Siren Song & Shipwreck ~ Passages Across the Sea
Life in all its forms is part of one great wholeness and that makes us kin and helps us to survive.
~Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki
In the summer of 2019 (feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?), before Covid took the world by storm, I gave a talk at the very first Magickal Women Conference in London. As many of you might already know, I spoke about Nanny of the Maroons (you can listen here if you want to).
Nanny of the Maroons is a Jamaican National hero, and though her story makes compelling listening, I won’t retell it here. Suffice it to say she was an enslaved woman, forcibly taken from her homeland and sold into slavery, but she also fought back, winning freedom for herself and her people. Anyway, I’d been looking forward to not only speaking at the conference but listening to others talking, people whose work I admired, one of whom was Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki. Dolores was one of the keynote speakers and her talk, ‘The Art of Survival’, is one I think of often.
I could have listened to her forever, so vast her experience, so full her life. Her words raised goosebumps as she spoke about her early life, “I know what it’s like to be a refugee in a strange country,” she told us, “I know what it’s like to be really hungry.” Then followed a poignant childhood story of her escape from the Nazis by boat at night. She told us how a heavily pregnant woman gave birth in the tiny boat, how a rich lady took off her furs for the newborn, wealth, status, all those things used to mark our successes no longer mattered.
I remember listening to her and thinking of my own talk, thinking of my own grandparents’ voyage from their home in Jamaica to start a new life in England, and back even further to the nightmare passage of their enslaved ancestors. Seeing the lines that flow from the past and the future, connecting us all.
Like I said, I think of this often, particularly when, as of writing this, 27 migrants died in the English Channel trying to cross those treacherous waters.
Of course, this is heavily reported in the media. There are plenty of soundbites of politicians saying the right words, “...step up efforts to break the business model of the gangstas” said Boris Johnson on some news channel or other. Others, still, spoke of working closely with other countries etc, etc. It’s the same shit they say every time. We all know traffickers are low, but more is needed than simply focusing on the exploiters of the vulnerable, dispossessed and displaced.
And the discussions that rage on the subject always focus on the same shit too. We frame the discussion about the migrants and refugees of Calais in terms of why. Why do they want to come to Britain? If you listen to the mainstream media, as many do, then you’ll hear why. Benefits of course. As though the Universal Credit system is worth risking your life and that of your kids for. We don’t discuss the many important issues such as war, often driven by Western agenda and armed by Western arms dealers. About political sanctions that affect civilians. About climate change, fascism, racism, oppression. You get the picture.
And really, it’s not just the migrants of Calais who try to cross the channel in dangerously crowded dinghies and lifeboats. It’s kids in cages, the Haitian migrants chased down by government gangstas on horseback, it’s the remains of hundreds of children buried in unmarked graves. It’s the very real suffering and hurt of people, of children, of the most vulnerable.
I don’t have any answers. I just wanted to, or even perhaps needed to, say something in honour of those people I never knew and who are looked down on and seen as less than human. And for anyone struggling as they read this, no matter the struggle, I leave you with this quote from the wonderful Dolores:
I have put cardboard in my shoes to cover the holes, I have bought books for pennies in a jumble sale to burn instead of coal. I know what it’s like to crouch in a shelter during a bombing raid and I’ve stepped over dead bodies after the air raid to go to school. But every time I have learned something: survive, no matter what, survive.
*If you want to read a transcript of Dolores’s talk, then you can find it in Making Magic Happen (Making Magic Happen, Magickal Women & Company, 2021). You can find it here: https://www.magickalwomenconference.com/making-magic-happen
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
You can follow Emma on Facebook.