“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Mohandas Gandhi
“I’d like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.”
Spike Lee
Our aim in this page is to introduce the many facets of our Panamanian Westindian Culture. We are hoping to open discussion on the role Westindian Culture, as a whole, is to play in the Study of Blacks in the Americas. The proponents of Black Studies in the United States are to be commended for opening the vehicle of Black Studies first in he Universities, but for the rest of us living in the countries and islands that make up the Americas, such studies, by and about Blacks in our culture, are still in the realm of dreams that intellectuals dabble in to be “exotic.”
We would like to invite all of our readers who have been stirred by the muses to contribute articles, poems, reminiscences and your ideas on the education of the unique culture of Westindian Panamanians. Your comments are valued and always welcomed.
Allow me to kick off our compendium with a little lullaby verse to a Westindian child.
Go To Sleep Picní
By Cobert Roberto Reid
Go to sleep my little Picní,
Go to sleep my angel!
So you can grow up strong
Then yo’ can take care
Ah you Ma’da an you Fa’da.
Go to sleep my little Chi-chi.
Go to sleep me Beibi.
You Fa´da he working,
Working as ah Bo’sum
On the Canal Zone he workin.
An’ you Ma’da is jus a cook
In white people them house.
Go to sleep Picní
So you can grow up
An be Presidente of Panama!
An take care ah Westindian people dem.
Like one boy name, like dem boy dem,
One name Westerman and the a’da one name Rhodes.
All dem Panamanian big time Law’ya dem.
Go to sleep you! Little Beibi,
So you can wake up su’den like
An become Presidente
An ah Law’ya an buy me ah house.
Yes buy you Ma’da ah house,
An take care ah you Fa’da.
Now go to sleep an don’t
Ask me no more question!
Din’t I tell you o’va an o’va
You going be one ah dem
Big time Law’yah?
“An ah Bombiero too?”
Yes, ah BOMBIERO too!
Now go to sleep Picní!
