Gullah Galavanting

Hi there:

Quiz:   Of the hundreds (just two) responses to the quiz (“what is Gullah”), both had them correct.  Gullah is a culture/cuisine/language from slavery times that survives on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and parts of Florida.

Our first port of call after leaving Charleston on Saturday was Beaufort (SC).  Although both Carolinas contain a “Beaufort”, one of the first things we learned from our tour guide (below) was that the South Carolina city is “Buuuuuufort” and not “Boooooofort” which is in the “other state”.  And don’t you forget it..

On Sunday we went on a “Low Country Heritage Tour” which encompassed the sea islands of Ladys and St Helena, where the Gullah culture still has a presence.  We boarded a bus and “met” our tour guide, Evelene, and headed out

Although she was not an anthropologist (real estate agent) she has been giving tours and studied the Gullah culture for years and was quite knowledgeable on the subject.  (According to her) “Gullah” was a corruption derived from “Angola” where most of the slaves came from. If you’re interested you can google yourself to death on the subject.  Gullah people had a language all their own which enabled them to speak about and in the presence of their “masters” and owners without their knowledge.  Here’s a short utube clip kind of cute, but you might get a flavor..

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So we set off to tour some of the Gullah Sites

 couldn't convince them to stop

Our first stop was at an old Gullah Cemetery

She explained that the traditional customs were that you couldn’t take a stick or blade of grass because the spirits might go with it, your head had to remain covered so they couldn’t enter, and most of all, you had to back out the entrance from which you came…we all complied, not wanting to test time honored ways.   

we toured along lovely lanes lined with live oak and the omnipresent “Spanish Moss”.

And there are still a few old houses on the island

We then visited a “praise house” a small building used for religious purposes by the slaves, mostly music.  this house is on the register of national historic places

We all squeezed in to listen to Evelene talk about its history and use.  I’ll try to include a snippet of her talk.

At the end of her little talk we all sang Amazing Grace.   Quite moving.

We then visited the ruins of a “Chapel of Ease”.  It was built ca. 1740 to serve planters in St. Helena Parish who lived at great distances from the parish church in Beaufort and could not regularly attend services there

Around one of the little enclosed plots was some lovely (old) iron work

As a quick aside, it was constructed out of “Tabby” concrete, a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime, then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells. 

While we were all absorbing the rustic beauty, our bus driver amused himself with some undefined activity on a stage of a stump..

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That ended our tour of Ladys and St. Helena island, and we left with new knowledge and respect for a people enslaved against their will and how they coped with life. 

When we got back to Buuuuuufort, MFO and I walked around town some, a lovely place

And an interesting poster advertising an upcoming air show…  nice airplane

Then back to the boat for a great dinner

and view....

The evening closed with a return of Evelene singing some songs a more talks about the local culture.  

Nice day and start to our cruise, and of course we were

DFD