Rita Taking Bob Home

[Poetic_Princess]

Marley's Wife Plans to Exhume Remains

By ANTHONY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - The wife of reggae star Bob Marley said Wednesday that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his "spiritual resting place," Ethiopia.
The reburial is set for an unspecified date after month long
celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley's birth to be held next month in Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press.

"We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia," said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley's band, The Wailers. "It is part of Bob's own mission."
Marley was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in 1945. He died of cancer in1981. Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Addis Ababa where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie.

Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living godand head of the Rastafarian religious movement.
Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament."Bob's whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica," said Rita,a singer who married Marley in 1966.
"How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission.
Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place," she said. "With the 60th
anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right."Together with the African Union and the U.N. children's agency, Rita Marley has organized celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley's birthday, Feb. 6, to be held in Addis Ababa.

The monthlong celebration, dubbed "Africa Unite" after one of Marley's songs, aims to raise funds to help poor families in Ethiopia.The Marley Family, Senegal's Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour, Angelique Kidjo of Benin and other African and reggae artists will perform as part of the US$1 million (euro760,000) program.
The event is expected to be broadcast in Africa and beyond.

[natural blacks]

There's a big debate about this right now in Jamaica. Saying "Rita has no right, blah blah"..."Bob Marley was Jamaican, blah blah".

I think if that's what Rita wants then who's to stop her...I feel that's what Bob would've wanted anyway...he was always about Africa/Ethiopia, never Jamaica.

But Rita denies it though