Wadadli Experience Band Adventures
The first trip the band made to Barbuda was in 1979 on a local fishing and cargo vessel that travel between Antigua and the Virgin Islands regularly. The boat did not take the usual route to the harbor in Barbuda; it would have taken another two hours to get to the dock.
To save time and get back to Antigua for another commitment to St. Marten that evening, they anchored approximately 130 yards from Coco Point Beach on the south coast of Barbuda and began offloading the instruments onto the small boat (dingy) to transport them to the beach.
Just as they began to offloading, Kumasi suddenly decided he was going to swim into Barbuda, so he asked the group if anyone was interested in coming with him? No one volunteered, so without hesitation, Kumasi jumped off the boat and swam to Barbuda.
Since then, the route to Barbuda and the beach he landed on that day lived in his memory forever. The rest of this article is a detailed account of the second trip to the Island and the confluence of events that led to the inspiration for the song "We See Jah."
It was sometime in 1981 when the band got a job to play at the Green Door Tavern in Barbuda for the weekend, and the guys were excited. On the morning of the trip, the boat Wadadli had secured for the journey informed the band that they were having trouble with the boat engine so that they couldn't make the trip.
All the boats going to Barbuda that weekend was already book and unavailable, so the band was in a desperate situation. The only option was a much smaller wooden boat about 18 feet in length powered by an outboard seagull engine and operated by Noel Lashly, (Aka: Evil Canevil).
Kumasi asked if he could get the band to Barbuda before nightfall and he said yes, so to keep the commitment at the Green Door Tavern, Wadadli was about to embark on a history-making adventure that very few people would dare to attempt.
It was on a Friday afternoon just after 3 pm when Kumasi decided to proceed with the mission to get to Barbuda in defiance of Antigua maritime laws which prohibit boats from traveling to Barbuda after 2 pm and in the night.
After packing the ship with the instruments, personal luggage, extra fuel and food, eight members of the band along with a Barbudan called Audrick, Wadadli Band left Antigua on route to Barbuda.
Nekuma wanted no part of the boat trip, so he took the last flight to Barbuda in the afternoon and got there ahead of the rest. Oblivious to the dangers ahead, the group proceeded confidently, but as Antigua slowly disappears from view and the darkness begin to unfold, the moment of truth had arrived sooner and much more frightening than the group could have imagined.