Sankofa

I sit in my favorite chair, tea warm between my hands.

The steam rises slowly from the cup—today, it’s Puerh from Hunan, earthy and deep, like a song hummed by an elder just before dawn. It tastes of time—fermented leaves, pressed tight like memories held close to the chest. And as I sip, my mind travels far, beyond borders and years, to the soil of Africa.

And there I find Sankofa.

Sankofa is an Akan word from Ghana. It means, “Go back and get it.”

The symbol is a bird, head turned backward while the feet face forward, an egg—symbol of life—clutched gently in its beak. A reminder. A wisdom. A prayer.

To go back for what was lost.

To return for what was forgotten.

To reclaim what was stolen—stories, names, languages, laughter, sacred ways of knowing.

To look behind not in shame, but in reverence.

We live in a world rushing forward, always wanting the next, the new, the now. But Sankofa tells a different story. It tells us that the path ahead begins behind. That we must touch the roots to nourish the bloom. That ancestors are not behind us—they are beneath us, holding us up.

As I sip again, I think of all that has been buried in time:

The woman who whispered to leaves and turned them into healing.

The songs sung to children that kept them brave at night.

The drumbeats that told the news when there were no words.

The ceremonies that called the rain.

The names that held the whole of someone’s story.

Sankofa asks us to bend down and pick up what we dropped on the road to modernity. Not to live in the past, but to bring it with us. To braid it into the now. To wear it boldly. To teach it to our children.

And so, this tea—this Puerh from distant China, finds harmony in this African knowing.

One speaks through flavor, the other through symbol.

Both remind me that healing is not just forward. Healing is full circle.

Sankofa.

I drink, and I remember.

I sit in my chair, and I return.