From One Community To The Next

By: W. Earle Simpson
As the long hot day began to cool and the clouds of dust from the road on which we were travelling began to settle, my sister, Stephanie, and I hoped that the approaching cool would soon dry the copious flow of sweat running off our bodies. The journey was long, we were tired and exhausted, but we kept on going; the night was approaching fast and we had only covered about a third of our journey. I quickened my strides and Stephanie kept close behind me. Although we did not say a word about the trepidation we felt, we understood perfectly why each of us had started to move faster - night was approaching.
Earlier that day we had walked the more than fifteen miles from home to Ulster Spring and we were retracing those steps. It was not our first time travelling to Ulster Spring, but it was our first travelling on foot. The last time we travelled over the hot and dusty streets that lead to and from our nearest Hospital, our uncle, Uncle Venty, took us in what to us was the biggest truck we had ever seen - his old Bedford truck. We liked driving in Uncle Venty’s truck because, although the suspensions were mostly broken and the truck bounced us around, we loved the attention we got from our friends especially after he blew the loud horn as he passed by them. But that day, we could only imagine riding in that truck.
“Hurry,” I said to my sister as I contemplated the difficulty and danger of the rest of our journey. Our elder brother had told us many ghost stories about the very journey we were on. In fact, there was a very scary story associated with a very lonely area of the path on which we would soon tread. The myths would come alive at night and night was coming soon. As we got closer to the lonely area, I grabbed my sister’s hand in an effort to move us along faster, but the pull set us off running. We ran toward a corner that led to the object of our fear, but a loud noise stopped us in our track. Our eyes searched for the source of the noise and when we found it, we were very surprised; it was the loud sound of Uncle Venty’s truck horn. Why we were so happy to see him did not matter to Uncle; to him we were always happy to see him, and although this time we seemed extraordinarily happy, he did not question our motives.
On our way home, Uncle Venty stopped at his house and feed us. To our surprise, there were many other children there, running through the house calling him “Uncle Venty.” “From where did he get all these nieces and nephews?” we asked ourselves. “And are they our cousins?” we asked our parents when we got home. “No. They are not your cousins and he is not your real uncle,” answered our mother. “He is your ‘community uncle’; your father’s church brother; the church brother of the parents of all the children you met at his house.”
A community uncle! Wow! But that was how it was. Uncle Venty was not the only uncle we learned was not our real uncle; we had many other uncles and aunts like him, but our mother’s announcement did not diminish our respect for their authority over us. We loved and respected those ‘community relatives’ as we would our blood relatives. In fact, many times they exercised more authority over us than did some of our blood relatives, and somehow, we did not rebel against them. We accepted them as part of our regular disciplinary routine. Along our life’s journey, we expected it; we were given it and we accepted it. Growing up, it was not uncommon for me and my siblings to encounter hundreds of aunts and uncles along a journey of 15 miles. We were always aware that if a tragedy struck us on any part of our journey, we had an uncle or an aunt nearby who would happily assist us. We lived it; we loved it, and now we miss it. These days are different: the concept of the community has been sidelined by the framers of the norms of our post modern society.
In our post modern society, each person’s interest is pitted against that of the other. Each man lives for himself; one lives and dies at his own risk and expense. In this society there are no “community uncles or aunts.” There are only blood uncles and aunts, if one can find them. Our post modern society mostly emphasizes the individual, leading the French Author, Jacques Languirand, to opine that, “Individualism is something of a virtue, because there was a time when the individual did not matter – there was the tribe, the clan, and the extended family et cetera. Finally we started to focus on the individual – the man at the heart of evolution; a sense of progress in humanity…that’s fine…but I get the feeling that if we go too far in that direction, we will become alienated from society as a collective whole.” But will we?
I yearn for the community into which I was raised and my feeling is that several other people suffer from the same nostalgia. For those whose experiences disallow them from empathizing with the nostalgic ones, I believe that there is an innate desire for community. The psychologists say that we are social beings, meaning that our communities are essential to our collective survival. Individualism contradicts everything that our existence stands for. Little wonder then that, starved of our community, we project our need onto the concept of brands.
Brand is not just an idea. According to Languirand, it is also “le marque” - a mark. Cattle ranchers brand their cattle. This branding identifies the cattle as members of a particular cattle community. The concept of branding ourselves with tattoos, clothes and electronic gadgets is similar to that of cattle branding – it places us in a community. We seek brands like Nike, Guess, Gucci, Fubu, Benz, BMW and Lexus. Why do we stress the concept of individualism while we simultaneously want to identify with a certain social, educational or financial community?
My answer to that question is, at the heart of who we are, lies the community. We are the community and the community is us. Long live the community!