‘A SOUL SPACE’
Afrocentric community group is building a labyrinth in Hartford’s North End to serve as centerpiece of a place for reflection, healing
Aneighborhood sanctuary for reflection and relaxation is taking shape on a vacant lot off Albany Avenue, the work of an Afrocentric, community-building project in Hartford. The centerpiece of 75 Sterling St. will be its labyrinth, a walking path being built stone by stone by members of Kamora’s Cultural Corner and the Oyutunje, a West African Yoruba cultural and religious community in the South Carolina Lowcountry. They began work Wednesday with a drum and dance welcome ceremony and hope to finish the project in a little more than a week.
Kamora Herrington, the founder of KCC, collected $25,000 in donations for the first phase of the Sterling Street Sanctuary and Nature Preserve, which includes the labyrinth and an herb garden and raised plant beds to grow ingredients for food, teas and tinctures. The property, a former parking lot, is owned by retired Deputy Fire Chief Terry Waller, and has been used for about a year to host community events and a Black art market.
A teaching greenhouse will also be relocated to the Upper Albany lot from its current home in a South End backyard, Herrington said. The space will eventually host weekend bazaars with yoga, DJs and primarily Black artists and vendors.
Located in a deeply impoverished community and steps from Albany Avenue, a bustling corridor of Black-owned businesses and cultural organizations, the sanctuary aims to provide a welcoming space where residents can enjoy their own community and support each other economically.
Herrington doesn’t think there’s nearly enough of that in Hartford. And while she says community gardens are well-intentioned, they can be a problematic addition to poor, minority neighborhoods because they rarely provide restrooms or a comfortable place to take in the scenery.
That’s what sets the labyrinth apart.
“This is not set up as a place to rest while you toil. This is a place to let your soul rest with other souls, a place where we value your humanity, where you can let your mind relax and be,” Herrington said. “I want my people to have a soul space.”
She intends the winding walkway to ease the stress and trauma so many Hartford residents live with as a result of poverty, instability at home and exposure to violence, drugs and racism.
Many people who are dealing with hardships feel shunted into programs that make them feel worse about their problems, Herrington said. A peaceful, urban refuge provides an alternative.
And don’t call it a maze, she added. A maze can be a test, a trick, a trap — a recipe for anxiety.
The labyrinth, “this is a wonderful place where we can step into trust and as long as you follow the path, you’re gonna come out of it,” she said.
There are more than 50 installed around Connecticut, most of them on church grounds, at retreat centers and other places of reflection, according to the World Wide Labyrinth Locator. In Hartford, one decorates a floor of the parish house of Asylum Hill Congregational Church, others gardens at Trinity Episcopal Church and the Hartford Seminary.
Herrington has wanted a labyrinth since she was a kid and experienced one at a monastery she visited with family in coastal Massachusetts.
To get it built, she turned to a new friend and skilled builder, Oba Adejuyigbe Adefunmi, the leader of the Kingdom of Oyotunji African Village, a community his father founded in the woods of Sheldon, S.C., in the wake of the Civil Rights movement.
Herrington had learned about Oyotunji when she was growing up at The Artists Collective in Hartford’s Upper Albany neighborhood, where her elders talked with admiration about the Black nationalist settlement.
Herrington visited the village in November during her team’s post-election tour of important African American cultural sites in the Southeast.
When she offered to hire Adefunmi to build the labyrinth, he accepted.
“We call this building community,” he said.
On Thursday, he helped place and level stones as volunteers filled the gaps.
“I laid this brick right there,” a woman with heartshaped sunglasses said, stretching to tap a gray stone with her foot. “I’m proud of that.”
Kathleen Maldonado, a Clay Arsenal resident active in all the neighborhoods in North Hartford, had also come to help the day before. She said she’d just been fired from her job but figured she’d come and volunteer anyway, saying, “The weather’s been great and the project is here, so better get busy in the community.”
Opportunities for healing are necessary in this part of the city, Maldonado said. As she worked, she thought about whether a peaceful place to walk and reflect might have helped her father, who died of a drug overdose.
She can see how the labyrinth would work. Feeling anxiety about the days’ events at work, Maldonado walked the short, finished portion of the labyrinth Wednesday night.
“I was like, ‘Wow,’ “Maldonado said. “I only walked half of it. Imagine if I had the whole path. It gave me an opportunity to just breathe and be in the moment.”