Gabri Christa,
"ANOTHER BUILDING dancing: Making Quarantine and Savoneta"
(page 3 of 5)
Savoneta
My real motivation in creating Savoneta—and
Quarantine—is perhaps to understand my own place in this complex
post-colonial society. As a teen growing up in Curaçao, I was fascinated
with its history. In fact, history and geography were my favorite
subjects in high school. Although most of our books came from the
Netherlands, and our exams were sent to the Netherlands for grading, we
were lucky to have teachers who thought it was critical for us to learn
the history of the region. My geography teacher, Eddie Baetens, even
took our class on field trips, where we would stay in an old plantation
house for the weekend and take day trips out from there.
My interest in history also started with stories about slavery. In
some ways, my view was a romantic one, fueled by short stories about
slavery in Curaçao from Marek Decorte's historical novel De
Bullepees[1].
These stories reveal the often cruel and
highly sexual interactions among the colonizers and slaves, and they
take place in around plantation and other colonial houses on the island.
One such house, at least in my imagination, sat along the
Penstraat (the road along the sea) in the city of Willemstad and
also next to the houses of the West Indian Company traders. Friends of
my parents rented this house, and I always imagined it as the setting of
a certain Decorte story, where two single sisters lived—and where they
brought male slaves only for their own pleasure.
This particular Decorte story wasn't the only one that triggered an
intense curiosity about the past. There was another one about a man
named Sjon Freddie, who fell in love with the lighter-skinned house
slave Sarita. To come even close to Sarita was forbidden by Sjon's
father, who offered him access to any other slave but this one. Why?
Sjon Freddie found out the hard way. After falling in love with
Sarita—and eventually impregnating her with his child—he discovered that
she was, in fact, his sister.
The constant sneaking around, and the constant attention from all
sides that Sarita endured, was something that I, as a young girl, was
well aware off. It was everywhere in my society. I likewise identified
with the two sisters in the other story, who could not live an open,
authentic life in the gossip-ridden town that was/is the island. Not
finding a husband in the limited circle of suitable men, they inherited
the fruits of their father's slave trade and plantation; yet as single
women of a certain standing, they couldn't do anything without drawing
intense scrutiny. To have sex, even, they practically had to buy slaves.
And all turned out tragic when one of the sisters became pregnant—with
an inter-racial child whom society would in no way accept. Here again,
as an inter-racial child, I identified with the child who never fully
came to be.
What most intrigued me about these stories, aside from the complex
relationships between characters, were the cruel things that happened
inside and immediately outside of the beautiful and colorful buildings
in which the scenes were set. Situated under a radiant sky alongside the
most incredible aquamarine sea, these bright buildings inspired me when
times were tough—and when I felt different or alone. Like the
characters, I understood how it felt to live outside of the norm. Even
as a child, I was already an artist, though I didn't know it at the
time. My self-expression, my dresses, the poems I published, the solo
dances I presented—all of these made me an easy target for bullies and
easy prey for the eyes of many men. But I found solace in the buildings,
the landscape, the sea, and the stories I read and made up under the
never-ending blue sky.
As an inter-racial child, I often identified with the light-colored
house slave, Sarita, and her complex existence. I lived between two
worlds, neither of which I truly belonged: one was the world of the
slaveholders and the other of my dark-skinned brothers, sisters, and
lovers. Unlike my peers, I spoke Dutch at home instead of
Papiamentu[2], the language developed by slaves. Much pride
comes from speaking Papiamentu, which allowed slaves to talk openly,
without slave owners and other whites understanding the conversation.
Language was a form of resistance.
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Next page
|