THE MAAFA: THE JOURNEY TOWARDS HEALING THE TRAUMA

The Maafa (mah-AH-fah) is a Swahili term that means “great disaster,” “calamity “ or “terrible occurrence.” It has come to refer to what some call the African Holocaust—the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade which transported millions of Africans as human chattel in the belly of cargo ships from their indigenous lands and cultures, across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold on the auction block as slaves in the West Indies, the Caribbean and the Americas.