Ep187 Summer Podcast Club: What is ours and where is our home?

This week, we continue with Tara Roberts’ National Geographic podcast Into the Depths, episodes 3 & 4. 

Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica is where she meets Afro-Costa Rican teen divers bringing up pieces from wrecks linked to Danish slave ships. Should descendants and local communities be the ones who name, interpret, and keep what they find or is it the responsibility of academically trained archeologists? We connect this to familiar patterns of gatekeeping, from Black hair braiding certifications to how African American midwives were pushed aside when institutions decided tradition was not “legitimate” enough.

In episode 4, Tara travels to Africa for the first time and runs into a reality many of us wonder about:  Is the dream of a homecoming with open arms  a reasonable or a fantastical expectation?  We unpack diaspora 

identity, the grief of not fully belonging anywhere, and the reframing that may be helpful in finding peace.

Listen, then leave your comments so we can chat and connect with more listeners.

Referenced Content:

Diving With A Purpose

https://divingwithapurpose.org

Your Homework Assignment:

Listen to Into The Depths episodes 5 & 6 and join us for the discussion next week:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/into-the-depths

Want behind the scenes content, Join us on Patreon at $5 or $10 level: 

https://patreon.com/user?u=83534204

Get Angie’s eBook: 

We’re Too Old for This! The Inquisitive Older Woman’s Guide to Joy http://joystrategy.co/ebook

IG: https://www.instagram.com/blackboomerbestiesfrombrooklyn

Transcript

Welcome From The Brooklyn Besties

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hey Ange. Hey Les, what's cooking? Two thumbs up.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Yes, two thumbs up. It's a beautiful day.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

So welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hey guys, I'm Angela, and that's Leslie. Leslie, my best friend of almost 50 years. We are two free-thinking, 60-something-year-old black women. And we have decided to make joy the center of how we move through this wisdom phase of our lives. This uh the last um, the last third, if we want to call it, new chapter, all the things. Joy is what we're seeking. And joy is not always easy or happy. It requires us to rethink certain things that we might have been raised to think, or develop some belief systems that it's time to let go of and just kind of push against the status quo. And so our conversations on this channel is about that. And under undergirthing all of that is two funny as heck best friends who are from Brooklyn and we move through life with a certain kind of swagger.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

And I was gonna say je ne sais quoi.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Je ne sais quoi, yeah, but we we're a little rough for we're like jeanne says what? Um there you go. But anyway, we invite you to stay. Um, we're gonna be talking about this um podcast series that we have decided to focus on

Summer Listening Homework And The Plan

SPEAKER_01 1:52

during the summer. So, Leslie, tell them what we're doing. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Okay, first of all, the old teacher in me says if you guys didn't do your homework, you're getting a red X. All right. Turn it in. Let's see your papers. Let's see your papers. Yes. Actually, I never got demerits.

unknown 2:12

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

I just didn't. You know, I was that student. Omari got like after school, he had to stay in detention all the time. Me never got demerits or detention. What? I would be too embarrassed for that. But anyway, so this is the second part of our summer podcast listening experience. And we're now today gonna talk about episodes three and four of Tara Roberts Into the Depths podcast. Did I get that right? You got that right. There you go. So you want to talk about uh summarize three and four a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah, so

Into The Depths Episodes Three And Four

SPEAKER_02 3:00

I got things to say.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

What we're hoping is that you all join us. Um, it is a six-series podcast, and it's a it's about um this black American woman, um, Tara Roberts, who is intrigued by a photograph of scuba divers, black scuba divers, that she saw at the African-American National Museum of African-American History and Culture in DC. And it takes her on this path. Um, and we've kind of linked that path to uh a part of her joy journey because it's a very difficult path. She decides that she has to become a scuba diver, she gets a job with National Geographic so that she can actually do this work and bring it to a big audience and tell her story. Um, and in episodes three and four, she goes to Costa Rica, and Costa Rica is particularly um important in uncovering the um the sunken ships that were a part of the transatlantic um slave trade. And there were two ships that um met their demise off the coast of Costa Rica, the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. And so episode four talks about this community in Costa Rica and how they are interacting with this information. They are um a diving uh community, and there's a woman there, Maria, who kind of gets the young people involved. And then in episode four, Tara goes for the first time to the continent of Africa, and she experiences um a very a very difficult kind of understanding of herself as uh an African American. And um so we'll kind of leave it there, and then we will kind of talk about our thoughts about those two episodes. And most importantly, we want to hear from you. We want to um see your comments. We thank you for the comments that we've received so far about episodes one and two, and um we want to engage with you around this dialogue. It's not going to be just a retelling of what happened, it is how what came up for us uh as we listened. And so, anyway, with that, go ahead, Les.

Costa Rica Shipwrecks And Afro Caribbean Roots

SPEAKER_02 5:26

So let me tell you how happy I am about my ears perked up when I got to uh episode three, because as you guys probably know, Costa Rica is really one of my happy places. And uh Tara Roberts mentioned Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica because Ricardo and I spent some wonderful times there in um Puerto Viejo. It's on the southeast um side of Costa Rica, so they call that the Caribbean side because it's near the Caribbean Sea. In fact, it's very close to Panama. Um, it's very close to Western Panama. So um there the people tend to be more uh darker and have more Caribbean influence, and the food is culturally different than it is on the other coast of Caribbean, the more uh of Costa Rica, the more touristy area. But um so she met this um elder of the community named Maria, who has spent some time um leading groups, um piquing their interests, I should say, young people, of diving to find um artifacts and shipwrecks off the coast of Costa Rica. And what Tara discovered is that these are young people, mostly self-taught divers, who just took an interest in following Maria's lead and and um and um education, I should say, started diving. So most of these are teenagers who would find pieces that they had no idea the importance of. And when they were um met by professional archaeologists, they were shocked at some of the things that they were bringing up.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, yeah. So a couple of things around that. Um, so what happened with these two ships, um, and I uh we're not gonna focus on the ships. I don't even want to remember their names because it's they're they're the um the kind of um that is typically what the focus is uh about the enslavers and not about um what happened to the formerly enslaved. Um so these two ships were traveling together and there was a mutiny on one of them. And right, and so these were Danish ships because they were a big part of the slave trade. There were 40 countries, by the way, involved in this 400-year, 400-year um transatlantic slave trades where they moved 12.5 million Africans from the continent and across the Americas and Europe. So um when this revolt happened, um many of the enslaved who were on the ship went into the hills of Costa Rica and then became a part, you know, they they um uh got together with the Briberi um indigenous people. And so there, these kids, and it was really important for Maria because these kids are Afro um Costa Rican, right? They are the ancestors of these people. And she thinks that they absolutely must be involved in this um adventure of finding these pieces, and they should be the ones. And she makes it a point. She's like, if anyone is bringing this stuff up, it's them. It's their people's stuff, it's their people's history, yes, and they're the ones who are going to bring it up.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

So, yeah, so that was, you know, a really and not only that, she she explained how important it was for them to be part of this um excavation or these excavations, because typically they're from these academics who are from outside of the country. And um, if you think about it, if you have no history in this area or um your gaze is different than one whose these might be my ancestors um down here. So could you imagine coming from the outside in a more um traditionally academic um setting, coming in looking for artifacts when in fact Maria explained the importance of what she called indigenization of the exploratory trips, you know?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Um she thought that it well it well should be the young people's names in the books of these um discoveries rather than people

Who Owns History Community Versus Institutions

SPEAKER_02 10:34

from outside of the community who may not understand the importance of these things.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Or have any connection to them.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So let me tell you two things that came up really, really big for me as she was she was talking about this. Um so the whole idea of um archaeologist, uh, whether they're marine or whatever, maritime archaeologist, it is a it is a um an academic pursuit, and someone decides that you need to know this, this, and this before you become a good archaeologist, right? Um and it made me think about the um all the controversy around kind of um um certifications on black hair braiding. And how it became this thing that it was taken away from the people who who held a tradition and it had to be um you had to get certification. I can talk about this at nauseum because I actually um got trained as a um natural hair care specialist and went to cosmetology school for that. And what I learned is that we knew much more about um braiding and things like that than than our instructors. Um and so this idea that oh, you guys are doing it wrong or doing it badly, or you know, we need to certify you.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

We need to certify that it's okay to do this.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Exactly. That came up for me. That was one thing. The other thing is that my sister, Dr. Gertrude Jacinta Fraser, has written a book about African-American midwives in the South. And that's something that she talks about in her book, too, that midwifery used to be this um hollowed um uh gift, really, that was passed down in African-American families because, you know, in the rural South, especially, white and black people were birthed by midwives. Hospitals were very far away, and so midwives were the ones who brought um uh babies into the world. And it was a it was a very respected practice. And then the white medical establishment came in and said, You guys are dirty, you guys are doing things wrong. Um and they pulled this this um this tradition away from African African-American midwives and made it more. I'm sorry, my headphones keep slipping out, and um kind of barred them.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

They encircled laws around them.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Exactly. And so the same thing. It's like this thing that has been traditional, because coming back to this story, um, she also interviewed this woman named Um Laura Wilson, who is a community activist, and she talked to um some elders who actually had artifacts from these ships in their homes that their grandparents um uh discovered and felt some energy around, and they have them. And so, this idea that these things need to be in museums and taken away, and these people won't know what to get.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Taken away from the community and the people who have personal meaning and yes, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

And so that those are the things that just kind of yeah, this is an old playbook. This is an old motivation playbook.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Like the the Who is who are you to say what's important to me and my ancestors?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Exactly. Who are you and what we should do with them? Why, why should they be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art or wherever and not here and on my mantle? Why aren't our children being taught about this part of the history? They're taught, they're taught about the Danish, the Portuguese, all of these, the American, all these people, the English, why aren't they taught about what happened in this part of the story instead of the you know, the kind of whitewashed way that their history is taught? And one of the little boys actually said, I don't, I didn't learn any of this in school, none of it. Yet these these two ships landed. So these people never knew that this was a part of the of their history and why they're Afro-Costa Rican, why they look the way they look.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Right. Different from other Costa Ricans on the other coasts. Right. Yeah, because that is where the ships came or where near where they sunk. Exactly. Here's something else I didn't know. I uh naively. I didn't know that there were mutinies on these slave ships. Oh, yes. I mean, and if you think about it, the ships were they kind of were set up for these tenuous voyages where there was a minimal amount of food, it was often overcrowded, um, you know, people were suffering. Um, obviously, there's human cargo there that needed to be tended to. Yeah. Um, I mean, it it must have been a miserable endeavor. So why wouldn't people say, wait a minute, I'm out?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they um uh the episode also talked about the fact that the um women were most likely more involved with mutinies um because it was mu a mutiny was more likely. Or I should say no, the mutiny, I'm gonna use um be more careful with these words. The the the um the um because uh you know sometimes we hear mutiny and it's kind of like the the people who are the um who who are kind of running things in charge had a mutiny and that that happened here, but I'm talking about the uh revolts.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

The the revolts, yeah. Let's use that word.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, the the revolts typically happened um on ships that had more women, and so the the um extrapolation of that is that women were more likely the instigators in uh to resist. Yeah, yeah. So that was that was really interesting too. I tell you, women.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Hey, look, Ange.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Women wait, you gotta push up the underside. Oh, oh, go from the back, yeah. Women.

Revolts At Sea And Women’s Resistance

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Oh my gosh, let me look in my notes and see if there's anything that I forgot to mention. Um uh yeah, that was that was it. And I I loved how oh, this other thing. So Tara talked about how she enjoyed, you know, hanging out in Costa Rica with these people, and she said she enjoys enjoyed eating rondon. And I was like, wait a minute, because I was like, wait a minute, that sounds like this thing we have in Jamaica called rondon. Rondon.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

I did a little because um Laura and Maria, they had a little Jamaican-y in their accent to me. Well, didn't you know it's the same thing? Isn't it? And I don't know where it originated, but it's basically the stew that's made using coconut milk. And you boil it down until it becomes this really creamy thing with a little oily base, and we put fish and vegetables in it, and you eat it with ground provisions, you know, yam and potatoes and you know, dumpling and green banana and so on. But it's the same meal, it's the same, it's the same dish.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

So you picked up on that I didn't. I was like, oh my God, it's the same thing. I'm telling you about the the party uh and and all that Ricardo and I like just stumbled onto, and the people were so warm and friendly and very dark and color way uh browner than I am. Right. And um, you know, everybody, it was just such a homey atmosphere. It's like, and it's so close to Panama, we need to perhaps make a um, you know, make a trip. I would love to.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I would love to. Yeah. All right. So that was episode four. That was episode three. Um episode three, rather, sorry. So we'd love to hear from you about what you thought about episode three. Shall we move into episode four?

SPEAKER_02 19:24

We should, and that's a little bit different and heavier. It's yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Do you want to introduce it or share?

SPEAKER_02 19:31

So Tara um thinks the next logical place for her to um go on a dive

Africa For The First Time And The Dream Breaks

SPEAKER_02 19:40

is in Benin. So because it is the winter season, they're not having any diving um expeditions. So while she's in in Africa, she decides to um go travel around Africa and visit some friends and what have you. So um she actually has like an emotional awakening while while she's there that she talks about in episode four.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

You want to go into some of the specifics?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, well, well, um, um one thing I'm gonna do to link three and four is that um if you remember in episode three, one of the persons she interviewed, um, I think it was Maria, said, you know, she wants to know. Um, she actually said it one way, who um who am I? Who am who am I? Who am I? Who I am? Um she said it was one of the most important um things to investigate for for each person. And so here um Tara is on the African continent exploring this idea of who am I? She's now on the African continent with this with this um this uh desire to understand better who she is as a black American woman. And um and I think we often romanticize about the continent, um, about um how things are and oftentimes it's probably a mix between um what we've been taught about the history of the continent, but uh maybe less so what it is now, right? And and in our kind of thoughts about it, um, how much are we kind of thinking about it as a country that has um, first of all, as a continent with countries, right? And so this um it's not a single place, it is a mix of cultures and so on. And so um she c she she's really deeply considering this and coming in, I think, with some very typical um uh Um, diasporic ideas about what Africa is and what Africa kind of owes us and embracing in a way. And she's faced with maybe not so much. Maybe that is not the question to ask oneself. And and one of the persons she interviewed said, um, you know, maybe it was a it was this young woman that she met. Um no, I'm sorry, it was a friend of hers that said to her, Yeah, the gentleman, um, it's not um, why don't they accept me as an African? Why, why I I come to the continent, why am I not accepted as an African? Um, that is maybe not the right question to ask. The question to ask is, how do I get close to this continent? Right. And for me, that was a huge shift. But I really want to hear from you, Leslie. As an African American, I know that I've lived in America for a very long time, but I grew up in a country that is very different than America, right? In in um, I grew up in a country where um black people are on our money, right? And so it's a very different framing than growing up um than you as an African American with ancestry um in America, how you kind of felt as she was talking about this.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

You know, it was really meaningful to me listening to her uh narrative about this because this, as an African American and general generationally, so I can trace five or six uh generations back to America. We have this idealized dream of Africa. You know, people may even say it in a derogatory way. Why don't you go back to where you came from? You know, I was born in Kings County in Brooklyn, you know, but we have these ideas that the motherland, our motherland, our ancestral home, would be embracing of us, you know, if we all were to experience it and go there. And what um what Tara recognized is that she really did not feel at home or more so much um akin to the African people from the continent. And it was jarring because we all have these visions and dreams that once we come home, we'll be embraced by our brothers and sisters as your as a homecoming. When in fact, Africa is not our home because we have been away from it for so long and so many generations. And then as African Americans, we so often in this country are reminded that America is not really your home either. You know, go back to where you came from. Or we are so often mistreated because of our skin and racism and all of the isms that this is not our home either, even though we can trace back generations. So, as someone said in the piece, um you may need to be more like a turtle carrying your home with you on your back.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yes, yes. I thought that was yeah, and it was profound.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

And instead of expecting to come to the continent and be home, you may need to learn a little bit more about what Africa is really. And I I I recognized her um her sadness about that realization because it's an it is an end of a dream. We think that once we're home, we're home. You know, I've had the privilege of being able to go visit Africa several times. And um and I was often reminded of how American I am. I was never really called an African woman.

Carrying Home Like A Turtle

SPEAKER_02 26:16

They actually kept jokingly calling me Trump's daughter. You know, this was during Trump's first presidency. They they said, and she's Trump's daughter. Wow. You know, and I they meant it as funny, and I'm not sure how derogatory they actually meant it to be. But they were reminding me, here it is, in Ghana, of my lack of connection, perhaps to Ghanai, other Ghanaians when in fact I am an African American.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

You know, and they saw me more connected to President Donald Trump than, you know. Messy. Messy, but it's it it requires a reframing.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

It really does. So a couple of things I want to just um say because it ties so much with what you just expressed, and um there was a quote that Tara recalled, and it said that to be African American is to be African without memory and American without privilege. And so I wanted to kind of put that in here because that's kind of where she found herself on the continent now for the first time, and trying to come to grips with this reality that um, you know, it's not about them embracing me, but it is about how am I experiencing the continent. And when you talked about the turtle, that really hit me because the the the the turtle takes its home with with them, right? Um, and so using that um that imagery, it's kind of like, well, and and and now being an immigrant in Panama, uh-huh. I was just gonna say it becomes this what are you taking with you versus um what does this country owe me? Or so it's kind of like um uh I think the reframing is not really of um longing for a particular place, but how do you um kind of bring pieces of wherever you land into your shell and right, you know, and kind of a way so so to me, especially being a part of um Exodus Summit and the group of women who travel abroad who live abroad, this whole idea of um we can be who we are everywhere and anywhere, and anywhere, right? And so I think that this revelation for Tara, even though it was really, really difficult and and um brought about some tears, we are gonna try to put some of what she actually said into the episode so you can kind of hear from her.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

It's funny.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Oh, you're saying that all of this guidance, all of all of this that I'm doing, I'm I'm being guided.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

What do you feel? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

You know what? I I actually I think that's that's right. That feels very right. The thing about the ancestors was kind of resonating. I guess it's why I felt compelled to do this work with the shipwrecks. But Anna's words were still gnawing at me.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Sometimes it is the question that we ask ourselves that becomes this really like new way of experiencing things, right? If you're if you're asking yourself, what does the continent owe me? And I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm going back to find to find home. Um, it's even like how how are you finding home? And what is home?

SPEAKER_02 30:32

What does home mean? Do you know what I mean? Right. Is it a location where your feet are planted? Is it a mindset where it's where your body is, or where your ancestors are, or where your memories are, or the stories that people have told you? You know, because in my case, you can look at my skin color. I have roots not only in Africa, but in Europe and in Germany specifically, um, you know, um ancestors there. So my roots could very well be in Germany.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

You know, or my great-grandmother, you know, her father was from Spain, in Spain, you know, so yeah, I I I love that idea. As you were speaking, I did think about us and our, well, your reality, but my plan to emigrate to Panama, and I will be bringing my home, you know, to Panama when when I'm there, you know?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yeah, yeah.

Blackness As An American Construct And Closing

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Um, and we're gonna bring it to a close. I wanted to just say that at some point, hopefully soon, I do want to talk about the whole idea of blackness and explore that a little bit and maybe bring some some guests in. Um, because it it came up in this episode too. Um Tara, Tara asked um one of her friends, um, I think this was a woman from Benin, asked her, Well, do you consider yourself black? Yourself black. And I know that that question and its response has a lot, carries a lot of weight in America, right? People often think that if you don't say that you're black, there's something wrong. You're trying, you're rejecting, and so on.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

But it's a construct that It's a construct that is a it's a made in America thing. It is so doggone America. I don't know if you remember that both Trevor Noah had some issues with that, and then the South African singer Tyler. Yeah, she also had some um issues, um, and there was controversy about that because they have been confronted over the years in interviews and stuff, and people were asking, Well, are you black? Are you this? And if they say they are not black, it's like, oh, this person, they're light skinned, they say they're not black. That's not a thing for them. It's not a thing. And we are so hung up on this color. Are you black or are you white that um it's almost like a ridiculous question to ask? Yeah. Um in outside of the United States. In fact, in Benin, the um what she said is we don't ask those kind of questions. That's not a thing for us. Instead, we will say, where are you from? Or where are your people from?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Or what tribe are you from?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Pardon me.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah. Yeah. So really, really um uh what is the word I would use? Insightful um episodes three and four. We hope that you enjoyed them as much as we did. I'm just gonna pull this out. And um, that you will join us again. What's the homework, Les, for next week?

SPEAKER_02 33:48

The homework is to read the final two episodes of Tara National Geographic Explorer, Tara Roberts, Into the Depths podcast.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

That's it.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Don't read, don't listen to Into the Deep. It's not the same. It's not the same. Take it from me, I know. Don't read, don't listen to Betrayed. Take it from me. That's not it. That's you know, for those of you who have listened, I've had a couple of glitches locating the podcast. But um, episodes five and six, that will be the end of it. So um, I would love for you to leave comments, leave feedback, tell us what you thought about three and four, and I can't wait to have you back in class with the besties, Angela and Les. Yeah. So this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.

unknown 34:45

Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Bye, guys.