Join us, TRANSFORM and reclaim your past so we can all move forward.
Sankofa Odyssey Experience
Brief Historical Perspective of African Seamanship
There is established proof that Africans were great sailors from as far back as 3,000 years ago. Documented evidence proves that there was ancient cultural contact between Africa and America.
It is known that North and West African peoples possessed boat building skills. There were tribes that could build boats large enough to carry twelve tons of cargo across the Niger. The Swahili people were known to trade on with China and India by navigating the Indian Ocean. These vessels weighed as much as seventy tons and had oars and sails.
Additionally, there are accounts of a West African King that took hundreds of vessels on a voyage down the Senegal and into the Atlantic, never to be heard from again. At least some of these vessels voyaged in to the Canaries Current and flowed westward in the North Equatorial Current. This current flows to the Americas and hits South American shores from Guineas through the Antilles in the Caribbean.
A Portuguese navigator aboard one of Christopher Columbus’s expeditions noted that there were many villages of “tall black men” at war with regions of Mexico and Columbia South America. Artifacts have been discovered in Mexico that were crafted before the Mayans and Aztecs that prove there were North Africans residing in the regions of Mexico, Panama, and even North America.
This brief account summarizes the perspective of the sailors of Sankofa Odyssey. The sailors of the Sankofa Odyssey recognize the natural and spiritual with those African sailors that have sailed before us.
Essence of Sankofa Odyssey
“Honoring our heritage and sharing our passion for sailing, exploration, and adventure”
⦁ We are African American Sailors with a passion for sailing and adventure.
⦁ There is no mistake that this passion exists in us in part because of our heritage. There are recent writings and discover
ies (past 50 years) that have identified the expansion and injection of African culture throughout the world as far as 3,000 years ago. This expansion was successful because of courageous sailors and leaders with the very same passion for sailing and adventure we possess. The sailing prowess of Africans is mostly noted in the Western and Northern regions of Africa where they negotiated the waters of the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Their desire to coexist with the seas did not stop there. Once reaching the Americas, they became intimately familiar with waters and coasts of South America, Caribbean Islands, Central America, and more than likely but not widely accepted, North America.
⦁ Our guests in adventure are typically, but not limited to, African Americans.
⦁ We have a desire to expose African Americans to sailing and our heritage.
⦁ We have a desire to expose other cultures to our adventures and to help them realize that the passion from those African leaders and sailors ventured before us lives strong within us all.
⦁ We have a desire to expose other ethnic groups to our passion for sailing and acceptance of our heritage in sailing and adventure.
There is a set of symbols from West Africa that were defined based on Wisdom. These symbols are called “Adinkra”. One of the symbols is Sankofa which literally means “return and get it”. The concept is that “we must go back and reclaim our past so we can move for
ward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.” The philosophy is that we should always place importance in learning from the past and honoring the past. This symbol shows a mythical bird moving forward while looking back into the past to learn from and to honor the endeavors of forefathers and ancestors. There is an egg in its beak which symbolizes the future.
The name “Sankofa Odyssey” speaks to the recognition of:
⦁ the passion we honestly received from our heritage,
⦁ our acceptance of our heritage,
⦁ the importance of learning our history,
our desire to share in our ancestor’s experiences today,
⦁ our role in the creation of a legacy of learning, sailing, exploration, and adventure.
Sankofa Odyssey
The sailors of Sankofa Odyssey are reclaiming the spirit of African sailors who came before us! We are tapping the passion and moving forward! We learn more about ourselves with each adventure! We are returning and We are getting it!
Join us on our upcoming adventure