The Gullah language, a Creole blend of European and African tongues was born in the holding pens of Africa's slave coast, and matured on the isolated plantations of the coastal South. Gullah accents, words and intonations echo across the sea islands today. Still standing are the Praise Houses, revered since their slavery day beginnings. Within the walls o f these small buildings, religious worship and African elder culture combined to uplift and console the people. Sweetgrass basket weavers make their exquisite wares in the ancestral ways.
Storytellers speak their ftin and wisdom.
This is the heritage of a people who have survived. The African Culture Located just under the hump of West Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, the sovereign republic of Sierra Leone is one of the smaller African countries, only a bit larger than South Carolina, with a population of approximately four million people. Sierra Leone is in the center of what is called the Mano River region, a tri-state area including Liberia to the south and Guinea to the north. It is from this region that thousands of Africans were stripped from their homeland and families to be transported across the sea. Their first stop was Bunce Island located on the Sierra Leone River near Freetown.