MAARIFA

Inside of a black and white Hogwarts-looking house, just outside of downtown Baltimore, a class of brown and black pre-kindergarten aged children – of all skin tones and hair textures – gather in front of a large red, black and green flag hanging on the wall. They chant in a sing songy, semi-unison way:

red black and green. i’m talkin’ 'bout red, black and green

im talkin’ 'bout red is for the blood

im talkin’ ‘bout black is for the people

im talkin’ ‘bout green is for the land

they beat their hearts with their little fists. 

harambe, harambe, harambe

they finish. they are proud. 

and now the day can begin

at 

Maarifa Children's School Center.

Everybody at Maarifa was BLACK. It was like a daycare-kindergarten HBCU. All of my teachers were black women. We called them Mama. Mama Kay was the principal. 

I started at Maarifa in daycare or pre-kindergarten. I was around maybe 4 years old. I remember one day one of the teachers asked me to grab my things and go upstairs "with the big kids." (big is so much more relative when you're like 5 years old) I was being taken out of my pre-k class and joining Mama O'Dell’s kindergarten class. Her class was named Yoruba. 

When my pre-k classmates joined me the next school year, Mama O'Dell started pulling me to the side and teaching me basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. She was also my music teacher - she taught me drums, recorder, and piano. They took us to a nearby park for tennis lessons. Every December, we celebrated Kwanzaa as a school together. 

Years later I would learn (google) that Maarifa means knowledge. The knowledge school for children. I am forever indebted to those teachers and my mother for recognizing and nurturing my intelligence into knowledge. They are the reason why I was able to skip the first grade when I entered public school (a story for another time).  

It had been years since I set eyes on Maarifa. The alma mater of my blackness, if you will. My Wakanda. I could still remember each room of the old house. And the trees. And the hopscotch on the patio. And the swing set next to the slide set under the blackberry tree. It felt like a whole lifetime ago. 

The black and white house is now gray. The playground looks smaller (or perhaps, I am just bigger now, ha!) 

I don't even know if Maarifa is still there. But it lives with me.

❤️🖤💚

🙅🏾‍♀️🙅🏾‍♀️🙅🏾‍♀️