A push to get the Twi language taught in schools in Moore Town, Portland, is a major focus of this year’s Nanny Day celebration being hosted by that Maroon community.

The celebration, scheduled to run for the entire Heroes’ Weekend — October 19 to 21 — will pay homage to Jamaica’s only female National Hero, Queen Nanny of the Maroons, while exploring issues of relevance to the development of the indigenous people — descendants of runaway slaves who won their freedom from British colonisers in the 1700s through armed conflict.

The celebration will open with discussions on Maroon and herbal medicine history; visits to Nanny Falls and the burial site of the woman who was conferred with the Order of National Hero on March 31, 1982 in recognition of her outstanding military leadership and ability to unify the Windward Maroons, particularly during the First Maroon War with the British from 1720 to 1739.

“On Sunday [October 20] we will be looking at the language of our ancestors — the Kromanti and Twi languages — as well as the Jamaican Creole and the language of the Tainos,” Moore Town Maroon leader Colonel Wallace Sterling told the Jamaica Observer.

Monday’s activities will include more celebrations of Queen Nanny, Kromanti songs and dances, children games, as well as indigenous and African guest speakers.

“This year we’re going to have delegates from Nigeria, other persons from the Diaspora and Evergreen [State] College in the US, as well as people from The University of the West Indies. In the end, what we want to get done is to have the Twi language taught in schools in our community,” Colonel Sterling said.

Twi is said to be spoken by up to eight million people in the southern two-thirds of Ghana. Regarded as a tone language, it is spoken in two major dialects — Ashanti and Fante — both mutually intelligible but sometimes considered separate languages because of their different cultural and literary traditions.

Language experts say it was the Ashanti dialect that began to be recognised as the proper base for a national literary language through the first half of the 20th century.

Acknowledging that difference, Colonel Sterling said the Moore Town Maroons want to determine which version their ancestors used most, therefore they are trying to engage people from Africa to participate in the discussions.

“It would be a major achievement of the conference if we can get an agreement to start teaching Twi in our schools,” he said. “And even if we can’t get permission from the Ministry of Education, we still can include it in our cultural studies that we have in our community.”

He said they already have a commitment from a Ghanaian woman who lives in the United States to teach the language, and he’s also in discussion with a man, who also lives in the US, to give Twi lessons here as well.

“He was hoping to retire, and had said that on doing so he would come to Jamaica, spend a year or two with us, at his own expense… at the end of the day we have to have people residing in the community for a year or two to teach the language because this is not something that can be done from a distance,” Colonel Sterling said.

He made reference to a trip he made earlier this year to New Zealand where he saw what the Mori people have done to save their indigenous language from extinction

“They were losing the language and decided that they had to get it back,” he said of the revitalisation efforts that began in the 1970s but gained momentum in 2019 when the Government committed to the revitalisation of te reo Mori by setting a national target of one million speakers, at any level of proficiency, by 2040.

Today, the language is included in everyday life in many ways, including at sporting events where New Zealand’s national anthem is sung in both English and Mori.

Time Magazine has also reported that Vodafone, the largest mobile network, changed the banner its cellphone users see on its screen from Vodafone NZ to VF Aotearoa, the Mori-language name for New Zealand; while the meeting rooms in Microsoft’s Auckland office have Mori names; and Pic’s, a popular peanut butter brand, has translated its labels.

Those developments have impressed and encouraged Colonel Sterling. At the same time, he has insisted that the Moore Town Maroons are “not saying that we must replace English… however, it is important that our children get a better understanding of our history and culture… because if we don’t know who we are, people can tell us anything about ourselves, even things that are not true”.