The water healed my wounds

Even if you’ve never been to Sapelo Island, you may have tasted its bounty.

Residents of the Georgia Sea Island decades ago made heirloom crops and agritourism central to their community’s economic strategy, resulting in the revival of purple ribbon sugar cane and Geechee red peas. Those itty-bitty cowpeas are classically used in hoppin’ John, but in Charleston—where The Food Section is based—they’re braised and paired with fried chicken at The Darling Oyster Bar, sugared and baked for a pork plate at Halls Chophouse, and served alongside grilled swordfish at Southbound, to name just three general interest restaurants.

Considering the significance of the island to eaters, including those unaware of the people responsible for the depth of their meals, The Food Section commissioned Tendaji Bailey to contextualize the tragedy that unfolded on Sapelo on October 19. That afternoon, a ferry dock gangway collapsed, plunging at least 20 people into the swift Doboy Sound.

Seven elders were killed in the disaster: Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; Charles Houston, 77; William Johnson Jr., 73; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; Isaiah Thomas, 79, and Queen Welch, 76.

How da wada keep Oona, I don’t know/ Going on this Journey to Learn fasho 

–from DA WADA

The wind danced across my face as I stood at the ferry’s bow. I could feel light splashes of water hitting my ankles as we glided over the waves. The sky was vivid and devoid of clouds. The air was cool but not brisk. The scent of the salt marsh filled my nose.

Going from mainland Meridian, Georgia to Sapelo feels like taking a trip back into the past. There are only a few Sea Islands that require a trip like this. Sandy Island, Daufuskie Island, and Sapelo Island remain bridge-less, so the hundreds of people who call them home are often without cellular service and do lots of bulk shopping.  

This wasn’t my first trip over to Sapelo. Nearly a year prior I’d brought a handful of my Morehouse brothers and a Spelman sister to tour the island with one of the descendants of Sapelo. We drove all over the island seeing remnants of former plantations and sacred burial sites, stopping at the only store on the island. Wild cows and pigs roamed freely. The vegetation was thick with medicinal plants such as mullein and life everlasting. We spent time on the beach. It was ours to have alone. Across the ocean, if you looked far enough, you’d see straight to Africa, the homeland some would fly back to.  

This time I’d come back for a celebration, Sapelo’s Cultural Day. This year’s celebration was important for many reasons. The heritage of Sapelo Island, like many Gullah Geechee communities, has been assailed  by zoning changes, tax increases, and development that pushes natives of the island away.

Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of West and Central Africans who were brought to the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida because they knew how to cultivate rice. As time passed, the antebellum economy shifted to indigo, to cotton, and then back to rice, each shift requiring more of our ancestors. Some fled enslavement, creating free large communities in inaccessible forests and swamps. Up to 1,000 maroons hid in the Four Holes Swamps, off the Edisto River in South Carolina, and along the Savannah River.

There was never a day when enslaved Africans and their descendants didn’t resist their enslavement. They revolted, rebelled, sabotaged crops, and poisoned their enslavers. We still carry their resilience and determination for freedom with us now.  

The transition from enslaved to free was quite successful. Many believe 40 acres and mule were given to our ancestors, but in reality, Gullah Geechee farmers, fishermen, carpenters, blacksmiths and midwives were finally able to earn wages for their labor and purchase much of the same land they once worked for free. When I speak with elders, they often share that they were not often financially wealthy, but they had land and were never hungry. They always knew how to get their food from the sea.  

Sapelo’s Cultural Day’s most famous dish is smoked mullet. The mullet is stretched across an open fire and allowed to cook slowly until it’s served, with mustard and hot sauce if desired. That’s how I prefer it. But the fish isn’t filleted, so I’m careful not to swallow any bones. Luckily, they’re large enough to catch before they can get stuck in your throat.

For many in the sea islands, seafood is the primary diet. Frogmore Stew, now commonly known as Lowcountry Boil, was created on South Carolina’s Saint Helena Island. Shrimp, sausage, potatoes, and corn, their complementary flavors intertwined in one shared pot. Crab cracks and oyster roasts always brought families and communities together. Food is ritual to us. Recipes for dishes such as the conch stew and okra soup prepared on Sapelo are passed through generations. 

SICARS, the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, has hosted its annual event since the organization’s inception. Cornelia Walker Bailey, culture keeper and author of “God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man,” co-founded the group in 1993, with the goal of bringing in tourists and generating income to help preserve her community. Cultural Day also functions as an annual family reunion, bringing back island descendants who live on the mainland.  

Since the end of the Civil War, Gullah Geechee communities have gathered to celebrate their freedom and resilience. People used bateau boats—handmade, flat-bottomed boats suitable for shallow waters—to traverse intricate waterways from one island to the next. The first Gullah Geechee cultural celebration with institutional backing took place at The Penn Center on Saint Helena Island in 1981.

There are over 50 annual Gullah Geechee festivals and celebrations throughout the Cultural Heritage Corridor, which stretches from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. They are often centered on education, entertainment, and food. Each event is unique because no one Gullah Geechee community is exactly the same as another. Many similarities, but each island, each coastal community bears the unique fruit of a separate bloody past.  

As I reflect on the devastating loss at the Sapelo ferry dock, my mind takes me to Dunbar Creek. I’d taken those same Morehouse and Spelman student interns there to engage in a commemoration of Igbo Landing.

In 1803, Africans from what is now known as Nigeria were brought to the shores of Saint Simons Island, Georgia. As they approached land, they revolted, overthrew the crewman, and took over the ship. The chief among them began to speak words of life and love, “The water brought us, the water will take us back home.” They believed the water had the power to heal and liberate. They grabbed hands and proceeded into the water.

This is one of the origin stories of flying Africans, a belief that permeates Sea Island folklore. It’s said some bodies were never recovered because they were transported back across the water, home to Africa. 

We are water people. On the voyage across the Atlantic, some say we were reborn and made into a new people. Fundamentally African, adaptively American. Many of us didn’t survive the trip, some choosing the water, some forced into it. So many bodies over time went into the water that the ecology of the ocean shifted. Sharks’ migration patterns began mimicking trade routes. Blake Plateau, the world’s largest deep-sea coral reef habitat was reshaped by a collection of ancestral bodies, bones cast into the ocean. A sacred burial ground.  

The Doboy Sound now holds new history. A new site of memory. We will return every year to Sapelo Island for Cultural Day to celebrate our resilience, to remember, to lay offerings, to pour libations, to cry, scream, mourn, and to heal. 

SICARS has partnered with five other organizations to form the Sapelo Strong Coalition​​​​​​​, committed to providing immediate relief through counseling and  financial aid to cover funeral expenses, and supporting long-term recovery.

Tendaji Bailey is a Gullah Geechee native of Port Royal and Saint Helena Island. He is a 2015 graduate of Morehouse College, former middle school math teacher, community organizer, and artist. Founder of the Gullah Geechee Futures Project, Bailey is the Associate Director of the Morehouse Movement, Memory, and Justice Project funded by the Mellon Foundation.