In Honor of Black History Month the Memorial Miles took their February group walk to The African Burial Ground National Monument locate at the corner of Duane and Elk Street in Lower Manhattan.
After being absent from the last two commemorative monthly walks, I caught up with the group this past friday and I am now finally on this site. How did it happen? I don't know, maybe with a larger participation I would have kept my mouth shut and someone else would have volunteered to do the blog, however it was a golden opportunity for me to finally sign up and share my experience. I guess after all this rambling, I should introduce myself.
My name is Amadou Bah and I am a Memorial Miler.
I have lived in several places in the world and to make a long story short, I moved to NY two years ago from Chicago, affectionately called the windy city!!!!
As we all do our miles individually, I usually keep a hard copy (Thanks for the diary Tom!!!) of my thoughts with the promise that I will one day share everything (as in thoughts that I have while completing my miles) with the people that visit this site. However, every weekend I make the same promise: I'll blog tomorrow, and now tomorrow has turned into 6 months. We all have our reasons why we have not blogged here and I won't be the one to point the finger, however as they say better late than never, right? Right!
As stated above, this past commemorative walk led us to the "African Burial Ground National Monument". Honestly, I was totally oblivious to the fact that such place existed here, especially so close to my place of business. Tom and Paul were so kind to share their knowledge that we, the group, thought that maybe it should be the theme of our walks, to provide something educational(which is actually the goal, Lol!!). Paul went on to explain, why these ancient burial ground were never marked and how some more places like this one were discovered upstate. The conversation along Broadway was very animated, until we arrived to Duane St., there was just a handful of people on that street as opposed to Broadway, the weather was actually mild (we were expecting rain!) and we caught a glimpse of the sun! After a half block, there we were, at the burial ground. It was a bit quiet, and I know for me, it was kind of a time for reflection.
The monument looks like an elevated triangular structure that opens into a circular shape. The monument, most of it is made out of marble, and Tom, feel free to correct me if my perception of what was used is incorrect, just being an engineer, that's all... Either side of the triangular shape had inscription and of course ancient african symbol, one synonym of eternal life. The interesting part came when we acually walked into what I called the "ring of life", the interior wall had several symbols with inscription below describing what they stood for. The floor of that structure was organized in age group and sex gender. Your age and gender determined how you were buried given the afore listed categories. Not only that it shed light on how these customs were maitnained so many years ago, we also discovered, maybe I should say observed, something that totally amazed us.
Once placed in the epicenter of the oval structure, any word spoken in any direction would echo at a significant higher decibel level than spoken, and it was mainly audible to only the speaker.
The intent was to meet with the design architect but it was not possible... However, it permitted us to pose each other several questions so that the day we get to meet with the architect responsible for the edification of this monument we would be ready to ask questions... And maybe at the time I will have also blogged about the interior of the GSA building that house more instructional material and maybe you will have taken it upon yourself to visit that place...
I guarantee you will find it eductional and would want to know more... I did!!!
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