(folk guitar and singing)
When we was growing up, you know,
we were always called Saltwater Geechee and never Gullah.
Never Gullah.
We'd never even heard that word, didn't even know that word.
So it was always Geechee and if you lived on Sapelo,
you were a Saltwater Geechee and if you lived
further inland on the other side,
then you were a Freshwater Geechee.
So we were those fast talking,
rice eating Geechee folks.
(folk guitar and singing)
We came from Africa originally, our people did.
We think that during the days the slavery ran
they brought people down specifically
to plant rice in these areas,
that a lot of them came from the Kissi tribe in this area.
And from Kissi came Geechee, because, you know,
words have a way of slipping on the tongue, passing down,
and sound different to different generations.
And so we are Geechees.
(singing in a foreign language)
(folk guitar playing)
We still have a lot of African ways,
a lot of dishes we cook,
a lot of words we say that people don't understand;
there's Muslim and African mix.
And when we bury our dead,
we bury where they're facing east towards Mecca,
so when Judgment Day come and Gabriel blow his trumpet,
they rise, they're facing Mecca.
So we have a lot of little secrets.
(folk guitar playing)
Everybody knows Sapelo Island for the red peas.
We planted these about two months ago,
and we're picking today.
Other places in other areas they would cook
black-eyed peas; we never did cook black-eyed peas.
We always cooked red peas.
So these are what we always picked.
So it's like a brick-red color.
So that's it right there; so that's red peas.
And usually when I'm talking, people always correct me
and say, "You mean red beans,"
and I'm going, "No," I say,
"I know the difference between red peas and beans;
"beans is bigger, peas are little,"
so this is it right here.
The peas, the original red peas,
they like poor soil, sandy soil.
The slaves that brought them in,
they came from Sierra Leone, which is sandy soil,
and so the peas like sandy soil, don't like fertilize.
And they will grow as very flavorful peas.
A lot of people say they've got the original,
but they don't have the original.
Because once they take it from Sapelo and they plant it,
it's not the original.
They've done changed the genealogy of the seed then.
(folk guitar playing)
And we always grew red peas when I was growing up.
You know, red peas was a thing that
no matter how poor the soil was
you can get some red peas growing, you know.
So if you even throw it outside on top of the soil,
and next thing you know there's red peas sprouting up.
And even today, we've got relatives
that live in Florida and New York, Boston;
they'll call you and write you and say,
"You grow any peas this year?" and you say yeah.
"Can you send me a handful please?
"Because I need it for New Year's."
So off in the mail it goes, you know!
The peas goes.
So we figure now, if it grows that easily, which we grew it,
and people like it that much,
why can't we make just a, income-producing crop?
So hopefully that's what it's going to become,
a crop that we can grow to help sustain the community,
because the community's dying.
(folk instruments playing)
Most of the people don't own a piece of land
on the mainland or anything; all they own
is right here on Sapelo.
And they own this in the family
since a few years after the Civil War.
This is home; this is where the roots from Africa to here
started.
And sometime your own people is your worst enemy,
because when your own folks, your cousins and others,
selling out to people, so they base all of our property
on the sale that someone did, you know,
and because they call it valuable.
So, they don't even evaluate our houses;
they just evaluate the land,
and say the land is valuable now.
I can't afford the taxes that they're going put upon us
because somebody's building a $300,000 home.
So, how are they going to preserve,
how are they going to keep the community,
coming to help the community?
They're not helping.
Really they're destroying the community.
Our land is in a tax debit right now,
and we're trying to save our land,
and we feel that if we get this Red Pea Project up
that we can make the money to save our lands,
and we can just keep the Geechee culture going on
with our Red Pea Project here on Sapelo Island.
How many places you can come right now,
on the coast of Georgia, without being on a state refuge,
and see Mother Nature at its finest?
Go to a beach when you feel like you own it,
when you can walk the whole beach
and you might see five people.
You ain't going to find that nowhere else; it's hard.
(folk instruments playing)
Over here in this community,
you can have a get-together and you can sit around
on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon
and one will call the other one and say, "What you doing?"
And you say, "Nothing," and the other one said,
"Ah, let's get together;
"see what you got in your refrigerator."
Call the next one, and next one.
And say, "We'll meet together around four o'clock."
Around four o'clock you have a get-together.
So no planning, no anything, just everybody
show up with something and you have a good time.
So we call it a get-together.
So we have get-togethers kind of often.
(soft folk music)
Life revolved around your dreams when I was growing up.
Dreams were how you got to be a member of the church.
Dreams was telling you the sex of a baby;
dreams will tell you whether
the death of someone is coming up,
or whether it's a man or woman.
Dreams will tell you whether a person's pregnant.
Dreams will tell you whether you got the right number
to play the bolitas, you take a gamble on.
I mean dreams were important.
So it was not a trifling thing that you take lightly,
you know, it was important to people.
So dreams were very important in every aspect
of your life, you know.
My thing for Sapelo is that I want it
to become better than it is now.
I want more people here, more children.
I want it to be a place where people live, love, and die.
So, with the peas project we hope to entice
some of the young ones that are still here,
the few that are still here, and the ones
that is not living too far, to say,
"Wait a minute; I've got land over there on the island,
"I even got a house my grandparents or my parents left me.
"I'm going back to Sapelo;
"I'm going to work on this peas project," you know?
And so these small peas will probably be the one
that will do big things for Sapelo,
so that's what we're hoping for.
And now I've already got people saying,
"Well next year I'm going to plant peas."
So I think it's catching on already.
And if it catches on and people really like our peas,
then we'll have to plant more peas,
and more peas and more peas!
- [Deloris] We love our island; it's precious to us.
Our island is just as precious as a newborn baby,
and we're going to save our land no matter what.
With this little ol' teenity thing called
"the little red pea."
We're not scientists and that sort of stuff,
but we are, we grew up over here
fishing and planting and cooking,
so we need to cash in on what we know best.
So that's right, and make it work for us.
- [Narrator] In the '70s and the early '80s,
it was really, really hard for a black waiter
and a black waitress to make money,
because you know, you had people ...