What does it mean?

Applied to this cloth are 10 kabbalistic symbols. Made from white cotton, these symbols are simply sewn onto the blue cloth. Attached is a card explaining the meaning of each of these symbols. (translation of the second paragraph of the archival ticket in the Museum System. See Fig. 1).

The referenced ‘card’ is untraceable, so we must make do without it. I understand ‘kabbalistic’ here to be in its broader meaning of ‘occult’ or ‘mysterious’. Some of these appliquees, however, do not seem all that mysterious to me: I recognize the Venus Symbol (Fig. 2), the Star of David (Fig. 3), and a dollar sign (Fig. 4). Other symbols appear to be, albeit a bit off, the zodiac signs Scorpio and Capricorn (Fig. 5) and the Celtic cross. The rest, I know nothing about. My reading of the signs is, of course, only measured against what I know and learnt myself. It may be far removed from the meaning of the signs on this cloth.

The first time that I saw this cloth was in a piece on Afaka writing See Dubbelaar & Pakosie 1999 . Afaka is a syllabic script that came about in 1910 (Fig. 6). The script carries the name of its inventor: Afaka Atumisi, a Ndyuka Maroon. The Ndyuka became a separate community following their 1757 revolt. After being transported as cargo from West-Africa to Suriname in the 17th and 18th century and then being forced into labor on plantations, this group ultimately managed to escape. Fleeing into the rainforest, they set up villages on the Tapanahony River in Eastern Suriname. On October 10, 1760 the Dutch colonizers recognized their autonomy. (Video is a snippet from 1933 footage of Ndyuka village)

One and a half centuries later in 1910, a female spirit approached Afaka Atumisi. She needed him to spread her script amongst the Ndyuka people. Every night she appeared in his mind, teaching him one or two signs until the script was complete. Later that year, after the appearance of Halley's comet, Afaka knew: this alphabet was given to him to help his fellow Ndyuka towards a brighter future. See Dubbelaar & Pakosie 1999

The white appliquees are, however, in no way an example of Afaka. Dubbelaar and Pakosie brought it up only to establish a connection between Afaka writing and the various, mostly extinct, forms of ancestral West-African writing that might have inspired the Ndyuka, and therewith Afaka. Besides the cloth, the authors also try to establish connections with writings that they and others See e.g. Renselaar and Voorhoeve 1962, footnote 5 saw on Ndyuka tablets, corials and on the inside of huts (Fig. 7).

Afaka script never became accepted by the Ndyuka. Renselaar and Voorhoeve, who also saw similar writings on their travels in the area in the 1960s note:

We are of the opinion that during Afaka's time the script was already used in this sacred function and that Afaka assigned phonetic values to its symbols. By doing so he in a sense profaned the sacred script, which may explain the opposition of the granman [‘chieftain’] and high priest to the innovations introduced by Afaka.

While the Afaka script meant my first confrontation with this cloth, I learnt that its symbols are not Afaka. But surely the cloth, at the very least, is made by a Ndyuka Maroon?