Bunce Island also illustrates the enduring family ties between the Gullah people – African Americans living today in coastal South Carolina and Georgia – and their Rice Coast cousins.

In recent years Gullah people have made two well-publicized pilgrimages to Bunce Island. In 1989, Emory Campbell, Director of Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, led a group of Gullahs to Bunce Island in a tearful journey memorably recorded in the PBS documentary “Family Across the Sea.” In 1997, Mary Moran and her family from Harris Neck, Georgia visited Bunce Island on their trip to Sierra Leone to meet the Mende people who share an ancient African song they have retained in their family for generations in America. Mrs. Moran’s visit is recorded in the documentary, “The Language I Cry In.”

The film tells an amazing scholarly detective story reaching across hundreds of years and thousands of miles from 18th century Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia. It recounts the even more remarkable saga of how African Americans retained links with their African past through a song, a burial hymn of the Mende people brought by slaves to the rice plantations of the Southeast coast more than two hundred years ago.

Here are the various versions of the Mende funeral song:

Gullah Version

A wohkoh, mu mohne;
kambei ya le;
li leei tohmbe.
A wohkoh, mu mohne;
kambei ya le;
li leei ka.
Ha sa wuli nggo, sihan;
kpangga li lee.
Ha sa wuli nggo;
ndeli, ndi, ka.
Ha sa wuli nggo, sihan;
huhan ndayia.

Modern Mende

A wa kaka, mu mohne;
kambei ya le’i;
lii i lei tambee.
A wa kaka, mu mohne;
kambei ya le’i;
lii i lei ka.
So ha a guli wohloh, i sihan;
yey kpanggaa a lolohhu lee.
So ha a guli wohloh;
ndi lei;
ndi let, kaka.
So ha a guli wohloh, i sihan;
kuhan ma wo ndayia ley.

English

Come quickly, let us work hard;
the grave is not yet finished;
his heart (the deceased’s) is not yet perfectly cool (at peace).

Come quickly, let us work hard;
the grave is not yet finished;
let his heart be cool at once.

Sudden death cuts down the trees, borrows them;
the remains disappear slowly.

Sudden death cuts down the trees;
let it (death) be satisfied, let it be satisfied, at once.

Sudden death cuts down the trees, borrows them;
a voice speaks from afar

Discover the remarkable history and heritage of the Gullah people, a storied civilization and culture prevailing on the Sea Islands of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

The Gullah people have sustained their treasured West African traditions and ways of life for generations, and their cultural impact on the Lowcountry is undeniable.

Family Across the Sea shows how scholars have uncovered the remarkable connections between the Gullah people of South Carolina and the people of Sierra Leone. The ancestors of the Gullah were African slaves brought to the Sea Islands because of their expertise in rice cultivation. Family Across The Sea documents how the Gullahs incorporated many aspects of African culture in the daily life of the plantations. The Gullah language contains over 3,000 words of African origin and resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone. One woman speaks what many African Americans will feel: “Now, I know that I have really come home.”

Sunn m’Cheaux is a Charleston, SC native Gullah speaker. He teaches Gullah in the African Language Program at Harvard University.

He’s also fluent in Geechee (a derivative of Gullah) and Jamaican patois. His research illustrates the continuing links between the Gullah and Sierra Leone as well as the wider linguistic diaspora of the enslaved population.