Paper long abstract:

The Hadrami presence in East Africa dates back to the classical era when the East African coast was under the authority of Moka; over the centuries movements between Hadramut and East Africa ensured that social and cultural ties were constantly renewed and reinforced: these links are enduring and perpetual. Today there is a community who have strong ties in both areas: Hadramis in East Africa have "homes" in Hadramut and Swahili in Hadramut have "homes" in Africa. This paper considers the notion of "home" among such mobile people, asking what the idea of "home" means to them. The fact that they are perceived, and perceive themselves, as being "African" in Arabia and "Arab" in Africa suggests that "home" is not a place so much as an idea: "home" is part-past (remembered, reconstituted, imagined), part-part future (desired, constituted, imagined), instantiated in the present as a way of being. Going home is a trajectory that can never be completed: one can only travel towards home. Home is not simply a motivation for travel, but a condition for and an experience of travel.

Paper long abstract:

The Afro-Sri Lankan community in the North Western Province of the Island are the descendants of Africans who were uprooted from their homelands. The African roots of this community in the village of Sirambiyadiya are exposed through their oral histories. As functionaries within the colonial regime, they had to cope with changes in a postcolonial setting since the middle of the 20th century.

In a milieu where education is subsidised, the Afro-Sri Lankans, like all other ethnic groups in the Island today, are able to gain access to primary, secondary and tertiary education. This has increased exogamy as they are exposed to social change and other ethnic groups who gain an education in the same institutions. Endogamy is nowadays a rare occurrence in this community.

Afro-Sri Lankans learnt the bridging tongue of the day - Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon. They have not retained an African language or dialect. While being mother-tongue speakers of the lingua franca gave them an advantage over the indigenous communities during colonial rule, they have now switched over to Sinhala, the mother-tongue of the majority of Sri Lankans.

In terms of housing, clothing and food, this community shows no African retentions.

However, negritude is expressed through their music which they call Manhas and whose lyrics provide clues about their past. The impromptu dancing which accompanies the sessions of this vibrant music are a reminder of this community's African origins.

Relevant Publications

Les Cafres de Ceylan: le chaînon portugais. Cahiers des Anneax de la Mémoire No. 3,

pp. 229-253 (2001). France: University of Nantes.

Les femmes et l'esclavage au Sri Lanka. Cahiers des Anneax de la Mémoire No. 5,

pp. 99-122 (2003). France: University of Nantes.

"The African Diaspora in Sri Lanka". In The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. pp. 251-288 (2003). New Jersey: Africa World Press.

"On The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean". In The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean. pp. 7-17 (2003). New Jersey: Africa World Press.

"Trading on a Thalassic Network". International Conference on "Issues of Memory: Coming to Terms with the Slave Trade and Slavery". UNESCO, Paris.

3-5 December 2004.

Indian Ocean Island Cultures: African Migration and Identity. Conference on "Monsoons and Migration, unleashing dhow synergies" organised in association with the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), Tanzania. 5-7 July 2005.

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Paper long abstract:

Co-authors: Ben Page, Department of Geography, UCL & Martin Evans, Department of Geography, University of Leicester

African diasporas often maintain links with their family's place of origin through home-based associations which unite indigenes wherever they may congregate 'abroad', most commonly in urban centres within their home nation and overseas. Some of these associations are now stretched out over space: the home branch itself, chapters that meet in the cities of the home country and chapters that meet overseas. Recently these associations have widened their remit from a focus on the welfare of those living in the diaspora to an explicit concern with the 'lack of development' in the home place. In so doing, they embody the tensions inherent in the intersection of debates about cosmopolitanism and development practice. On the one hand, current policy discourses and postdevelopment ideas about appropriate and sustainable approaches to development foreground the importance of the identity, knowledge and experience of 'the indigene' in the diaspora. On the other hand, recent debates about the 'politics of belonging' foreground diasporic activity as potentially parochial and uneven in its engagement with 'home'. Drawing on research on home-based associations amongst the domestic and British diasporas emanating from four rural home places (two in Cameroon, two in Tanzania), the present paper demonstrates that the different paths of nation-building followed by post-independence Cameroon and Tanzania are reflected in the different forms of each country's diasporic associations and the ways in which they mobilise place-based identities. Ethnicisation, where it occurs, plays out differently in different contexts but can also bring material benefits to home places.