Greetings Adofo, it is good to hear from you in the New year, let me hope that you and your family are in the best of health, as well as your entire African Village. As a young man in the movement, I was a great listener and by listening I learned. As I learned I also teach what ever I learned. We were also intelligent cultivators, we examined words, sounds and power and various activities in the land, and take what we think was positive and good, and make them a part of our teachings. I have said here before, that I do not blame my elders from whom I learned, for anything which I was taught, which I later have to up date, because of new discovery, because our Elders were only giving us, the best information which they had, and they meant us good. They gave us the baton of knowledge to carry on, and it is our responsibility, to correct any mistakes which they have made, not knowing that they have made them.

In those early days we read the bible a whole lot, searching for things which were to come to pass in the later days, since it was taught to us that, whatever were written in the bible were prophetic and truthful. So one of the things which was very controversal in our teachings, and we were called crazy for teaching it, was when we teach that we as Rastafari people could not die, but will literally live for ever, since we are the holy people who shall go to holy mount Zion and live there forever. Now that I have taught, because it is written in the bible that the wages of sin is death and the gift of God is eternal life, so since the bible was supposed to be truthful, we figured that we were speaking the truth.

Well, as the years go by, and some elders grow older, and some of them died, the doctrine would be, that they have sinned, and that was why they died, although their was nothing which could be point to which they did, they became sick and died. In those early days, when a Rastafari person died, his family which he left out in the world, would be the ones, who take care of his funeral, because Rastafari people did not deal with the dead or with funerals. Today, some of our elders are coming to the reality, that the bodies of people will die, and go back to the earth from whence it came. After a large number of Rastafari elders have died, over the past 20 or more years, some brethren realized, that it is best for them to deal with the burial, and funeral
of their patriots who died, but their is still a large amount of Rastafari people, who still think that they will not die, and that they will not deal with funerals, even if it is their parents which are involved.

My focus here, is that there are things which need to be done, in order to create a good social and governmental structure in the movement, which will provide services to our people, and thereby, give then a reasonable standard of living. Since there is always a large number of people, who come to binghi to pray and chant and smoke, then let some reasonable time be set up at these binghi, for community and governmental reasoning, so that we can be aware, of what is taking place in our communities, about the hardships on our people, about those who are sick, those who are in need, and how we are going to raise money, to take care of needed projects. Since all organizations will need money to carry on projects, then we must get into the good habits, of making financial contributions to the assemble, in order to ease the financial burdens, on just a few people from time to time.

Each of us must just feel free to review from time to time, just to see if there are any thing within the Rastafari movement, which needs to be changed, to make the movement more effective, as it relates to improving the lives of African people everywhere, and to preserve unity and brotherly and sisterly love among our people everywhere. We must seriously take a very good look at how our women are being treated, not only in the Rastafari Movement, but in all African Liberation Movements, as well as in our family structure, the work places and everywhere.
We just should for one moment forget, that our African women are our mothers, and the Great Mothers or Creation.
Again I send many oceans of blessings and self determination to African people everywhere
ONE BLACK LOVE ONE BLACK HEART
Baba Ras Marcus