph concerns those Afrikans who are present in Sri Lanka in the early twenty-first century. While definitive information on when they came to the Ceylon and where they came from are clouded in the differing oral histories of the Afrikans themselves and the differing written histories of others, their presence, survival, and prosperity are not open to speculation. They are facts. This monograph has the following goals: to provide visual images of the various communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in different parts of the island; to weave together the oral and written evidence and provide alternative explanations for when and where they came from, and to offer their successful continuation as a testament to their resilience. In common with Afrikan peoples wherever they are found, the Afrikan Sri Lankans provide a spiritual centeredness, joy, and kindness that rejuvenate both themselves and those around them.
{All Sources (Footnotes) are found at the end of the Narrative, below}
Acknowledgments
Works of this sort cannot be carried out by a single determined researcher working in isolation. Thanks first to those ancestors who guided each and every person involved in this work, bringing us together and guiding us to the truth. Thanks to the Afrikan Sri Lankans who opened their homes for our visits, their hearts to our questions, and allowed us to photograph them to record their presence. To Z. Ameen Saleh, friend and traveling companion, for translating Sinhala and Tamil conversations into English and for guiding me, a passionate Afrikan American, into the various Sri Lankan cultures in which the Afrikans of Sri Lanka reside. To Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya, who has written more on the Afrikan Sri Lankans than any other single author, for her scholarship. To Asiff Hussein, whose text Zeylanica provided information, insight and context for this work, and whose concern and friendship aided in its completion. To Indika Rosa of the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics for assistance in finding Afrikans in the Eastern Province and for your interest in the project. To the staff and audience at the American Center in Colombo and the American Corner in Jaffna for allowing me to present my preliminary findings and photos and offering advice and support. To students, faculty, and others before whom I lectured on this topic at the Colombo Institute of Research and Psychology, American National College, the University of Colombo, and the University of Kelaniya. To the reporters at the Financial Digest and Ceylon Today newspapers who wrote about this work. to Nirosha Kulasekara, my student and my teacher, and her family, for your research into the language that the Afrikan Sri Lankans sing in Sirambi Adiya and Kalpitiya, and for Translating On Our Travels to Visit the Afrikans. And To those countless persons who offered advice, directions, food for thought and for the spirit along the way. I thank you each and every one.
Overview
Afrikan people have had their cultures, countries, and communities altered by the aggression of outsiders for centuries. One result has been the scattering of Afrikan peoples across the globe as forced servants of merchantile and imperial masters. And while many Afrikans traveled the world as adventurers and explorers, free to roam and settle where they wished for eons earlier in the history of humans, In more recent epochs these people are smaller in number, and their stories are largely lost in the sands of time. As Afrikan-centered scholars continue to research and write of these adventurers, we will all gain a clearer picture of how Afrikans came to be residents in countries around the globe. Similarly, as scholars provide more detail about the forced migrations of Afrikans, we will learn how they got to where they live now, how they survived and prospered, and what they contributed to the locales that they now call home. This is the story of one such group, the Afrikan Sri Lankans. While evolution, intermarriage, and loss of Afrikan cultures and customs may eventually see their descendants disappear into the surrounding Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka, for now they form some distinct communities, and add to the Sri Lankan experience in a number of ways.
To name ourselves or to be named? The Afrikans of Sri Lanka
This term ‘Afrikans’, as noted above, is a new and recent addition to the lexicon. It stands as a statement by Afrikan peoples that we have emerged from the era where all that we were and did was defined by others. It is a statement of identity, of agency, and of the assertion of the right to define ourselves. The term ‘the Afrikans of Sri Lanka’, is also of recent vintage. As with Afrikans the world over, these people have been referred to by many names. Some of these names are complementary while others are cruel. In most cases, the names were ascribed by outsiders and not by the Afrikan people themselves. This term signals the ascension of Afrikan people in this part of the world.
The name most often used when talking about Afrikans in Sri Lanka in the present day is kapiri. This term is a recent vintage. Scholars agree that kapiri is derived from the Arab term, kafir or qafr which means non-believer in Arabic.[2] (I have included the term “Kaffirs” in the title of this monograph so that others can more easily find their way to this monograph and the information and perspective it contains.) This term, in turn, was used when Arabs engaged in the enslaving and selling of people. Early in the history of Islam, Arab traders stayed close to the Islamic dictum that forbade the enslavement[3] of persons who professed the Islamic faith. Hence the term kafir came to be used to designate those who were not practicing Islam, were infidels, and were therefore ‘eligible’ for enslavement.[4] In time, the desire for profit overcame the strict interpretation of this rule, and Afrikans were purchased and enslaved by Arab traders regardless of their religious affiliation as early as the fifteenth century.[5] Arabs began trade with Ceylon in the fifth century of the modern era, before the advent of Islam as a religion. While there is no identifiable historical record of Afrikans being sold in Ceylon during the fifth to fifteenth centuries, one can assume that if there was a need for laborers, craftspeople, maids or soldiers, and Afrikans were available at a good price, that they would have been sold in Ceylon as they were throughout much of the known world. So kafir had a negative connotation in Arabic, a connotation that continued when Europeans captured Ceylon.
During the colonization of Ceylon by the Portuguese and then the Dutch, enslaved Afrikans were imported to Ceylon in large numbers. They were referred to by the Portuguese as kafre or cafre, which the Portuguese inherited from the Arab traders when the Portuguese took over the trade in enslaved persons in southern Asia from the Arabs.[6] The Dutch called them Kaffers.[7] In each case, the term was used to designate those who were enslaved subjects of the Portuguese or Dutch respectively. The British continued the use of this term, anglicizing it to Kaffir.[8] The British also used it in a negative way. One only need ask an Afrikan in Azania (South Afrika) about this term to learn how they despise it.[9] It holds a connotation in Afrika and south Asia similar to the term nigger (a linguistic corruption of the term negro, which means ‘black’ in Portuguese and Spanish) holds in the United States.[10] (In the east of modern Sri Lanka one finds a group called ‘Burghers’, people of mixed Portuguese and either Tamil or Sinhala ancestry. Burghers refer to Afrikans as ‘negro’ in keeping with the Portuguese term for ‘black.’) It is from these versions of the term kafre that the term kapiri was derived. Some speculation exists that kapiri comes from the term karuppu, which means ‘black’ in Tamil, one of the two dominant languages in Sri Lanka.[11] However linguists in Sri Lanka are firm in their belief that kapiri derives from the Arab word kafre[12] One of the Afrikans in the Puttalam area, Peter Louis, said that those who are in their 50s or older are designated as “‘Lanka Caffres’ or ‘Lanka Kapiri’” on their birth records. But on census records, they are designated as “Other.”[13] It is worthy of note that when a group of academics visited Sirambi Adiya in the 1970s to learn about the Afrikans’ use of Portuguese, the researchers did not refer to them by any group name. Rather, they simply described their facial features thus: “More akin to the natives of Angola and Mozambique. Flat lips, bulging eyes, short curly hair, dark complexion.”[14] The most recent Sri Lankan census (2012) was conducted by ascertaining the identity of the male head of the family and defining all who are part of the family on that basis, or categorizing them as “Other.” Hence, in the west of the island, Afrikan Sri Lankans could be defined as Sinhala, since that is the language they speak, and some of the heads of household are Sinhala by marriage. In the east, they speak and may be characterized as Tamil. This leads to the Afrikans ‘disappearing’ from the statistics even though they are alive and well.
Additional challenges are presented by the naming of individual Afrikan Sri Lankans by their parents or those who enslaved or colonized them. The Afrikans I met in this research are largely Catholics, indicating the influence of the Portuguese, part of whose colonial mission was to convert those that they enslaved and/or colonized. This can be seen in the family names of these Afrikans, such as ‘Marceline’ and ‘Alphonso.’ Another challenge is the way the Afrikans present their names. Typically they give their surnames or family names first. So, for example, ‘Marcus Jerome Ameliana’ would be known as ‘Ameliana Jerome Marcus’ in much of the rest of the world.
But how do the Afrikan Sri Lankans describe themselves?
Do they use the term kapiri to identify themselves?
Yes, they do. Some Sri Lankan researchers opine that they do not interpret the term to be insulting.[15] However, that was not the case when this Afrikan-centered author asked the community in Sirambi Adiya about it. Initially they reported that they embraced the term. They believed that it was not a racist term.[16] They know that they are descended from Afrikans and that this term was used to identify them. But when the derogatory history of the term was explained to them by this author, and soon thereafter by representatives of the South Afrikan High Commission to Sri Lanka, they changed their minds. Evidence of this can be found in the photos that accompany this essay. Prior to learning the derivation of the term kapiri, those Afrikans who perform in a musical troupe called their organization ‘Ceylon Kaffir Manja’. After their consciousness had been raised concerning this term and their heritage, they changed the name of the group to ‘Ceylon African Manja’. Note that they did not feel the need to change the name of the country from ‘Ceylon’ to ‘Sri Lanka’, but they did feel the need to change the term used to identify themselves. Other communities of Afrikans in Sri Lanka also identify with the term kapiri until they are educated as to its meaning. They then call themselves ‘Afrikan’. All of these people are proud of their heritage when approached by people who respect them for who they are. They did not object to the term kapiri due to a lack of awareness of its meaning. But more importantly, they wanted to fit in to a society where they are a small numerical minority who has suffered from a legacy of enslavement and discrimination in their current lives. So they tend to be shy, accommodating, and hopeful that they will be treated well or left alone.
From whence did these Afrikan people come?
This seemingly simple question is both complex and hard to answer in a definitive way. Commerce between Sri Lanka (also known as Serendip, Taprobane, and Ceylon) was carried on with societies in east Asia, west Asia, and Africa for thousands of years. Early reports of trade with Egypt and the Roman Empire verify this.[17] Trade by people from the area in and around what is now called the Arabian Peninsula predates the introduction of Islam. Similarly, trade between Abyssinian traders from Afrika (‘Abyssinians’ hailed from the area now known as Ethiopia in east Afrika) goes back to the fifth century of the Common Era (CE, also called AD), when they traded at Matota, a location on the west coast of Ceylon.[18] A monk from Kemet (Egypt), Kosmas Indikopleustes, wrote that Abyssinians from the empire of Aksum were trading with what was called Taprobane (now called Sri Lanka) in the sixth century.[19] One can assume that at least some of these Afrikan traders took up residence in Ceylon. The Italian explorer Marco Polo visited Puttalam, which he called ‘Battelar’ and Ibn Batuta called ‘Battela’, in 1293 CE.[20] Ibn Batuta, an Afrikan traveler from Morocco, noted that the ruler of what is now Colombo had 500 Abyssinians in his garrison. He visited the island in the 1340s CE.[21] A favorable ocean current made travel by sea from the east coast of Africa to Sri Lanka manageable for six months of each year. And an overland trade was made possible by a land ‘bridge’ between India and Sri Lanka in the area of the town of Mannar. That land bridge is now submerged and is called Adams Strait. Hence, whether by land or by sea, the connection between this island and places in east Africa was of long standing. Arab traders moved goods from Sri Lanka to the west, while traders from China, Japan, and the other lands of East Asia moved them to the east.[22] There exists a long history of Arabs enslaving and selling Afrikan people to states in west Asia and on the Indian subcontinent.[23] Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Afrikan people, both free and enslaved, resided in Sri Lanka prior to the expansion by powers from Europe into southern Asia. However, beginning with the Portuguese, and continuing with the Dutch and the British, the nature and purposes for enslaving Afrikan people and bringing them to Sri Lanka changed. Having removed these Afrikan people from their homelands, the colonial powers used them as an occupying force in Ceylon and other colonies. Afrikans were prized because they were good soldiers, they were believed to be loyal to their enslavers, and because they often converted to the religion of their enslavers. It was also believed that they could withstand the ravages of malaria, which was prevalent in tropical locales such as Ceylon.[24]
The historical record reveals that Afrikan people were enslaved and imported from all parts of the Afrikan continent to Sri Lanka. Scholarship on the enslavement of Afrikan people by Arabs and European colonial powers focuses on their movement from east Africa to Arab states and states in southern and eastern Asia.[25] However, the trade in Afrikan people was not as uniform as many histories depict it. During the period that Portugal colonized Ceylon (1505 to 1658), the Portuguese enslaved Afrikan people from areas now known as Brazil, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the Congo, Angola and other sites in in west Afrika, from Mozambique, Madagascar and elsewhere in east Afrika, and from Portugal itself, and brought them to Sri Lanka[26]. Interestingly, the Portuguese distinguished between those Afrikans that they called ‘Abyssinians’ and those they called ‘Kaffirs’ by which part of the Afrikan continent they originated from.[27] Peter Louis, an Afrikan Sri Lankan who lives in the village of Sirambi Adiya near Puttalam, was told by his elders that they came to Sri Lanka from Mozambique in three waves that corresponded to the invasion of Ceylon by the Portuguese (1505) and the British (1815 and 1817).[28] The Portuguese only controlled parts of Ceylon, principally along the coast. The Portuguese had control of the Ceylon taken from them by the Dutch, who colonized Ceylon (actually, Ceylon was colonized by the Dutch East India Company) from 1658 to 1796, again mainly along the coast.[29] Similar to the Portuguese, the Dutch enslaved Afrikans from its colonies in the Congo in West Afrika and from the Cape of Good Hope (now called Azania or South Afrika) in southern Afrika and brought them to Sri Lanka.[30] The Dutch used Afrikans as soldiers and as laborers to grow crops and build forts and other structures. Rapiel Anthony Philip from Kalpitiya said that he can trace his Afrikan ancestry back four generations to a great, great grandfather who came to Ceylon as a soldier. He reckons a ‘generation’ to be 60 to 70 years, so this places that ancestor in Ceylon between 1730 and 1770, during the time of the Dutch control of the coast.[31] The Dutch also enslaved people in Ceylon and brought them to South Africa.[32] Both the Portuguese and the Dutch also purchased enslaved Afrikans from ports in east Afrika as well as from states in west Asia and on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent.[33] Jayasuriya reports that British official Anthony Bertolacci, who served in Ceylon from 1800-1816, said that 9,000 Afrikans were brought by the Portuguese and Dutch to Ceylon.[34] They also moved enslaved Afrikans from their colonial holdings in East Asia, such as Malaysia, to Sri Lanka. The story gets more complex when the British took the island away from the Dutch and colonized Ceylon from 1796 to 1948.[35] From 1796 until 1834, when the British followed the Americans and legally abolished enslavement, the British were also engaged in the enslavement of Afrikan peoples, and brought them to Ceylon. In reality, Afrikans were enslaved in Ceylon for many years thereafter. Enslavement of Afrikans continued in what is now Kenya and Tanzania well into the twentieth century,[36] as well as in various parts of Asia.[37] At one point, British records showed 874 Afrikan soldiers as part of the Third and Fourth British Ceylon Regiments in the early 1800s.[38] According to Sir James Emerson Tennent, British Colonial Secretary to Ceylon from 1845-1850, the Dutch augmented their supply of Afrikans by bringing them from the Cape of Africa (Azania or South Afrika), while the British purchased enslaved Afrikans from Goa. Earlier, Sir Frederick North, first governor of Ceylon under the British (1798-1805), had sent a ship to Mozambique and purchased five hundred Afrikan men and women and enslaved them for service in Ceylon.[39] Once the British government made slavery illegal, the trade continued for a time, though in reduced numbers. Thereafter, while not formally enslaved, Afrikan people were taken as colonial subjects by the British and brought from one colony to another as suited British interests. Historical records show that the British purchased enslaved Afrikans from Goa and Bombay (Mumbai) in what is now India and brought them to Ceylon as soldiers.[40] In many cases, these Afrikans were not ‘freed’ until they had completed their military service.[41] The historical record is replete with stories of Afrikan being employed as soldiers, fishermen, crafts people, maids, labourers, and concubines for the British, as they had been for the Portuguese and the Dutch.[42] Martin Marcus said his ancestors told him that they came to Sri Lanka as part of a battalion of Portuguese speaking east African soldiers under the British after the Boer War.[43] Shortly after World War II concluded, in 1948, the British granted Ceylon its political independence. Some of these colonized Afrikan people, or the descendants of colonized and/or enslaved Afrikans, chose to stay in Ceylon rather than to return to the colony from which they had come.
To complicate matters even further, some Afrikans were moved to Sri Lanka and then were moved away, only to be moved back again at a later date. Such was the case with some Afrikans who were enslaved by the Portuguese. When the Dutch defeated the Portuguese in Sri Lanka, those Portuguese who could afford it, moved their enslaved Afrikans along with their other property to a nearby Portuguese enclave, such as Goa, which is on the west coast of India. Later the Dutch and the British would purchase some of these Afrikans and bring them to Sri Lanka to work.
As is the case for most descendants of enslaved Afrikans, those Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka now no longer know the name of their ancestral nation, their culture, customs, rites, rituals, or religion. Some do have oral histories that add some clarity to this question. These histories also raise questions.
Among the group of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live on the west coast of Sri Lanka, those who have had a history passed down to them have two dominant narratives. One narrative says that their ancestors had been brought to Sri Lanka from Mozambique.[44] Credence is lent to this understanding by the elders in the group, who can converse in a creolized combination of Portuguese and the dominant language in Sri Lanka, Sinhala. However, there is no documentary evidence that the ancestors of these persons were brought directly from Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, to Sri Lanka. They may well have been brought from Goa or some other Portuguese colony by the Dutch or the British.[45] (Goa, Daman and Diu were client states of Portugal until 1963 when India annexed them and made them part of India proper[46]). Another narrative from the Afrikans in western Sri Lanka is that their ancestors were brought to the island by the British either during the Boer War (1899-1902) where the British colonized Azania[47], or during the period before and during World War II, and decided against returning to the country from whence they came to Sri Lanka. Jayasuriya quotes M. J. Elias, who believed that his ancestors had been brought to Ceylon from the island of Kaffa off the coast of Azania, which is why they are called ‘Kaffirs.’[48] It may well be that both narratives are correct. The forebears of these Afrikans may have been brought as enslaved persons or colonial subjects. Some of the Afrikans in the area of the town of Puttalam on the west coast of Sri Lanka can still speak a creolized version of Portuguese mixed with Sinhala terms.[49] They are all Catholic, and worship at churches established by the Portuguese.[50] (The Dutch and the British were Christian but not Catholic during this period[51]). This gives credence to the Portuguese enslavement version. These same persons have British family names, lending credence to the British colonial version. One person in the village of Sirambi Adiya, which is just outside Puttalam proper, told of meeting British soldiers just after World War II who were stationed in Puttalam before being transported off the island around the time of Ceylon’s political independence.[52]
And where did they go?
During the Portuguese colonial period, large numbers of Afrikans were transported to Ceylon. Some were employed as soldiers; others performed a variety of other tasks. When the Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch at the end of the sixteenth century, some of the wealthier Portuguese took their enslaved Afrikans with them when they left the island. Some went to Portuguese enclaves along the coast of India, while others may have returned to Portugal. While the details of what happened to the scores of Afrikan people who lived in Ceylon at that time remain unclear, the record does indicate that many became the property of the Dutch and stayed in Ceylon when the Portuguese left.[53]
The Dutch continued to import Afrikan peoples during the era of their colonization of the island. The Dutch not only imported Afrikan people from their other colonial possessions; they also purchased Afrikan people from the Portuguese states in India and brought them to Sri Lanka.[54] The numbers of Afrikans in Ceylon during Dutch rule grew into the thousands according to Dutch Governor Ven Goyans.[55] A famous event in the history of this period tells of how the Afrikans rebelled against their enslavement, killing some of their enslavers in the process. The rebellion was, however, not totally successful. Once the Dutch regained control, they sequestered all the Afrikans living in Colombo on an island each evening, transporting them by boat. In the morning they were brought back to the mainland to work.[56] This island, which in the present day is a peninsula, is still called ‘Slave Island’ owing to this history. The history also shows that some Afrikans rebelled as the Dutch fought the Kandyan kings for control of the inland areas away from the coast. In fact, many of these Afrikans deserted their enslavers and joined the Kandyan side in the conflict. While Jayasuriya asserts that they simply “swapped masters,”[57] the reality was that leaving the cruelty of European enslavers for the freedom to live and fight alongside the Kandyans was an opportunity not to be missed.[58] One Kandyan king so favored and trusted these Afrikan soldiers that he made them his personal bodyguard.[59] Later in their stewardship of Ceylon, the Dutch passed a law that was designed to grant freedom to enslaved Afrikans when their master and mistress died.[60] This ‘emancipation’ had to have resulted in many Afrikan people being freed of their bondage but it occurred in a land far from their ancestral homes. Like those that were left in Ceylon by the Portuguese, those Afrikans who were freed by their Dutch masters or did not go with their masters or former masters to other colonies or to the Netherlands, remained in Ceylon and eventually married into and blended in with the surrounding populations.
When the British superceded the Dutch in 1796, enslavement of Afrikan people was still law in the British empire and the British profited from the use of enslaved Afrikans as laborers. Some were purchased from the Portuguese state of Goa in western India and brought to Ceylon.[61] The British used Afrikan soldiers in a push that eventually allowed them to conquer the entire island, a feat which had eluded the Portuguese and the Dutch. Spittel writes of Afrikan soldiers stationed by the British in Alutnuwara after a rebellion by the Kandyan people in 1817, shortly after the British had gained control of the entire island. These Afrikans were eventually allowed to settle in the area.[62] While various dates have been put forward for the abolishment of slavery in Ceylon (1833,[63] 1834,[64] 1841 and 1845,[65] 1844[66]), it was probably the case that enslavement continued after it was outlawed. If the trade in enslaved Afrikan people in the western hemisphere is any indication, the abolition of enslavement by colonizer nations such as Great Britain and by receiver nations, such as the United States, did not cease with the passage of laws making the sale of human beings illegal.[67] The profits were too great. Nonetheless, the importation of enslaved Afrikan people by the British eventually slowed and stopped. But enslavement was supplanted by the importation of Afrikan people as colonial subjects to Ceylon, a practice that occurred right up to Ceylon’s declaration of political independence in 1948. Sargent Major D.B. Dissanayake, who is 90 years old at this writing, recalled being in the British Army from 1932 to 1943. During that time he worked with Afrikan soldiers from east Afrika. He spoke some of the Swahili words he learned from these Afrikan soldiers, a few of which were known by this author. Swahili was spoken in a number of east Afrikan British colonies, including the countries now known as Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.[68] In separate interviews, Marceline Alphonso, who lives near Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka, and Williams Mary Elizabeth, who lives in Puttalam on the west coast, told of Afrikan soldiers being marched from Trincomalee to Anuradhapura, in the center of the island, and on to Puttalam after the end of World War II. This version of the narrative fits with that of Ana Miseliya, an elder in Puttalam who has since made her transition, who said that Afrikan soldiers were brought to Trincomalee to help the Europeans in a war.[69] But her son, Marcus Joseph Michael, recalled that his grandparents had told him that his ancestors had been living in this area for five generations.[70] Marcus Joseph Michael would then be a member of the seventh generation in this locale. If by a ‘generation’, he meant a full lifetime, the elders in this Afrikan community often live to be eighty or more years old. If that was true of those in his family, then it is plausible that their ancestors came to Ceylon with the Portuguese in the mid-1600s. But if he meant the more standard definition of a ‘generation’ as being twenty five years, then six generations before Marcus Joseph Michael’s birth in approximately 1940 would be 150 years earlier, or 1790. This was a period of political instability in Ceylon. The Dutch were struggling to maintain control of the coastal areas, resisting attacks by the kings from Kandy inland, and the British via the sea.
In this case, both the oral histories from the Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka today and the historical records indicate that while many of these Afrikans left the island after World War II ended, some stayed and are the forebears of those Afrikans who live in Sri Lanka today. The census records from 1921 list a total of 255 Afrikan Sri Lankans in Ceylon, excluding soldiers and sailors.[71] Today the number of those who identify themselves as Afrikans who were born and living in Sri Lanka is between 200 and 300.
Community or Communities? Sirambi Adiya and Puttalam
Popular history has it that only one community of Afrikan Sri Lankans still exists.[72] That community, concentrated as it is in the village of Sirambi Adiya[73], outside the small city of Puttalam on the west coast of Sri Lanka, is indeed a force. Afrikan soldiers were brought to the area in the mid-1800s. Once the need for soldiers diminished, the fort in Puttalam was abandoned. The Afrikan soldiers who were stationed in Puttalam were given land there by the British in Puttalam when the Third Ceylon regiment was disbanded in 1865.[74] Brohier amplifies this point, noting that the land surveyor who preceded him had plotted out land for the Afrikans in the neighboring village of Sellan Kandal when Ceylon was still a British colony.[75] Benedict Francis Calistis reports that there are no longer any Afrikan Sri Lankans residing in Sellan Kandal.[76] At present, in Sirambi Adiya, they are a small community numbering perhaps fifteen males and twenty five females by their own account.[77] They live in fourteen houses constructed by a German Non-Governmental Organization. It appears that this community was organized on an acre of land given by the British to Marcus Martin when he retired from government service in 1944.[78] Another group of about five families lives about one kilometer away in the same village. George Sherin Alex, the female leader of the Afrikans in Sirambi Adiya, said that their elders had told them that when the Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch, that the Afrikans were sent away from the island. They were told that the same thing occurred when the British supplanted the Dutch. Sherin was the only member of the village to have made it to Ordinary Level in the British educational system. The men did not make it past grade nine before they had to go to work. One of the community elders, Williams Mary Elizabeth, said that Afrikan soldiers who were part of the British army stayed in Puttalam for a short time in 1947 before being shipped elsewhere. She recalls that these men treated the Afrikan Sri Lankans with kindness. Sherin’s mother, Marcus Jerome Ameliana, the current eldest member of the group at age 84, said that her grandparents had told her that their ancestors had come to Ceylon from Mozambique.[79] She went on to say that her ancestors had been in Goa and had been brought to Ceylon as soldiers in 1817. Her husband, the late Leonis George, was the brother of the Afrikan elder, Marceline Alphonso, who lives in Trincomalee (see below). Leonis George and Marcus Jerome Ameliana had eight children, six of them girls. George Sherin Alex is one of their children.
On a later visit to Puttalam, we met a number of Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in Puttalam proper, and not in Sirambi Adiya. They are geographically scattered and do not constitute a community. One of them, Sebastian George Gabriel, lives in a section about two Kilometers away from 'Good Shed' in Puttalam. Many others live in the area of Puttalam known as ‘Good Shed’. One of them is Marcus Joseph Elias. He is 78 years old and is one of Ameliana’s brothers. His wife, who also has Afrikan features, was part of the community of Kala Oya, about twenty five kilometers inland from Sirambi Adiya. Two other families of Afrikan Sri Lankans whose members are related to the family of Marcus Joseph Elias live on the same street has he does in the Good Shed section of Puttalam. Another family from this area is that of Benedict Francis Callistis. His father was Peter Benedict Manuel. The Peter family occupies two homes in Sirambi Adiya. Calistis works as a security officer at a local insurance company. His wife is Sinhala. It was he who we met on our first visit to Puttalam in January 2013. He guided us to Sirambi Adiya. His father worked as a driver for the salt company in Puttalam. His mother was Sinhala. He recalls his father telling him that his grandfather came to Puttalam around the time of World War I.[80] In this same area, we met Marceline Alphonso’s brother Ruban in Puttalam. He has two sons, Robinson and Johnson. We met Robinson as well. One will encounter other persons of Afrikan descent in Puttalam town. In the attached photos is a three-wheel driver named Linton, who has two brothers living in Kalpitiya (see below), and a man at the weekly market.
Also in Puttalam we met a vendor named Suberappa Khalil, who was selling radios at the weekly market. He is Muslim by religion. Both his parents are Afrikan Sri Lankans, and they are also Muslims. This raises the question of how many more Muslims in Puttalam, which has a large Muslim population, might also be of Afrikan descent. And it raises the further questions as to whether there exist any practitioners of Buddhism who identify themselves as Afrikan Sri Lankans. Further, other than Alphonso Noel Selvarasia, also known as Kuti, who lives in Jaffna (see below) and professes to be of the Hindu faith (when in Jaffna), are there other Afrikan Sri Lankans who are part of the Hindu faith? These questions remain unanswered at present.
A part of the community in Sirambi Adiya has become prominent in Sri Lankan culture. They have formed a musical group and entertain people around the island and occasionally outside the country as well. This musical tradition was passed down from generation to generation[81], including the language which Jayasuriya calls ‘Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole.’[82] Their unique rendering of Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole lyrics, an Afrikan stylized music known as kaffringha, and a form of dance only found among Afrikans in Sri Lanka, has brought them fame and earned the troupe both money and a solid reputation. One can find them performing on YouTube. Newspaper and internet articles about them usually focus solely on their musical and cultural performances. However, such work does not sustain them economically. Most of the men are laborers, and spend much time away from home. Some families work in the recently reopened saltern (a company that dries salt water in the sun to obtain and sell the salt), while others work in the hospital. Many of the women in Sirambi Adiya can be found at home during the day; the men are seldom available as they are away at work. All are devout Christians. A small church is situated near their homes in Sirambi Adiya. They attend the larger St. Mary’s Church in Puttalam on special occasions, such as Good Friday.
But is that the only group of Afrikans on the island that can be called a community? The answer is a clear “No.” There are communities of Afrikans to be found in the village of Palauttu near the eastern city of Trincomalee, and in Kalpitiya, which is on the ocean side of the Puttalam Lagoon, across from Puttalam. As noted above, a fragmented community exists in Puttalam near Sirambi Adiya and Tabbova, hamlets less than an hour’s journey from Sirambi Adiya. Families of Afrikan descent can also be found at various locations around the island, such as in Jaffna, Mullativu, Negombo, Wattala, and Dehiwela. Many of these Afrikan people are related by marriage and/or descent. This indicates a preference to marry within their racial group.
The community in Sirambi Adiya has no formal structure, though elements found in villages across the Afrikan continent prevail here. Peter Louis has stepped forward into a leadership role, as has George Sherin Alex. They consult each other when issues arise. As the community is small, group consultations occur on matters of import. Jayasuriya reported that the patriarch of the Marcus family, Marcus Martin, had been vice president of the village council from 1946 to 1957.[83] This was a council of all those living in Sirambi Adiya and not just the Afrikan Sri Lankans living there.
I met with about 35 Afrikan Sri Lankans at St. Mary’s church on Good Friday, 2014. From that meeting and prior visits and discussions, I would estimate that there are 70 persons in the Puttalam area, including Sirambi Adiya, who identify themselves as Afrikans, and perhaps another 150 persons who have Afrikan ancestry but do not identify themselves as Afrikans.
Community or Communities? Palauttu, Trincomalee
Another community of Afrikan Sri Lankans live outside the city of Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka. The village in which they live is Palauttu, also spelled Pallutuwa and Palaiyoothu. These Afrikans are also Christians, but their language is Tamil rather than Sinhala. The patriarch of the family is now 90 years old. Marceline Banda Alphoso by name, he is a powerful personality in the area. One need only find anyone in the Trincomalee area and tell them that you are looking for the Afrikan people (kapiri) and they will tell you to “Go and see Alphonso.” The community in Palauttu mainly consists of Alphonso’s siblings and their children. Alphonso himself sired thirteen children.[84] Most of Alphonso’s children and grandchildren can be found in the area around Alphonso’s home.
Alphonso’s brother Marceline Vincent David, and his wife Rosemary, lives less than a kilometer from Alphonso and in the same village. They had five children. All of their children emigrated to Europe and west Asia. Four of his grandchildren live with him. David was a machine operator in the harbor at Trincomalee.
Alphonso told us that his great grandfather, an Afrikan man, came to Sri Lanka as a soldier.[85] He did not know if his great grandfather was enslaved or free and did not know whether he was brought by the British or came some other way. But he was sure that all of his ancestors lived in this same village, Palauttu.[86] His great grandmother was Sri Lankan. His father was named (Marceline, presumably) Tom, but he recalls little else about him. His mother was named Marceline Banda Dora. Alphonso was one of eight children: four girls and four boys. One brother is dead. His brother Ruben lives in Puttalam. Alphonso was a teenager when World War II commenced in the late 1930s. The British saw strategic value in the deep harbor at Trincomalee and determined to defend it from the Japanese.[87] The British built a prison in the jungle near Trincomalee which housed Italian prisoners. Alphonso was initially employed by the Royal (British) Navy to brew and serve tea for British officials there. Later he worked at the prison.[88]
In a more recent interview, Alphonso told me that he is a third generation ‘Kaffir’ Christian. He was a carpenter by trade and worked for the British Navy as a carpenter on ships, in the Air Force, and for a petroleum company. His first wife, by whom he had one child, was Tamil. That wife died, and the child, a daughter named Saroja, lives in Mullativu in the north of Sri Lanka. His second wife, who is now 80 years old, Alphonso Theresa, was a Sinhala Buddhist. She became a Christian and married Alphonso. She bore Alphonso twelve children. Some of those children live near them on a large plot of land that appears to belong to Alphonso. Others have moved to Europe and western Asia to find work. One son lives in the northernmost city in Sri Lanka, Jaffna.
In discussions with members of Alphonso’s family, estimates of Afrikan Sri Lankans from this family living in Palauttu varied from 40 to 55. As there are other persons of Afrikan descent (and who identify themselves as being descended from Afrikans) living in the area but not part of this family, the total Afrikan population in the Trincomalee area is approximately 70.[89]
Community or Communities? Kalpitiya
A third community exists at Kalpitiya, which is across the Puttalam Lagoon from Puttalam in the north western part of the country. This group consists of approximately five families and about 20 individuals. Some members of this community are related to those in Sirambi Adiya, Puttalam, and Palauttu. Solomon Emmanuel, for example, is the brother of Linton, the three-wheel driver in Puttalam. They have another brother living in Kalpitiya who drives a boat that brings kite surfers and wind surfers to the ocean side of the Puttalam Lagoon where the winds are favorable. Members of this community range in age from their late 60s to children of two years. Two of the families, both part of the elder group, consist of an Afrikan husband and wife, proof of their desire to marry within their group where possible. Others are of mixed Afrikan and Sinhala heritage. All are Catholic. Members of this community had been part of the ‘Ceylon African Manja’ musical troupe. Members of this group also display musical and dance talent that is Afrikan in its characteristics. They wish to offer their talents to the larger community of Sri Lanka as do those in Sirambi Adiya. The newest generation is progressing farther than they did educationally. One young man is hoping to go to university in the near future.
Community or Communities? Jaffna
The Afrikan Sri Lankans in Jaffna consist of one family. They are Marceline Aphonso’s son, Alphonso Noel Selvarasia, also known as ‘Kuti’, and his wife and five children. Kuti is the head of a local fishermen’s organization. Kuti has Afrikan features. His wife is of Tamil heritage. His children do not have his curly hair, but one son shares his facial features.[90] During our conversation, Kuti revealed that he is a Tamil Christian when he is with his family in Palauttu, but that he is a Tamil Hindu when he is at home in Jaffna. This is an example of an Afrikan man adapting to his surroundings, both ethnically and religiously, in order to prosper.
Kuti’s eldest sister and Marceline Alphonso’s eldest daughter, Saroja, lives in the Mullativu District, which is also in the north of Sri Lanka. Hers was the only family of Afrkan descent that I have been told about in the district. Her children are the only Afrikans that I know of who currently reside in the area.
Community or Communities? Negombo
A professor of history at the University of Colombo, told me that a group of Afrikans live on Hospital Road in Negombo, a city to the north of Colombo. She said that they work at the hospital. I have yet to verify that claim. Those with whom I have checked said that there are no Afrikan Sri Lankans working at the hospital. This statement illustrates an aspect of this research that is ongoing. Many of those who are Afrikan Sri Lankans have experienced prejudice and discrimination due to their Afrikan ancestry. In such a milieu, it is prudent to deny their ancestry when approached by strangers or persons who appear to have authority or privilege. In short, denying their heritage may make their lives more peaceful. Nonetheless, I have met two families of Afrikan origin in Negombo. Mary Polomino and her family live there. Mary is the daughter of one of Alphonso’s and David’s sisters. Mary said that some of her family members live in Germany. The other family, a brother and sister, are the children of David’s son Vincent David Elmo, who lives in England. His son, David Elmo Frank Daniel, and his sister live in Negombo and attend school in Colombo. They came to Sri Lanka for education.[91]
Community or Communities? Kala Oya and Tabbova
At one time, five Afrikan Sri Lankan families lived in Kala Oya near Our Lady of Lourdes Church. According to Father Girard, the priest at the church, a flood in 1957 destroyed the church. Soon thereafter the families dispersed. Most moved to the nearby village of Tabbova. One Afrikan Sri Lankan man remains in Kala Oya. His name is Martino Francis Miranda. He said that the families that had lived in Kala Oya had originally moved from Puttalam to Kala Oya.[92] The village of Kala Oya is on the road from Anuradhapura to Puttalam (now designated as Highway A12). The oral histories indicate that Afrikan soldiers were marched from Trincomalee via Anuradhapura and on to Puttalam before being transported off the island after World War II and once independence was declared in Ceylon in 1948. One might well have thought that some of these Afrikans decided to settle in Kala Oya. This village has a Catholic church, and a river (‘Oya’ means ‘river’), two items of import to the Catholic Afrikan population in Sri Lanka.
Community or Communities? The Batticaloa Myth
Saldin is not the only writer who professes that there are Afrikan people living in Batticaloa district.[93] Jayasuriya also writes that there are Afrikans there,[94] and one finds a reference to them on YouTube and in the work of Kenneth David Jackson.[95] An article published in 1999 reports Census Department officials saying that Afrikans lived in Batticaloa at that time.[96] But the Census Department listed no Afrikans in the Batticaloa District in their 2007 report.[97] If they were included, they were listed as “Other”, along with the Burgher population of that district. I visited the district four times. I inquired about Afrikans living in the area from doctors, civic leaders, librarians, cab (three-wheel) drivers, restaurant owners and employees, businessmen, and leaders in the Burgher community. I found no Afrikans there. Those Afrikans referenced on the internet as being from Batticaloa were not resident there. Rather they were members of the musical troupe ‘Ceylon African Manja’ from Sirambi Adiya who performed there.
Stories of other Communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans
It is impossible to follow up every lead to see if communities of Afrikans are to be found. Reference in the text Zeylanica to settlements on a street in Colombo now known as Kosala Lane (see below) and to Adimunai near Trincomalee may have been true at one time but they proved to be false in the present day.[98] Similarly, many persons have indicated that relatives of the Afrikan Sri Lankans who live in Puttalam now live in the Kotahena section of the metropolis of Colombo. Kotahena is a densely populated area. I have been unable to find any Afrikans in this area. One of the Afrikans we met in Puttalam, Benedict Francis Callistis, reports that his brother lives in Dehiwela, a suburb just south of Colombo proper. Hettiaratchi (1969) reported a conversation with Daniel Bruno, an Afrikan Sri Lankan resident of Kala Oya, who said that an Afrikan regiment had come to Galle in southern Ceylon from Madagascar at the time of the Boer War between the whites of Azania (South Africa) and the British (1899-1902). Their descendants could be found in Kundasale, a town near the city of Kandy, which was the center of the Kandyan kingdom, in Kurunegala in the North Western Province, and in Nuwara Eliya, in the hills of the Central Province.[99] A friend suggested that I check in Boussa, a town in the south which was the site of a prison erected by the British that was said to be controlled at least in part, by Afrikan soldiers. Others suggested Mannar, the city closest to the Indian subcontinent.[100] The only “Afrikans” I found in Mannar were some baobab trees (one of which is more than 700 years old), which are the variety indigenous to Afrika. The popular story is that the seeds of the baobab were imported by Arab traders.[101]
In many cases, these reports of Afrikans living in these locales come from the stories that elders told their children. They may have been true; I simply have not been able to verify them or find Afrikan Sri Lankans in these places now.
The Myth of Afrikan Sri Lankans as Cannibals
As the Afrikans disappear into the surrounding population, the stories about them grow from history into myth. During this research, I have heard a tale told many times by many Sri Lankans, young and old. The tale is of Afrikan soldiers working for the British who lived in the Kandy area. They were, so the tale goes, cannibals. So dangerous were they to the ordinary citizens of the area that a contraption was built to lock their mouths and jaws shut when they were in public. I have not been able to find any further information on this story. But whether it is true or a myth, it served an excellent colonial purpose. It kept the Afrikans separated from those who they were charged by the British with controlling- the local population. In minimized social interaction between the Afrikans and members of the local population by generating fear. And it presented the British as ‘civilized’ by comparison. Further, it is hard to fathom why the British would capture and bring Afrikans to Ceylon, knowing (this is assuming that they were cannibals) that these cannibals might kill and eat the British. Finally, why would Afrikan soldiers who were trained and fed by the British, prefer eating humans to eating the food provided by their employers? Cannibalism occurs only out of the necessity to survive, or to fulfill a ritual function. Neither of these situations appear to be relevant to the situation in Ceylon.
Evidence of the Past Remains
The discerning eye will find other evidence of this Afrikan past in Sri Lanka. It is commonly known in modern Sri Lanka that Sinhalas and Tamils alike took Portuguese, Dutch, or English surnames (family names) and first names to enhance their chances for advancement under each colonial regime. Similarly, some took Christian first names when they converted to Catholicism. Afrikan people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere did the same thing. That is why the majority of names encountered above in this essay appear to have Portuguese, Dutch, or English roots. Similarly, Afrikans who converted to Islam took Muslim names.[102] For example, in Colombo, the large metropolis in Sri Lanka, there exists a street named “Abdul Caffoor Mawatha” (“Mawatha” means ‘street’). But who was ‘Abdul Caffoor’? As the name implies, this person was a man, probably Muslim, named ‘Abdul’, and he was probably of Afrikan descent- hence the name ‘Caffoor’ which is pronounced much like ‘Kaffir’. He was a prominent gem dealer in Ceylon.
As one enters the financial hub of Colombo, you will find yourself on the peninsula named “Slave Island”. After a rebellion by enslaved Afrikans was quelled by the Dutch in the early 1800s (see above), all enslaved Afrikans were to be brought to an island in Beira Lake at night and brought back to the mainland in the morning to maintain the security of the Dutch. That island has become known as Slave Island. A street near where they got on the boats was known as Kapiri Mudukkuwa, loosely translated as ‘Kaffir Alley’. It became known as one of the most dangerous streets in the city of Colombo.[103] That street’s name was later changed to ‘Kosala Patumaga’, or ‘Kosala Lane’.[104] One cannot find any Afrikans living on the street, but the residents know the story that Afrikans had lived there in the past.
The presence of these Afrikan Sri Lankans was exploited again in the 1980s when film director John Derek employed them to play ‘primitive’ Afrikans in his movie “Tarzan the Ape Man.”[105] Derek recruited Marceline Alphonso, who in turn invited Afrikans from the Puttalam area to join the cast.[106] Rapiel Edward Marcus of Kalpitiya said that four of those present when we met with them, three men and one lady, had been part of the Tarzan movie filming. He noted that the men in Palauttu had to cut their hair because it was straight, whereas those from the Puttalam area, including Kalpitiya, did not as their hair is spirally.[107] Each person thus employed received 300 rupees per day for up to three days’ work. They were clad in costumes provided by Derek and supposedly representing the dress of Afrikans. Derek’s purpose was to distinguish the ‘civilized’ Tarzan and Jane from the ‘primitive’ Afrikans. Unfortunately, those thus employed believed that the garb they wore and the roles they played were accurate representations of Afrikan life and culture.[108] They were not.
Assimilation and Rejuvenation- or Resilience?
The question of the intermarriage of Afrikan Sri Lankans to Sinhala and/or Tamil spouses deserves some comment. Much has been made of the children of these Afrikans possessing less of the physical features that distinguish them as Afrikans- curly hair, distinctive skin color, thick lips, broad noses, and the like. Similar discussions are occurring elsewhere in the world where Afrikans were enslaved and who now form small minority populations in those countries. For example, Afrikans in modern-day Turkey are intermarrying with Turks and gradually disappearing as a distinct minority. Afrikan Sri Lankans are also intermarrying and their offspring sometimes do not retain the hair, nose, lips, and other physical features that distinguishes them as Afrikans.[109] Also like the Afrikans in Turkey, these physical are the only signs linking them to an Afrikan past features (along with the music and dance, in the case of those Afrikan Sri Lankans) who are members of Ceylon African Manja. And like the Afrikans in Turkey, many of whom were enslaved and used as soldiers (and harem women) for centuries during the ascendency of the Ottoman Empire, Afrikans were brought to Ceylon as soldiers, maids, et cetera, in service of their enslavers. Jayasuriya asserts that what distinguishes the Afrikan Sri Lankans from other Sri Lankans is their curly hair.[110] Hussein writes that they are distinguished by their “dark skin and woolly hair,” but later confines the distinction to “curly or woolly hair.[111] Whether they live in the eastern or the western parts of the country, these Afrikans have lost their native languages, customs, cultures, and most of their rituals. They have lacked control over who interprets and writes about their history. However, the retention of a distinctive style of playing music, of dancing, and of singing are evidence of enduring aspects of Afrikan culture that no amount of enslavement or cultural imposition has been able to remove.[112] Bynum[113] argues persuasively that there exists a collective Afrikan essence in all persons of Afrikan descent, no matter where they are found. It is seen in these Afrikans in their music, dance, the way they adjust the Sinhala or Tamil languages, modifying them to fit their understanding of life, their easy smiles, their joys, the depth of their faith, et cetera. This view stands in stark contrast to the view that these Afrikans are assimilating because they were marginalized and victimized by the society surrounding them.[114] Similarly, when asked about their pride in being Afrikan and intermarrying, many will respond as did one person in Palauttu that their goal is to live and be happy.[115] There exist but a small number of Afrikan families in Sri Lanka. They are separated by many miles and have scant resources. George Leonis, who was an Afrikan from Palauttu and brother of Marceline Aphonso, and Marcus Jerome Ameliana, who is from Sirambi Adiya, married. This union demonstrated that these Afrikan people are conscious of their ancestry and, where possible, wish to preserve it. But if there are no Afrikan people who are not their relatives to marry, then they marry those who live near them and are known to them. Ana Miseliya, Marcus Jerome Ameliana’s mother, said that in the late 1990s, only one marriage of two Afrikan Sri Lankans was about to occur.[116] George Sherin Alex of Sirambi Adiya confirmed that her marriage in 1999 was the last such marriage that she knows of in Sirambi Adiya.[117] In such a situation where eligible marriage partners are not available within the group and marriages occur outside the group, that circumstance does not demonstrate assimilation. It demonstrates resilience- the resilience that requires survival first and then prosperity. It is worth noting that the majority of Afrikan Sri Lankans I have met are devout Catholics. This is not just, as many speculate, because their ancestors were enslaved by the Portuguese, who are Catholics. It is also an indication of the strong spiritual connection found in Afrikan communities around the world. This is one aspect of their resilience.
These Afrikans have become victims of this externally derived history. For example, Peter Louis, self-proclaimed ‘chief’ of the Afrikans in Sirambi Adiya, is quoted as having said that they are losing their language.[118] In so doing, he echoes the thoughts of anthropologist Karunasena Dias Paranavithana, who said the same thing.[119] The truth is that these Afrikans have lost their native language long ago. The language that is disappearing now is the Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole, which is not, and never was, an Afrikan language. When asked by academics and researchers (who represent sources of power and influence), the responses of the Afrikans demonstrate their desire to avoid conflict and appear happy with their lot. If one looks up the phrase ‘Sri Lanka Kaffirs’ in Wikipedia, you will read that: “The Sri Lankan Kaffirs are an ethnic group In Sri Lanka who are partially descended from 16th Century Portuguese traders and the Afrikan Slaves who were brought by them to work as labourers and soldiers to fight against the Sri Lankan Kings.”[120] It may be true that some of the Afrikans brought to Ceylon had Portuguese ancestors, as the quote suggests. But to imply that all of the Afrikans were brought to Ceylon and did not come on their own, and that all those enslaved or colonized Afrikans who were brought to Ceylon were descended from the Portuguese is misleading, if not totally false.
The Afrikans in Sri Lanka have prospered in the face of a lack of support from government and the stigmata attached to them by colonial powers and the citizens of Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Those who write about the Afrikan Sri Lankans add to the challenges. An example is found in the title of an article about them- “Sri Lanka’s African Slave Families Fade Away.”[121] Slavery was legally abolished in Ceylon by the British in the mid-nineteenth century, by 1850. The current Afrikans have never been enslaved; their families are not ‘slave families.’ As noted above, the language to which he is referring is called ‘Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole’ by Jayasuriya and others.[122] It is also known as ‘Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon.’[123] This language is not an Afrikan language; it is a combination of Portuguese and Sinhala words that was used as a communication tool in southern Asia after Portugal colonized parts of Ceylon, India, and east Afrika. The Afrikan languages that were spoken by the ancestors of Peter Louis and the other Afrikans in Sri Lanka have long been lost. And the academics do not help. For instance, one Sri Lankan historian and professor is quoted as believing that because these Afrikans were not educated, they lost interest in sustaining their language and culture.[124] As has already been noted, their cultures (recall, these Afrikans may come from many different Afrikan nations with many languages and many cultures) and languages were lost not due to a lack of interest, but due to the forced imposition of foreign religions, cultures, and languages as part of the enslavement and colonization process. And when Gunasekera asserts that “The Kaffirs were originally Muslims,”[125] he is creating a generalization and a history for which I have found no evidence. A similar confusion is found at this article’s conclusion when Jayasuriya states that the Afrikans were powerful when Ceylon was colonized, but that they lost their power when the British left Ceylon in 1948.[126] Afrikans employed as soldiers, maids, and labourers were not persons with power. Rather, they were colonial subjects just as was the rest of the population of Ceylon. The colonial situation was one where groups were pitted against each other so that a small contingent of British administrators, military, and business people could maintain control of a much larger population of colonized people. Read the history of British colonialism in India for a regional comparison. Similarly, when Jayasuriya asserts that Afrikan peoples suffered lesser discrimination in south Asia than elsewhere[127], one might well ask the point of comparing oppressions to see which was worse. Oppression is oppression. It is never to be desired or appreciated. In the face of such obstacles and discrimination which continues to this day, these Afrikans should be admired for their resilience. As an Afrikan American, I am rejuvenated and inspired each time I meet them. An example of such insults is one that has upset Afrikan Americans for decades- white performers who make a career of imitating Afrikans in a racist, stereotyped fashion by painting their faces black and adding big lips and other insulting caricatures of Afrikan physical features.[128] Jayasuriya notes a similar occurrence in Sri Lanka in the 1950s: “Alex van Arkadie, who now works at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome, and whose father was a close friend of Bastianz recalls the kaffrinha dance in the 1950s performed by Burghers who disguised themselves as Kaffirs by blackening their faces.”[129] Jayasuriya later elaborated on this practice as follows: “The most popular item in the variety entertainment performance was the Kaffrinha, performed by a Burgher couple disguised as Africans by blackening their faces right down to the neck. Fingers were encased in white hand gloves to cover their paler skin…. The woman wore a wig of raven black hair in a mass of fine curls bunched together in tassels to hang from under a neatly draped bandanna….”[130]
Looking Forward
The complexion of most Afrikans does not differ from that of the Sinhala and Tamil peoples of Sri Lanka, so it was not difficult for Afrikans to blend in with those around them physically. “They themselves predict that their African physiognomy will disappear but that their talents in music and dance will be inherited by their African descendants.”[131] However, “The problem of cultural survival is a complicated one. Only with the greatest difficulty could even the symbols of an African culture survive the destructiveness of slavery.”[132] Just as my son would have not looked Afrikan if I had not married an identifiable Afrikan woman, the futures of identifiable Afrikans is in question.
Sri Lanka is a caste society. In such an environment, differences such as those of skin complexion and the like are used to elevate or lower one’s status. By this measure, Afrikan Sri Lankans, who were not from one of the favored castes, would be the objects of discrimination. On the other hand, Europeans, who also were not part of the caste system, were favored, largely due to their colonizer status and their fair skin, one of the symbols of high caste status in India and in Sri Lanka.[133] Add to this the widespread myth of Afrikans as cannibals, and the stigma associated with being Afrikan deepens. In such an environment, it would be expected that many Afrikan Sri Lankans would deny their heritage when I would ask them from whom they had inherited their spirally hair. Doing so makes them appear to be shy, when their real object appears to be to avoid discrimination and other problems related to being different and blend in with the communities of people who live around them. The exceptions to this conclusion are found in Sirambi Adiya, in Palauttu, and in Kalpitiya. These are the three largest communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans that I have located to date. In each place, being Afrikan is a badge of pride.
Today one finds ‘new’ Afrikans coming to Sri Lanka. These ‘new’ Afrikans are mostly students enrolling in Sri Lanka’s public and private colleges and universities. Or they are the spouses of Sri Lankans who worked in Afrika or elsewhere, married to Afrikans, who reside in Sri Lanka. They are the employees of the high commissions and embassies of Afrikan countries as well as of countries elsewhere in the world. They all come free to partake in the abundance of Sri Lankan society.
May the history of the Afrikan Sri Lankans, chronicled here, always be honored, and may Afrikan Sri Lankans prosper and live in peace.
Source Notes
[1] The spelling of ‘Afrikan’ with a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’ is purposeful. It indicates that the author is part of a cultural and intellectual movement to reclaim the history of Afrikan peoples by viewing those histories from the perspectives of Afrikan peoples and not from the perspectives of those who conquered, colonized, enslaved or otherwise treated them in less than honorable ways. It is acknowledged that the proper name for the continent is ‘Afruaka/Afruaitkait’, as revealed in the script of ancient Egypt (known at KMT). The current pronunciation derives from these roots (http://www.odwirafo.com/AFURAKA-AFURAITKAIT_The_Origin_of_the_Term_Africa.pdf)
[2] Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company. 1974. See also “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[3] This document will refrain from the use of the term ‘slaves’. Its use is deemed repulsive by those Afrikans who are the descendants of those enslaved by Europeans and treated as property rather than as people. As these victims of the enslavement process were people first and foremost, they will be referred to as such. Their situation (as enslaved people) will not be equated with who they were, which the term “slave” implies.
[4] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[5] Levtzion, Nehemia. History of Islam in Africa. Columbus, OH, Ohio University Press. 2000.
[6] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[7] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[8] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[9] Hughes, Geoffrey. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. 2006.
[10] Kennedy, Randall. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. New York: Knopf Doubleday. 2008.
[11] Personal conversation with Z. Ameen Saleh, January 2014.
[12] Personal conversations with Asiff Hussein, January and February 2014.
[13] Interview with Peter Louis, February 2014. See also, “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011.
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[14] Goonatilleka, M.H. ‘Report of an Interview with the Portuguese Speaking Community in Puttalam. 10 August 1974.’ Unpublished. Made available by Prof. K.D. Paranavithana at the National Archive of Sri Lanka August 2014. Note: Afrikan people from such wide geographical expanses as the areas now known as Angola and Mozambique vary widely in their physical features, making such characterizations speculative at best.
[15] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008: 61.
[16] “Where ‘Kaffir’ is no Insult”. Gunasekera, Mel. The Telegraph. United Kingdom. November 20, 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/6613354/Where-kaffir-is-no-insult.html. See also “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[17] Schoff, W.H. Ed., The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century. London, Bombay & Calcutta (1912). http://www.und.ac.za/und/classics/india/periplus.htm
[18] ‘Abyssinians’ refers to those peoples who live on the east coast of Afrika in what now would be known as Eretria and Ethiopia. In earlier times it was the site of great empires, such as Punt and Axum (Aksum). See Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[19] Indicopleustes, Kosmas. The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. Newcastle. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
[20] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 31 (quoting Rahasinha 1950: 122).
[21] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007). Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 30.
[22] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[23] http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/east-indies/east-african-slave-trade/
[24] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[25] “The Arab slave trade: 200 million non-Muslim slaves from all colors and nationalities”. https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-arab-slave-trade-and-200-million-non-muslim-slaves-of-all-skin-colors/. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
[26] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007). Ali, Omar H. “The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World: South Asia.” http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/essay-south-asia.php
[27] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 253.
[28] Interview with Peter Louis, February 2014.
[29] http://www.sri-lanka-tour.com/history/dutch-colonization.htm. Retrieved March 31, 2014.
[30] Selkirk, James. Recollections of Ceylon, After a Residence of Nearly Thirteen Years. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle. 2009.
[31] Interview with Rapiel Anthony Philip in August 2014.
[32] Frederickson, George M. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American & South African History. New York: Oxford University Press. 1981.
[33] Vink, Markus. “The World’s Oldest Trade”: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 131–77. http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/support/reading_14_2.pdf Retrieved on April 3, 2014.
[34] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. pp. 7-36.
[35] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lkawgw/kaffirs.htm. See also Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009.
[36] “On the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean Region” by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya & Richard Pankhurst. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. pp. 7-17.
[37] Harris, Joseph E. The African Presence in Asia. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 1971.
[38] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[39] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. pp. 7-36.
[40] Cordiner, James. A Description of Ceylon. London: Longman. 1807.
[41] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[42] Wickramasinghe, Chandima S. M. “Coloured Slavery in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)”. http://www.srilankasouthindiaheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Coloured-Slavery-in-Ceylon-Sri-Lanka.pdf
[43] Goonatilleka, M.H. ‘Report of an Interview with the Portuguese Speaking Community in Puttalam. 10 August 1974.’ Unpublished. Made available by Prof. K.D. Paranavithana at the National Archive of Sri Lanka August 2014.
[44] Marcus Joseph Elias, who is now approaching 80 years old, spoke of his parents telling him that his ancestors were brought from Mozambique in chains to build the railroad to Puttalam from Colombo. Paldano, Jennifer, “These Others, Called Kaffirs.” The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) May 4, 1997. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/970504/plusm.html. His sister, Marcus Jerome Ameliana, age 83, told me the same hitory when we visited in 2013. [NOTE: Surnames are given first and first names are given last by the Afrikan Sri Lankans. See also: “Sri Lanka: Voiceless Ethnic Groups Fade into Oblivion.” Samath, Feizal. Inter Press Service. January 8, 1999. http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/01/religious-bulletin-sri-lanka-voiceless-ethnic-groups-fade-into-oblivion/
[45] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288, p. 272.
[46] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Tagus to Taprobane (Portuguese Impact on the Socio-Culture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD). Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo. 2001.
[47] ‘Azania’ is a term used by progressive Afrikans to describe the country known as ‘South Afrika’. See, for example, the comment made by Afrikan Sri Lankan B.M. Raphael in- Paldano, Jennifer, “These Others, Called Kaffirs.” The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) May 4, 1997. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/970504/plusm.html. See also, Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990, p. 78.
[48] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 273.
[49] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006, 25-41, p. 27.
[50] Interviews with the residents of Sirambi Adiya, February 2013, and with Marceline Alphonso, April, 2013.
[51] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 60. Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Identifying Africans in Asia: What’s in a Name?” Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 7-36, pp. 19-20.
[52] Personal conversation with Mary Elizabeth Williams, April 2013 (she spoke in English).
[53] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[54] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006. 25-41: 31.
[55] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[56] “On A Road Less Traveled.” Frederick Medis talks with Kumudini Hettiarachchi, The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), September 9, 2012. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120909/plus/on-a-road-less-travelled-11156.html
[57] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 75.
[58] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[59] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, pp. 74-75.
[60] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[61] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009.
[62] Spittel, R. L. Wild Ceylon. Sooriya Publishers. Colombo 10, Sri Lanka. 1925/2003: 176.
[63] Clarke, John Henrik, Ed. and Amy Jacques Garvey. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage. 1995: 27.
[64] “On the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean Region” by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya & Richard Pankhurst. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 7-17: 12-13.
[65] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009: 62.
[66] Wickramasinghe, Chandima S. M. “Coloured Slavery in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)”. http://www.srilankasouthindiaheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Coloured-Slavery-in-Ceylon-Sri-Lanka.pdf
[67] Clarke, John Henrik, Ed. and Amy Jacques Garvey. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage. 1995: 27.
[68] Interview with Sargent Major D.B. Dissanayake, in Matale, Sri Lanka, October 2013.
[69] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[70] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Music and Memories: Oral Traditions from an Indian Ocean Island”. In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva, Ed. Sounds of Identity: The Music of Afro-Asians. Musike: International Journal of Ethnomusicological Studies, 1(2), 2006. pp. 25-41.
[71] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 167.
[72] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008: 62. Elsewhere Jayasuriya states that this is other communities of Afrikan Sri Lankans may exist in Sri Lanka, but this is the only one she mentions directly.
[73] Spelling of Sinhala and Tamil words in English vary. This is the most common spelling for this village. It is also spelled ‘Sirambiady’.
[74] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html. See also Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[75] Brohier, R.L. Discovering Ceylon. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sooriya Publishers. 1973/2002: 40-42.
[76] Interview with Benedict Francis Calistis, April, 2014.
[77] This information was gleaned from community members during our second visit with them in April 2013.
[78] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 161.
[79] Third interview with the Afrikan Sri Lankans in Sirambi Adiya in October 2013.
[80] Interview with Benedict Francis Callistis in February 2013.
[81] “Getting to Know the Kaffirs through Music and Dance.” O’Connor, Maura. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) November 9, 2008. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081109/Plus/sundaytimesplus_10.html
[82] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008, p. 29.
[83] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170, p. 161.
[84] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, April 2013.
[85] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, October 2013.
[86] Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[87] “Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.” http://www.lanka.com/sri-lanka/trincomalee-sri-lanka-930.html
[88] Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp. Interview with Marceline Alphonso in April 2013.
[89] In conversation with Dr. Navam and S. Sivarooban, manager of the Tokyo Cement Company in Batticaloa, we learned of an Afrikan Sri Lankan employee of the company who works and lives in Trincomalee. His father hails from Puttalam.
[90] Interview with Alphonso Noel Selvarasia at his home in Jaffna, November 2013.
[91] Interviews with Mary Polomino and her family, and with David Elmo Frank Daniel, conducted in November 2013 at their respective homes.
[92] Interview with Martino Francis Miranda in February 2014.
[93] “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[94] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Migrants and Mercenaries: Sri Lanka’s Hidden Africans.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Angenot, Jean-Pierre. Eds. Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia. Boston: Brill. 2008. 155-170: 162.
[95] Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990. Jackson only refers to Afrikans possibly in Batticaloa during the beginning of the Portuguese occupation of Ceylon in the 1600s.
[96] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away.” Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[97] Basic Population Information of Batticaloa District 2007. http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/Preliminary%20Reports%20Special%20Enumeration%202007/Basic%20Population%20Information%20of%20Batticaloa%20District%202007.pdf
[98] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, p. 445, note 15.
[99] Jackson, Kenneth David. Sing Without Shame: Oral Traditions in Indo-Portuguese Creole Verse. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Publishing Co. 1990, pp. 77-78, quoting Hettiaratchi, D.E. Linguistics in Ceylon. (1969), p. 747.
[100] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288, p. 272.
[101] http://www.govisitsrilanka.com/baobab-tree-at-mannar/attractions-details/19/
[102] Pankhurst, Richard. “The Ethiopian Diaspora to India: The Role of Habshis and Sidis from Medieval Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century.” In Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003, pp. 189-221.
[103] “On A Road Less Traveled.” Frederick Medis talks with Kumudini Hettiarachchi, The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), September 9, 2012. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/120909/plus/on-a-road-less-travelled-11156.html “Life in the Heart of Fort.” Mohamed, Ranee. The Sunday Leader, June 30, 2002. http://www.thesundayleader.lk/archive/20020630/review.htm
[104] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, p. 445, note 15.
[105] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[106] Interview with Marceline Alphonso, October, 2013.
[107] Interview with Rapiel Edward Marcus, August, 2014.
[108] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[109] “Blacks in Europe- The Fate of the Afro-Turks.” Guzeldere, Ekrem E. AfricanGlobe, January 27, 2013, http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/blacks-europe-fate-afro-turks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+africanglobe%2FQfoi+%28WWW.AFRICANGLOBE.NET%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
[110] Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009, p. 9.
[111] Hussein, Asiff. Zeylanica: A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka. Depanama, Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications, Ltd., 2009, pp. 441, 445.
[112] “Festival of Folk Music for the Hearts and Souls to Mingle.” Passion Parade. June 1, 2011. The author rightly notes that the music and dance of their group ‘Ceylon African Manja’ is a direct link to their Afrikan past. http://passionparade.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html
[113] Bynum, Edward Bruce. The African Unconscious: Roots of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Psychology. (1999). New York: Teachers College.
[114] “Dance of the Sri Lankan Kaffirs.” Saldin, M.D. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). April 24, 2011. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/110424/Plus/plus_06.html
[115] “Sri Lankan Kaffirs: Remnants of a Glorious Past.” Hewavissenti, Amal. Sunday Observer, May 8, 2011. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/05/08/fea40.asp
[116] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 273-274.
[117] Interview with George Sherin Alex, April 2014.
[118] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[119] “Sri Lanka: Voiceless Ethnic Groups Fade into Oblivion.” Samath, Feizal. Inter Press Service. January 8, 1999.
http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/01/religious-bulletin-sri-lanka-voiceless-ethnic-groups-fade-into-oblivion/
[120] “Sri Lanka Kaffirs”. Wikipedia. Retreived on March 29, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka_Kaffirs
[121] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away.” Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[122] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Tagus to Taprobane (Portuguese Impact on the Socio-Culture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD). Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo. 2001.
[123] De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. “The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka.” Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst, Eds. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2003. 251-288: 258.
[124] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[125] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[126] “Sri Lanka`s African Slave Families Fade Away”. Gunasekera, Mel. Agence France Presse. November 14, 2009. http://www.biyokulule.com/view_content.php?articleid=5619
[127] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242.
[128] For an example of a white man in blackface, see Al Jolson singing ‘Mammy’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIaj7FNHnjQ . Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface .
[129] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 2008. Pages 59-60. Bastianz popularized the musical form known as baila in Sri Lanka. Jayasuriya explains: “Kaffrinha is often confused with baila, the most popular form of music that caught the pulse of the post colonial nation. Kaffrinha (Kaffir + nha (which is the Portuguese diminutive)) is associated with the Kaffirs (an ethnonym for people of African descent in Sri Lanka) and the Portuguese….Baila is a Sri Lankan composition with incorporated elements from Portuguese and African music.” Jayasuriya Shihan de Silva. African Identity in Asia: Cultural Effects of Forced Migration. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers. 2009. pp. 92-93. Elsewhere Jayasuriya notes: “In Sri Lanka, there are three forms of music which have African elements: Kaffrinha, Baila and Manha.” Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. 2010. P. 195. ‘Manha’ is the term that the Sirambi Adiya musical troupe uses in their name, ‘Ceylon African Manja.’
[130] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “Post-Colonial Innovations in Sri Lankan Popular Music: Dynamics of Kaffrinhas and Bailas.” International Journal of Ethnic and Social Studies. Vol. 11, No. 1, June 2013. pp. 1-29: p. 13.
[131] Jayasuriya, Shihan de Silva. “A Forgotten Minority: The Afro-Sri Lankans.” African and Asian Studies 6:227-242. (2007), 240.
[132] Harris, Joseph E. The African Presence in Asia. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 1971. p. 120.
[133] Hussein, Asiff. Caste System in Sri Lanka: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Battamarulla, Sri Lanka: Neptune Publications Ltd., 2013.