The casket bearing the body of the late Professor Kamau Brathwaite as it was carried out of the church.
“A titan of post colonial literature”, “a quiet revolutionary” and “an iconic Barbadian treasure”.
These were just some of the moving phrases used to pay tribute to the late Professor Edward Kamau Brathwaite during a two-hour long official funeral at the James Street Methodist Church yesterday morning.
Choking back the tears at times, Michael Kwesi Brathwaite spoke glowingly about his father’s work ethic and drive for success to the large congregation, which contained several dignitaries, including Governor General Dame Sandra Mason, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, and Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of The University of the West Indies, Professor The Most Honourable Eudene Barriteau, to name a few.
“To most of you he was Dr. Brathwaite, Professor Kamau, poet, author, literary figure, but to me he was just daddy, with an incredible calming presence and a capacity to invoke life, respect and understanding all at the same time,” he stated.
In a tribute dotted with personal interactions with the late poet, Prime Minister Mottley called Brathwaite a Barbadian, Caribbean and global warrior.
“A passionate warrior fighting against the language, history and culture of our colonisers. His battle strategic and pain- staking, but acquiring foot soldiers, one student at a time, one reader at a time,” she said.
Mottley also highlighted the importance of recording the oral history of the nation’s stalwarts.
“He invoked in us all whenever he wrote or spoke the effective power of thought, the complexity of feeling and the weight of history. It seems as though I have been saluting too many of our
stalwarts all too often in recent times, and it reminds me how essential it is for us to capture our oral history from all stations, from all levels, and from all perspectives. It reminds me of why we need to be able to preserve it for those who are to come,” she stressed.
Speaking of Brathwaite’s travels to England, Ghana, Kenya and Jamaica and his drive to help Caribbean persons break the shackles placed on their way of thinking, Barriteau described him as “a soldier for our souls”.
She expressed, “This Caribbean crier is now silent though he will never be silenced, and so back across the Middle Passage he goes for the final time to meet ancestors untold. They will blow the celestial ‘abeng’ for him and an African sun will shine upon this proud son.”
His body was laid to rest at the Coral Ridge Memorial Gardens.
(JMB)