{"id":1133,"date":"2015-11-26T05:35:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T05:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning201314\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2015-11-26T05:35:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T05:35:27","slug":"remembering-savannah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/2015\/11\/26\/remembering-savannah\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Savannah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gage Ulery<\/em> ’18-\u00a0Right when I asked to join the class, I had no idea what I was in for. While learning about the different themes in class such as Candomble, the orisha gods, and all the different aspects of this religion that was new to all of us, I started to think about the immersion trip and the places we will be going. We were not at all expecting to have the great journey that we had. It all started on a Saturday when we all woke up way to early to do something we had no idea what to expect. On the first day we traveled through the channels of the Atlantic Ocean to reach Sapelo Island. We had to reach the island by a short ferry ride which gave us a great view of the vast Atlantic Ocean and really stressed the long journey African American went through to come\u00a0to the Americas. Once we reached the island, we were introduced to our tour guide J.R., who\u00a0was a 5th generation resident of the island. There we went to different locations all over the\u00a0island such as: Chocolate, an old plantation, the common area where the gas station and a local\u00a0school or learning center was, and we went into the community where we could talk to the locals\u00a0on the island. Sapelo really showed us the difference in land from the Midwest to the South and\u00a0how the land was, and still is, able to grow goods such as cotton, indigo, and rice.<\/p>\n

On the second\u00a0day, we got to experience, in my opinion the most influential part of the trip, the First African\u00a0Baptist Church in Savannah. This was a remarkable experience because it touched a lot of my\u00a0project topic of Call and Response and the communication of African Americans that carry on\u00a0today. The songs and praises that were sung took place back in the 1700\u2019s and 1800\u2019s and still\u00a0inspire people today. There we got to experience how traditional Southern Baptist praise and\u00a0worship their god. The celebration included the singing of a small group of three women singing\u00a0beautifully, clapping of everyone in the building, and the continuous yelling of \u201cHallelujah\u201d and\u00a0\u201cYes Lord\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Entrance<\/a>
Entrance to the Oyotunji village.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the wonderful service, we took a tour of the historical places of Savannah by\u00a0Professor Jamaal Toure of Savannah State University. He took us back into the Baptist Church,\u00a0down to River Street, and several other locations in Savannah that played a major role in the\u00a0upbringing of Savannah and its start up. Until this tour, I had not idea that there was such a great\u00a0slave presence of slaves in Savannah. There is a statue down near the Savannah River, that\u00a0shows a family that is in the middle of the slave trade and the young boy is looking East towards\u00a0the homeland of Africa. There was such a large African presence in Savannah that a lot of the\u00a0cuisine and local shops are inspired by these people. The next place that we visited was Tybee\u00a0Island. The island was known notoriously for its large rice plantation and the thousands of slaves\u00a0that died in this area because of the malaria and dangerous living conditions that the island\u00a0possesses.<\/p>\n

On the last day that we were in Savannah, we visited an actual African Village in\u00a0South Carolina but it remains part of Nigeria. While we were at this village, all the students\u00a0could relate to what the villagers believed in because they practiced Candomble. We got to speak\u00a0with a high priestess of the village and we got the honor to speak with the King of the village.\u00a0Even being at the African Village Oyotunji, it all related back to Savannah and the large slave\u00a0population that it possessed at one point in history.<\/p>\n

I am extremely grateful that I was able to go on this Immersion Trip because of the amount of information that I learned and the experience that I gained that I would not of gained if I didn’t go to Wabash College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gage Ulery ’18-\u00a0Right when I asked to join the class, I had no idea what I was in for. While learning about the different themes in class such as Candomble, the orisha […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-african-arts-cultures"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/11\/IMG_20151124_120610-1024x757.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/immersionlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}