My son said he had the soul of a Rasta. I’ve wondered in his sixteen year old mind what that really meant to him. We never really discussed his core relationship with being a Rastafari and to be truthful, I wrote the whole thing off to a phase. But in Brandon’s honor, since his death, I have chosen to learn as much about the Rastafari movement as I can.
The religion of Rastafari was inspired around a modern day “Savior” in the physical form of Haile Selassie I. The initial inception of the religion was at the turn of the twentieth century, when a prophesy by Marcus Garvey announced that a new black king would reign in an African country.
In the 1930s, the Ethiopian Emperor was seen by many as the second coming of Christ. And even if Emperor Selassie was not recognized as the universal second coming, he was a savior in the eyes of the people of his country. Selassie knew that Ethiopia was richly endowed with an abundance of natural mineral springs. Using deep well drilling and water filtration to exploit the natural riches and drive them back into the welfare of the country was one of the Emperor’s greatest endeavors. He understood that water was the life-blood of his country.