DEBRA AMELIA GEORGE

QUEEN SHEBA DEBRA AMELIA KASAMBURA

 

HER MAJESTY'S A TRINI

SHE'S NEW QUEEN OF THE NUBIAN DYNASTY

 

By Laura Ann Phillips

Features Desk

Express

April 29, 2000

Page 25

 

The new queen of Nubia is an aesthetician from Diego Martin who used to lime at Pelican Inn, St Ann's and West Mall, and loved shopping on Frederick Street.  "I'm still Trini," proclaimed Her Majesty Queen Sheba Debra Amelia Kasambura from her temporary residence in Holland.  "I will always be a Trinidadian."

 

She couldn't remember Pelican's name immediately, but she described the location to a tee.  When the name was suggested, she squealed excitedly.

 

"That's it!  I used to go a lot!" recalled Kasambura, with an accent floating somewhere between Dutch and east coast America, yet still coloured by the rhythm of Caribbean idiom.

 

"I'd hang out with the Carib rugby team and the players' wives and girlfriends.  A lot of them were English."

 

In those days she was known as Debra Amelia George.

 

Her mother and stepfather Janet and Wayne Bart were taken completely by surprise when she announced her wedding.

 

They were at home in Arouca when the news came.  They run the Mount St John Spiritual Healing school, a Spiritual Baptist church.

 

Janet is spiritual mother there and Wayne, spiritual shepherd, or leader.

 

"The phone rang and it was Debbie," said Janet.  "She said, 'Mom, you're sitting down?'

 

"I said, 'Yes'.  She said, 'You're sure you're sitting down?' I said, 'Yes'.

 

"She said, 'Mom, I got married'!  And then she told me who she was married to!" said Janet.  "It didn't seem real!"

 

"Then, at some point we spoke to Adam," added Wayne, "and realised that it was true!"

 

"Adam" is His Majesty Adam Sheikh Thabit Kasambura of the Nubian Dynasty.  He had only recently assumed the throne following his father's death a few years earlier.

 

They met years earlier in Holland while they were both studying.  The wedding took place in Holland.

 

Janet described her daughter like this: "She liked lights and loves to communicate.  She's suited for that kind of person."

 

As a child, Debra Amelia George lived in Sierra Leone Village, Diego Martin with her father James Michael George, mother and brother Marcus Nekaay.

 

Her parents divorced and several years after, Janet re-married.

 

Kasambura had attended the Diego Martin Girls RC School and later graduated from Providence Girls Catholic School, Belmont.

 

After a stint as an aesthetician she married a Dutch native and emigrated to Holland.

 

Her husband died shortly afterward.

 

Left with three children, Kasambura studied law, psychology and international marketing.  She practised law while running a clothing and design business, she said, and also ran a consultancy firm.

 

She has had to give up her most recent job at an American communications company to assume her new duties.

 

Her children, Vanessa, 18, Yuray (pronounced Yoo-ree), 16, and Armando, 11, are now princess and princes of the new Nubian dynasty.

 

So what's it like to be an African queen?

 

Now, she can't just "pop out" on her own as she used to.

 

"We need to have security at all times," she said.  "There are bodyguards everywhere, all over the palace."

 

She can't really shop for herself, either.  If she comes across something she likes in a store, she can't point to it.  She can only express interest and her ladies-in-waiting pay for it.

 

"I don't have restrictions about the things I say or don't say," she said.  "I have a lot of freedom, because there's nobody above us."

 

Then there's protocol, protocol, protocol.

 

"When we attend formal events, I have to know n which side I can walk.  I can't just walk on any old side!" she said with a chuckle.

 

"I remember once, we were having dinner with a few guests.  I rose partially, I think, to adjust my chair.  Suddenly, everyone at the table stood up!  They didn't sit down again until I did!" she recalled.  "That was a real shock."

 

As Queen of Nubia, Kasambura's official role is that of private advisor to the King.  "On all international matters of concern to the Nubian people," she said even though the Nubian people do not live in any one place.

 

"The Nubian dynasty is not limited to borders.  There are Nubians in Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Egypt.  It's beyond borders."

 

"The dynasty is not about politics either", said Kasambura, "rather, it's about helping the more than 60 million Nubian people scattered throughout the world to understand their ancestry."

 

"People don't know where they're from.  Nubians are always Nubian in terms of race."

 

"If you saw a Nubian," she said, "you'd see yourself."

 

"More than 90 percent of slave descendants in the West," said Kasmbura, "come from that area which was the formerly wealthy kingdom of Nubia - south of Egypt and north of Sudan."

 

The royal couple's mission, according to a release from the Office of Nubian affairs in Holland, is to "bring, in a passive form, the peace to their people, give them back their identity, their pride."

 

"When slaves were taken they suffered a lot," said Kasambura.  "The Nubians who were left still consider them family.  They were taken from them, they didn't go by choice."

 

"We're your people!" she said.

 

Her new calling, Kasambura believes, was not by chance.

 

She had read of the Queen of Sheba, in the Old Testament of the Bible, who had visited King David.

 

"Somehow, she had always been my hero," she said.  "When Sheba was given to me as my Queen name, I almost died!"

 

Every woman is a queen, she said, and each Trinidadian and Tobagonian has a responsibility to the world.

 

"In Trinidad, we learn tolerance - whether we are Chinese, black, white.  That made it easier to adjust and speak to people."

 

But Queen Sheba insists that underneath her title and new responsibilities, she is still a Trini.

 

"I'll just be a Trini with protocol," she said.

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