THE RETURN AT LAST Chapter II: Regeneration Verse I: Republic of Benin

 This section is 80 pages long. I will let you enjoy it for the week and serve you another next week.

“This is Agoue, another slave transit point in the Ge country,” Ian waved over another slumberous area with the sea swishing and pounding to the right, as they left the border over a smooth road. “Founded by a splinter group from Aneho, it is now part of the Republic of Benin.”

Living proof of the bizarre nature of African borders as imposed by colonialism, Abdul thought bitterly.

 “Benin, part of the former Slave Coast, is still alive with the memory of the slave trade,” Ian said as they headed towards Ouidah whose fading, rusting signpost they soon saw by the roadside. “Ouidah is a historic, cultural, tourist and world renowned town because it has been the biggest center for the export of slaves, principally to Brazil and Haiti and it is also the birthplace of voodoo.”

Abdul winced to himself at that.

Soon they branched right through wide iron gates into a large quiet compound, drove through a parking lot towards the pair of two-storey College-like buildings. From the crashing sounds and the breeze, Abdul suspected the sea couldn’t be far away.

Ian and Abdul registered at the secretariat of IPA by the auditorium to the left and someone led them to their rooms in another building behind from which the aqueous sea was visible. Ian continued to Cotonou for some official business and Abdul strolled around talking with the other delegates from all over Africa and the African Diaspora of Brazil, Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain, Haiti, the West Indies, the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. By the time he retired to bed, Abdul learnt Ouidah, formerly Gléhué, was founded by the Kingdom of Xwéda. The town became famous during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, of which it still keeps relics which Abdul was dying to see as well as learn about its position as the Mecca of fetishism.

He and Ian were in the auditorium the following day some minutes before 7. The opening ceremony began an hour and a quarter late with a welcome address by the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, followed by a moving speech by the Beninese Minister of National Education and Research, and finally messages from other dignitaries. During the half hour coffee break, Abdul exchanged a few words and addresses with other delegates. On resuming they heard keynote addresses on the origins, the successes and the shortcomings of Pan Africanism, with specific references to Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Dubois, and Kwame Nkrumah, all of whose portraits hung behind the podium. Then panels presented pre-independence homecoming experiences in Benin, Togo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. They concluded that due to the returnees considering themselves superior to the natives, friction resulted between the two communities and advised that lessons be learnt from them for homecoming nowadays. The main lesson, Abdul knew: racial discrimination was borne by a feeling of superiority. Hence the returning descendants of slaves looked down upon the coastal tribes and lorded it over them. Irony of fate: centuries before, the forefathers of these coastal people had held themselves superior to the ancestors of the returnees and sold them into slavery.

Then it was time for lunch of moyo: a corn dough meal with fish in a peppery sauce. That was too searing for Abdul and Ian; they only sipped juice pressed from fresh fruits.

In the afternoon, members of the Diaspora who had returned to Africa recounted stories of their experiences. If all of them were thrilled to be back to the ancestral land however almost all expressed disappointment at the absence of jobs for them, at their being called Yovo—“That means white man here,” Ian whispered into Abdul’s ears—, at their not being readily accepted, at their being looked upon as strangers, at their shock at being treated as wealthy and therefore exploitable, and especially at their astonishment on discovering that most Africans were ignorant about the slave trade. Abdul had listened religiously, nodding at ordeals that he had experienced personally. On closing, he approached some of the presenters, especially a Rastafarian couple, natives of Guadeloupe, who had made a moving speech, and learnt that despite the daunting difficulties none of them contemplated going back “We can’t accept defeat just in six months of stay here after struggling so hard for years to come down here,” the dry-looking man said in his husky voice and his smiling wife nodded her head tied high in a huge white cotton cloth. “Every beginning is difficult but we shall surely overcome.”

That gave Abdul something to reflect on.

“I think I’m beginning to feel at home in Africa,” he told Ian who showed all his large teeth and pumped Abdul’s hand.

Abdul resolved that after visiting the La Route des Esclaves—the Slave Route—the next day, he would visit other vestiges of the slave trade in Togo, Ghana, and Senegal; and continue to Sierra Leone and Liberia to learn about the experiences of earlier returnees. He sent emails to Frank and Mohammed and obtained names and addresses of resource persons in their countries.

The following day Ian set out for Accra having wished that by the end of his West African tour Abdul would get reconciled with his past and be a member of the African American community in Accra.

            Buses wheeled the delegates to La Place Chacha which stood before the house of Don Francisco Félix de Souza, the famous Chacha, a close Brazilian friend of Guézo, the powerful monarch who ruled the Kingdom of Dahomey from 1818 to 1858.

A young lady welcomed them.                            

            “My name’s Raia Ayaba de Souza,” she said with the usual broad smile of guides. She was a slim woman of medium height. Her hair was neatly made and piled on her head in braids. Her skin was a smooth chocolate color and her face well proportioned. What most struck Abdul about Raia were her clothes: she wore a short blue jeans jacket over a white T-shirt and blue jeans trousers over Nike tennis shoes. “I’m guide at Musée de Ouidah, a Portuguese fort now turned into a museum which I strongly advise you to visit to see vestiges of the slave trade here. For the moment, I wish to welcome you here. Soon we’ll begin our almost 4-kilometer route which was the last of the peregrinations that the captured Africans underwent prior to their deportation to the New World.” 

Some members of the crowd suppressed sighs. Most wore long looks.

“The route consists of La place Chacha or Chacha Square—made up of La Place des Enchères (Auction Square) and La Place des Ventes (Sales Square)—which we’ll soon see, L’arbre de l’oubli (The Tree of Forgetfulness), La case de Zomaï (Zomayi’s Hut), Le memorial de Zoungbodi (Zoungbodi’s Memorial), L’arbre de retour (The Tree of Return), and La porte du non-retour (The Door of No Return),” she said.

Abdul caught the sighs again.

“Where we’re standing now was the first Station of the Slave Route which sent the captives into the holds of the ships which carted them away forever. It’s called La Place des Enchères. This is where the slaves were sold by auction. European slave merchants picked and exchanged slaves against goods of little value but attractive for the Dahomean ruling class. These were tobacco, cannons, alcohol, cloth, guns, gunpowder, mirrors, hats, trash, etc exchanged at the La Place des Ventes. A mirror, for example, was worth 40 to 50 slaves.”

“Goddamnit!” a strangled male voice cried from a dark Diaspora man with a dull grizzled hair looking dirty at the same time that Abdul swallowed hard and punched his own palm.

“After the slaves are sold, they are branded with hot irons bearing the signs of the buyer, shackled by the neck and chained by the hands. From the bidding and the sales places—which were, in effect, one—they were taken towards a tree—L’arbre de l’oubli—where a ritual was supposed to make them amnesiac, forgetful.”

“A voodoo ritual, right?” Abdul asked, recalling that Ian had said Ouidah was the birthplace of fetishism, and a ripple of murmurs washed over the visitors.

“Yes, a vodoun ritual,” the guide said quietly.

“Which means the making of Africans,” Abdul’s voice shook slightly.

She nodded quietly.

Abdul cursed Africans under his breath while the Diaspora visitors murmured among themselves and the Africans kept quiet.

“Any other question?” Raia asked in a strangled voice.

            “You said this is the house of your ancestor,” a very dark Haitian delegate boomed, his voice trembling and Raia nodded. “And that the slaves were sold here.” She nodded again. By now a stir moved among the delegates and the embarrassing look on Raia’s face was turning dolorous. “Does this mean that your ancestor sold slaves?”

            A sigh of agreement escaped from the crowd.

            “Own up,” a gangly young man beside Abdul cut in angrily as Raia lowered her gaze and jowls shaking, her lips moved soundlessly. “Chacha was a slave trader. It’s all in this history book.” He brandished a thick book at her.

            “I’m sorry for my family’s past,” Raia murmured. “And as always I ask for your forgiveness.”

            The visitors mumbled angrily. Abdul felt his fingers curling into fists and then they unfurled slowly as if the muscles which worked them had been severed. Now that he came face to face with a descendant of a slave seller Abdul was at a loss as to what to do.

            “Let’s forget about that slave trading sonofabitch,” a clearly African American voice shouted from the back and all laughed while he added, “and let’s mind our tour.”

            Nodding, Raia’s lean chest rose in a sigh. “We go to the tree of forgetfulness,” she croaked and cleared her throat.

            “Hi, I’m Abdul,” Abdul said to the young man as they shambled away, long looks on the faces of the Diaspora visitors.

            “Quenum,” the young man said and they shook hands warmly. “Glad to meet you. I noticed you at the symposium. American, no doubt.”

“I’m back to, to, okay, to stay,” Abdul said.

“Oh, how nice!” Quenum shook Abdul’s hand again, smiling broadly. “I’m a historian, from here.”

“You speak very good English.”

Quenum beamed. “I had my primary school education here, attended secondary school in Takoradi, Ghana, and came back here for my university training.”

“Like ping-pong,” Abdul joked and they laughed. “That lady, did her ancestor really sell slaves?” Abdul asked, more so to confirm the implication of coastal Beninese Africans in slave trading.

Quenum nodded. “It began in 1717 after the Kingdom of Agbome defeated that of Houeda. Having become a territory under mandate, King Ghezo entrusted its administration and management to his friend Chacha Félix. Instead of killing the prisoners of war, they subjected them to forced labor. With time the thought of sending them to work in the plantations of Europe and America became strong.”

Abdul cursed under his breath.

“Contrary to such states, lineage societies were not in a position to obtain slaves by force.”

Abdul wished it had been that way for all Africans.

“In such places, people were relegated to the status of a slave through complex practices by which various categories of social outcasts, such as criminals, adulterers, misfits, sorcerers and victims of natural or economic disasters, were reduced to slaves.”

Abdul soughed, his anger mounting at Africans. “Even so, these two methods would not have succeeded in turning the slave trade into the vast and centuries-long enterprise that it became.”

“You’re right,” Quenum said. “Other means exploded the slave trade to the dimensions we know today to meet the European demand.”

“Damnable people,” Abdul cursed under his breath.

“An adrenaline level-raising example is the Arochukwu (‘the voice of Chukwu’, the supreme deity), in the city of Arochukwu, in the Niger delta. This was a celebrated oracle whose authority was respected by all the population. It was called on to designate who, for whatever reason, should be condemned to be sold into slavery.”

“S---!” Abdul swore.

“This unfortunate practice continued up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Through such means, the slave trade grew to include able hands and even princes and princesses. Even a whole district was sold; that was the Brazilian quarter.”

Abdul’s eyes widened. “Why did they do that?”

            “Business,” Quenum said. “These people that a historian called ‘Atlantic creoles’ were a group of African descendants of slave traders or returned slaves from Brazil in the 19^th century who lived in a West African coastal community and who had acquired European languages and culture and a thorough understanding of the commercial links between their homeland and the slave traders. They were slave traders and connected by long-standing business and personal ties to other slave traders in Africa and Europe and the New World. They bought the slaves marauding groups and conquering warlords brought down to the coast and sold them to European traders. One of them was Chacha.”

            “Was he a big slave trader?” Abdul asked.

            “Certainly. He was the most powerful and the most famous Brazilian merchant who settled on the West African coast at that time.”

            “I wonder why he didn’t stay in Brazil to carry out his dastardly activities,” Abdul sneered.

            Quenum laughed. “I suspect Chacha was an opportunist. He arrived here almost penniless but quickly he got very wealthy from engaging in major slave trading activities. As such he became the financier, supplier and later close adviser of the king of Agbome. This privileged position allowed him to play an instrumental role in the establishment and the perpetuation of relations between several European powers and African kings in the period just before the great colonial expeditions.”

            “How come slave trading took place so openly in African communities but Africans today don’t know much about the slave trade?”

“I believe first of all Africans wanted to forget this episode by surrounding it with some amnesia,” Quenum said and Abdul nodded with meaning.

“John Steinbeck said a similar thing in The Winter of our Discontent that ‘when a condition or problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it’.”

Quenum nodded with satisfaction. “Secondly, colonialists did not give it prominence in history books, a tradition which unfortunately continued after independence. Now, we see those were terrible mistakes.”

“Yes, this is probably what Steinbeck meant when he added ‘But it goes inward and and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.”

Quenum nodded. “Precisely one of the objectives of the Slave Route Project is to break the silence by making the issue of slave trade known in the whole world.”

“But why did Africans sell each other?” Abdul asked, more out of chagrin than the desire to know more.

“You must understand the epoch. Mainly kingdoms existed at that time and since the powerful ones always sought to subjugate the weaker ones this created constant rivalry among them. These kingdoms used to go to war with each other and the victorious ones took prisoners that they subjected to hard labor or at worst killed. Invitation to sell such people to Europeans was of course welcome news.”

Abdul sighed.

“Not caring much for the other at that epoch was also in keeping with the times of inward-looking ethnic groups drunk with ethnocentrism. How difficult will it be for groups who not only thought themselves or their culture superior to the others but also despised them to use these people as they wished? But maybe the most important reason for Africans acceding to European request to sell them their slaves was the function of slavery in African societies. The slave in Africa was not a property and the notion of superiority and inferiority which was later invoked as justification for African slavery in America was not strict here. That’s why it was not uncommon for African slave owners to adopt slave children or to marry slave women or give spouses from their own families to slaves, who then became full members of the family. Moreover, slaves of talent accumulated honor and property and could even reach the status of kings. This was the case of Jaja of Opobo in Nigeria. Not knowing that whites in the New World looked down on black people as sub-human and treated them as chattels generation after generation, Africans maybe assumed the slaves sent overseas would be treated in the same way as in Africa.”—Abdul’s mind zoomed back to the descendants of Babatu.—“That was why when Madame Tinubu, a Nigerian slave-trader, discovered the difference between African and European slavery, she became an abolitionist.”

“Yeah?” surprise rang in Abdul’s voice.

Quenum nodded. “While almost all the earlier Africans transported to the New World were already slaves, most people exported later were simply captives produced by and for the trade. As I said earlier, stronger African kingdoms had subjugated weaker ones before Europeans came and later monopolized trade with the Europeans to the displeasure of their neighbors. With the advent of the European slave trade and the payment for African slaves with European weaponry, the coastal kingdoms found themselves in more powerful positions against their former enemies who bore more grudge against them on becoming victims of their slave-raiding expeditions. Counting on these deepened rivalries, European powers backed a side to win between African nations at a war and furnished that side with guns, thus worsening tensions among the African kingdoms. Victorious, the winning side rounded up captives of war and delivered them to their European allies.”

Abdul sighed. “Africans could have refused to be so fooled.”

“Political and military pressures that the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and other European powers put on African kingdoms forced them to cooperate with the slave traders. Europeans obliged many African kingdoms to collaborate willingly or unwillingly with them or face enslavement themselves. Mind you, the mentality was raid or be raided.”

Abdul sighed.

“There’s nothing new under the sun,” Quenum said conspiratorially. “Western nations, especially former colonial powers, use similar pressures nowadays to get African rulers to accede to their neo-colonial interests.”

Abdul nodded.

“Going back to slavery: Knowing that the captives held grudges against groups which had raided them, the whites used these captives in slave raids against their former allies. So you see, the situation was more than Africans simply selling each other into slavery. Specific social and historical circumstances therefore determined who ended up on the other side of the Atlantic as a slave: as a result of war, famine, commercial bankruptcy, judicial punishment, religious persecution, ‘mistakes,’ (arbitrary alterations in the terms and conditions of pawnship), failure to ransom kidnapped victims, and ‘panyarring,’ i.e. the seizure of individuals for debt or other compensation.”

Abdul remembered his talk with Professor Roland Little at Paga.

The group came to a spot where a statue stood on a pedestal and stopped.

“Here stood the agadia tree, the Tree of Forgetfulness,” Raia said. “Men slaves were made to go nine times around the tree and females seven. This was said to make them amnesiac so that they not only forgot their past, their culture, and their origin—in short their identity—but also left their gods behind. It was then they were led towards Zoungbodji, a village not far from the Brazilian quarter to be packed into makeshift lodgings until the slave ships arrived. Unlike the tree of return which we will see later on, we don’t advise people to go round this place since we suspect the magical power might still work.”

Cursed people! Abdul sneered, leering at the tree with revulsion and trepidation. “Why were the women made to go round the tree seven times?” he whispered to Quenum.

             “Because they were believed to have seven ribs.”

“And the men nine then.”

Quenum nodded.

Finally Abdul couldn’t help laughing. “Why did your people go to such lengths for the white man?” It was more an expression of frustration than a question. “Only they knew the virtues of the agadia tree and the secrets of fetishism.”

Quenum sighed. “The best I can say is that today that tree has been replaced with the kpatiman tree or the hyssop, which is a purification tree used for centuries here for preparing infusions.”

“The agadia tree was supposed to make the captives forget their culture and leave their gods behind. How come slaves from here took the voodoo abroad, Haiti for example?”

“The recreation of the vodoun in Haiti and Brazil by slaves showed that the african captives found ways to defeat the safeguard against their taking their gods and their past along with them.”

“So the magic didn’t really work.”

“Maybe it did but our people have a proverb which goes that there’s always a town ahead of the farthest one.”

“Meaning?”

“That some of the slaves had more powerful juju.”

“Why couldn’t they use it against slave raiders?”

Quenum tittered. “Another saying goes that the vodoun has nine fingers.”

Abdul puckered his brow.

“Since we have ten fingers, what this means is that voodoo powers are limited and they can’t be effective in all circumstances. Concretely, it will fail in one case out of ten cases.”

Abdul shrugged.

The group stopped before two statues of men in squatting position.

“The limbs and the mouths bound by iron depict the punishment rebellious slaves received in silence,” Quenum said.

“This place is La case de Zomaï,” Raia said. “Zomaî means where the light never penetrates. For the slaves brought here deep in the night were kept locked in total darkness in the cramped hut for weeks, mainly three to four months first to disorient them so that they don’t escape and secondly to get them used to the congestion and the darkness in which they were to be transported in the holds of the ships.”

An African American woman with a supple, sensual body burst into a heartrending Negro spiritual in a voice laced with a sweet timbre and choked with emotion. Other members of the Diaspora suppressed murmurs between sobs. Goose pimples rose on Abdul’s skin. Quenum patted him on the back.

The faces of the Diaspora Africans were taut with anger and pain. Abdul wiped beads of perspiration from his hot brow. His gaze fell on the Haitian who looked very glum and then he glanced at some Africans. 

“Why aren’t you people moved?” Abdul asked through a suppressed sob as the group tramped away. “Don’t you care?”

“We do, but …” Quenum shrugged. “I don’t know.” He shook his head; his chest heaved and he choked tears in sobs.

“This is the Le Mémorial de Zoungbodji, also known as ‘The Wall of Lamentation’,” Raia said at 100 meters from the hut of Zomaï before a memorial erected at the site of a common grave in memory of the slaves who died in the hut and were dumped there. She explained that Le Mémorial de Zoungbodji Zoungbodji was the first border post where the loading of slaves was first checked. It was there also that the slaves saw African soil for the last time. But today Zoungbodji represented the cemetery of slaves. “On the arrival of the ship, the alert was given. Those who had died in the hut of Zomaï or were too weak to make the journey were thrown into the common grave.”—A female voice yelled with pain.—“Excavation work carried out here in 1992 led to the discovery of a lot of bones and authentic instruments of slavery such as chains which are on display at the Musée de Ouidah.”

Abdul made a mental note to go to the museum, as more people broke into sobs and heartbreaking songs.

“As for the bones, they’ve been reburied here and the memorial erected on them. This memorial is an eloquent testimony to the tragedy which took place here.”

Abdul stared about. Difficult to believe that he was standing on the site of such a drama. Like others, he studied the memorial.

It was a decorated rectangular concrete wall standing six meters by four on a marble base in the form of a tomb. A wall ran around it and coconut trees waved in the breeze behind. It had brown relief which represented the slaves while the black symbolised the chains around their necks and feet.

“If you look at it from the left,” Raia burst in, “you’d find four heads of slaves. These crouching slaves are chained by the hand and brought into the hut at night. Next comes five slave heads. They are also chained by the hand but in a sitting position with heads bowed because they are deep in thought. That represents the position in the holds of the ships. On the third column we find slaves chained by the neck walking away. This represents slaves walking the way we’ve just come. On the right hand side are 22 chained heads side by side and represents the sardine form by which slaves were packed in the holds of the ships. Between the slaves you’d find red colors. These represent their blood, tears, suffering, anger, and anxiety.”

The sobs increased.

Around the memorial were some statues: one represented a slave with a broken chain symbolising the first decree abolishing slavery in 1848. The other was a head with tribal marks running down the cheeks and the rays of the sun representing the rising sun over Africa.

“Let’s now observe a minute’s silence in memory of our people whose bones are lying here.”

People clasped their hands in front of them or behind, bowed down their heads and a heavy silence ensued.

“Thank you,” Raia broke the silence after a minute. “Now, let’s take off our shoes and meditate on the grave.”

People climbed barefoot onto the memorial and burst into uncontrollable tears. Some ladies from the Diaspora crouched on the monument and drumming the ground, wailed. Goose pimples broke out over Abdul again.

When Raia asked to continue the tour to the l’Arbre du Retour, many members of the Diaspora, especially women, were still lying flat on the mass grave, shaking their heads, pounding the concrete, and murmuring, sobbing, and singing. Other members of the Diaspora and some Africans had to coax them away.

“Do Africans really care about the slave trade?” Abdul asked Quenum.

“Why not!” he countered, a horrified look on his face.

“I didn’t see it here,” Abdul hurled back. “If you don’t feel much for those who became slaves in America what about those who remained behind. Didn’t they remain purely African throughout?”

“Your ancestors who left also belonged to us,” Quenum reminded. “Do you know that Africans almost worship African Americans?”

Abdul stared at Quenum.

“We copied your stretched hair in the sixties; the bushy afro hair in the sixties-seventies; felt proud of you in films with actors such as Sidney Poitier; in music with Louis Armstrong Satchmo, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, James Brown; in sports with Muhammad Ali, Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan; in politics with Dubois, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, and so on.”

“But it isn’t all love.”

“Of course, a few Africans may not like African Americans because they’re said to be less friendly to Africans in America than whites. Even African American and African unions are characterized by more tension and last far shorter than those between Africans and whites.”

“It’s all because of our anger against Africans for taking an active part in the slave trade,” Abdul said. “Gone were the times when we believed European slavers swaggered ashore and grabbed the Africans. The truth is too bitter for us to accept. How do you expect us to come to terms with the knowledge that it was Africans who went to hunt Africans in the hinterlands but not whites.”  

“Yes, Africans got involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. That’s why in 2000, Benin’s President Mathieu Kerekou apologized for his country’s role in the trade. A year later, it was Senegal’s president Abdoulaye Wade who urged Europeans, Americans, and Africans to acknowledge publicly their shared responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade. A few months before Ivory Coast film director Roger Gnoa M’bala released Adagaman, a film which looked at African censorship of its involvement in the slave trade with the West.”

“I still find it difficult to understand that slavery and the slave trade are taboo subjects.”

“Yes, Africans pretended memory loss concerning those two subjects. It was hardly out of shame about their involvement in the slave trade. When African societies deliberately wished to forget about a matter, especially if it was painful, derogatory or shameful, they imposed censorship of any information about it and collective knowledge of the matter decreases or dies out. But don’t let Africans be blamed for the Trans-Atlantic slavery,” Quenum’s voice rose slightly. “They didn’t initiate this ignoble trade neither did they know about nor had any interest in what triggered the trade: mines and plantations in the New World.”

Abdul nodded-shrugged.

“No doubt Africans captured and sold other Africans to Europeans. That maybe was inevitable in a context where domestic slavery and Arab slave trade already existed and where for four hundred years after the transatlantic slave trade became the dominant form of trade. However what I don’t share is to blame every African as having sold their brothers and sisters. If Africans who remained behind were actively selling each other, then only the first slaves can accuse the others as accomplices of their departure. For those who left many years after, who can swear that his enslaved ancestors did not sell people before being enslaved also in those four centuries?”

That set Abdul thinking.

“Just as not all Africans who remained behind engaged in the slave trade, no descendant of slaves can be absolutely sure that his ancestors never sold anybody before being sold too. So, imagine how unjust it is if my ancestor never sold anybody but the descendant of a slave whose ancestor sold people before being sold accuses me of selling them?”

Abdul sighed.

“So, let’s stop throwing stones at each other and face those who initiated, unfortunately got us involved, and benefited from our ancestors’ sufferings and who, after slavery, continued to maltreat the African at home and in the Diaspora, even up to today. If you think Africans should be accused of heinous crime toward their enslaved brothers and sisters, then what will you say of house slaves who held themselves above field ones, black overseers who maltreated their kind, and free slaves who also owned slaves in America and those who returned to Africa and participated in the slave trade, like the Afro Brazilians?”

Abdul sighed again.

“And don’t think we’re a wicked race because whites also enslaved each other in antiquity and in modern times were unkind to each other by throwing some into concentration camps and gazing them during the Second World War. It’s human baseness.”

Abdul breathed hard, feeling more out of breath than Quenum. “I understand your explanation but there can be no excuse for Africans selling others to Europeans,” Abdul spoke in rugged bursts.

“Of course, not. And that was not what I was saying. But I think it is one thing being captured and sold by ‘pagans’ in ‘unenlightened’ lands and a completely different matter to be bought and kept in chattel slavery by ‘Christians’ in the ‘Land of the Free’. But maybe I’ll shock you by saying that the fact that Africans took part in the Atlantic Slave Trade was normal at that time,” Quenum affirmed and Abdul stared sharply at him. “Not normal in the sense that it was good,” he added quickly.

Abdul sighed.

“First, like everywhere else, various forms of servitude existed in Africa where a number of societies and kingdoms, including the Kings of Asante, Bonny and Dahomey, kept slaves before there was any regular commercial contact with Europeans. The bondsmen were treated as simple servants—working to pay off a debt—to war captives made to work for the victorious kingdoms or at worst, simply executed. But the form of totally degrading servitude Europeans subjected Africans to in the New World existed nowhere in Africa. It is true that the Trans-Saharan trade in African slaves along North Africa and the wider Mediterranean and Middle Eastern routes changed the form of traditional African slavery but still its effects weren’t as extensive and horrible as those of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.”

“There’s no excuse for any form of slavery,” Abdul blurted out.

“Of course,” Quenum agreed. “Maybe my assertion needs a little explanation. If the Arab slave trade was not as horrible as the Trans-Atlantic, it was simply because it served to furnish domestic slaves: concubines or eunuchs used as harem attendants by oriental rulers.”

“You mean to say it wasn’t so bad for African women to serve as mistresses or second wives to eastern lords or for the men to be castrated by them to watch over their households of wives, female relatives, concubines, etc.?”

Quenum hesitated. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangled. “Definitely not. What I meant was, apart from those conditions these people were relatively better treated than Trans-Atlantic slaves. For example, the African slaves in the Orient also served as servants or sometimes as armed bodyguards of top people and monarchs.”

“What does it matter?”

“Slavery is slavery,” Quenum agreed. “What’s especially regrettable about African and Arab slavery is that they prepared the ground for the hugely devastating trans-Atlantic one. Thus, when the European demand for slaves came, a pro-slavery mentality and a ready supply already existed. When that supply ran out, Europeans played one ethnic group against the other and distributed guns to this king against the other to generate slaves. People argue that Africans must take some of the blame for the European slave trade since they were involved in it because sometimes Africans themselves asked for European arms to hunt for slaves. That sounds acceptable. But what these people seem to overlook is that the European slave trade made an existing situation worse so that it could benefit from it. That’s what Granville Sharp, one of the earliest of the English abolitionists in 1776 meant when he pointed out that the slave trade preyed upon the ignorance and brutality of unenlightened nations, who were encouraged to war with each other for the sole purpose of producing slaves. And he affirmed that three-fourths of the slaves exported were produced by wars fomented by the avarice and temptation of the white race, for which reason he couldn’t exculpate any commercial nation from that sweeping censure. He didn’t fail to stress that while African slavery was an institution of domestic need and for comfort alone, Europeans stimulated the natives’ passions by introducing wants and fancies they never dreamed of so that what was once a luxury evolved into an absolute necessity; to such an extent that MAN became the coin of Africa, and the ‘legal tender’ of a brutal trade.”

That seemed to have softened Abdul up. “Maybe we can give African slave sellers the benefit of the doubt concerning their ignorance of what really happened to slaves in the New World but we cannot absolve them from reproach for selling their kith and kin.”

“No, we can’t and that would mean heaping all the guilt on one party while it took two to deal in that heinous business; and worst, it was Africans and people of African descent who continue to feel the consequences of the slave trade, even up to today. At least some of the horrors that modern African rulers continue to subject their own people to, that African states continue to inflict upon one another, and that Africans inflict upon each other and upon their countries can be traced not only to the disastrous processes of colonization and decolonization, but also to the long experience of the European slave trade for over four centuries when the major trade in Africa was in human beings; so that it took on a semblance of normalcy. It was in a way the most popular and the only profitable business to do. Today, that fact sounds strange. But let’s take the present lopsided international trade. It’s some form of slave trade, only goods have replaced human beings, yet its effects on Africans and African economies are as disastrous as slavery was, even if apparently less horrifying. So one day when this system disappears as it surely would somebody will stand up and say the Western nations which imposed the fraudulent prices and the biased rules of the game are not to be blamed for the present fraud because Africans took an active part in it. Analogically, they’ll say Europeans didn’t force the Africans to sell them their goods and that Africans actively sought to sell their goods to western nations and even freely signed trade pacts with them. Westerners didn’t haul the cash crops of cocoa, coffee, tobacco, peanuts, cotton, tea, etc. from the hinterlands neither did they cart the minerals like gold, diamonds, coal, copper, manganese, iron ore, uranium, phosphates, tin, crude oil, bauxite, aluminium, etc. from the mining and production sites. It was the Africans who did so and they were therefore to be blamed, or at least, they should share the blame with Europeans. Just as modern leaders like Sylvanus Olympio, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Augustino Neto and Thomas Sankara who refused Western hegemony in this regard were overthrown or assassinated, some earlier African rulers resisted the slave trade valiantly, if vainly, most notably King Afonso (Nzinga Mbemba) of Kongo in the sixteenth century, Queen Njingha Mbandi of Ndongo in Angola in the seventeenth century, and King Agaja Trudo of Dahomey in the eighteenth century.”

“Can we continue this discussion somewhere appropriate after the tour?”

“Sure.”

Abdul thumbed Quenum who nodded with a grin.

            By now they had arrived at the tree of return almost at a junction where they were met by Kakanakou, the Chief of Zoungbodji with excessive smile lines hugging the sides of his dark, blood-shot eyes and deep horizontal lines across his broad forehead. With his gnarled, crow’s feet fingers, he was scratching his sparse, dishevelled grey hair with patches of white at the temples and the sides.

The tree of return was an old tree with a forked stem at shoulder level situated where the slaves said goodbye finally to Africa. A statue stood on a pedestal under it and the tree itself was surrounded by a low wall. Simple houses stretched away from it in all directions.

            “I’m a descendant of Kakanakou, the man in charge of Zomaï,” the Chief said, pride ringing in his husky voice. “My name means ‘I will replace you before you die’.”

            “Weren’t your ancestor then an accomplice of the slave traders?” a tall, almost white, bespectacled African American asked.

            “No,” Chief Kakanakou said—after Raia had translated for him into Fon—shaking his head violently. “He fed the slaves once a day in the hut, healed the sick ones, and above all he was the one who planted this tree of return.”

            “What you see here is the tree that Kakanakou planted in the 16^th century, precisely in 1792, on behalf of King Agadja of Dahomey,” Raia explained.

            “Your ancestor was a damn collaborator of the white slave traders,” Quenum hurled at Chief Kakanakou in English for the benefit of the visitors. “On whose behalf was he taking care of the captives?”

            The visitors murmured their assent while somebody whispered into the chief’s ears and he lowered his head and scratched his head.

Abdul stared at the tree, seeing what an ancestor in pain saw.

“This tree was planted to give hope to the departing slaves that even if not physically at least their soul will return home after their death. To ensure this Chief Kakanakou made them go three times around the tree before being shipped away.”

“In our Fon language this tree is called hounti,” Quenum spoke in an undertone to Abdul. “But people refer to it as the wild kola tree. Its fruit is used to prepare an infusion to heal elephantiasis.”

Raia’s voice interrupted them. “The egungun dance or the dance of ghosts, also called kuvito, is organized here regularly in remembrance of the departed slaves because the saying goes that the dead are not really gone.”

At least here is some proof that Africans care about our ancestors, Abdul told himself as they lumbered in heavy silence towards the last stage of the tour: La porte du non-retour. Here at the beach stood a remarkable monument erected by UNESCO in memory of Africans forced to leave their motherland from this area.

“This beach, called La Plage de Djégbadji, was the last stretch toward the New World,” Raia said when they arrived at the beach. “It was the stage of desperation and distress. On arrival here the slaves who couldn’t bear it any more, grabbed handfuls of sand which they gobbled …”

Some people shut their eyes and shook their heads lowered into their palms.

“… others slit their throats with their chains.”

The sobbing, the murmuring, and the heartrending singing rent the heavy air again.

“Now, small canoes ferried them to the waiting slave ships,” Raia continued after some calm had returned. “Some slaves physically resisted the departure and others jumped into the sea.”

“Why? Why? Why?” a very beautiful light-skinned West Indian woman cried out, trembling all over.

Someone patted her on the shoulders.

“To minimize the possibility of insurrection during the sea transport, the slave traders separated wives from husbands, children from their parents, and siblings from each other right at the beach.”

After the emotion into which the declaration had plunged them had passed, many now stood staring dreamily at the heaving sea. Soon the sad singing began again. Some Diaspora people broke down on the tawny sand and wept like bereaved people.

“But our people did not just submit to enslavement,” Raia said as if to console them. “It was on the coasts of Africa that the enslaved Africans often rebelled. Rebellions on the coasts were also the most violent.”

“This is a dent on the conscience of humanity,” someone shouted truculently.

“Yet this tragedy is strangely absent from history books, and therefore truncated from the memory of humanity.”

“Because it concerns us,” the man shouted back and Raia smiled back.

“Through its Slave Route project UNESCO hopes to make this haunting tragedy a universal issue like other human calamities which are given due consideration, and enable the Slave Trade to assume its rightful place in the world’s history books. For the fight for democracy and human rights is first and foremost a fight for memory.”

“Well said,” the man said.

Raia nodded. “This is because any tragedy which is hushed up and disavowed may rear its ugly head again and, as Bertolt Brecht said, feed ‘the fertile womb that bore the vile beast’.”

“That’s right,” the man said again. “Nobody should forget.”

“It is precisely to take the slave trade out of its present obscurity and give it a rightful worldwide visibility that the General Conference of UNESCO has decided to launch an international project on the ‘Slave Route’, in order to throw light on the underlying causes, mechanisms and consequences of the slave trade. UNESCO and the international community therefore are planning to go back over a history which the French historian Jean-Michel Devieau described in his book ‘La France au temps des négriers’ as ‘the greatest tragedy in human history in terms of both duration and magnitude’.”

“Kudos to them,” Abdul said.

“As you know, the achievement of lasting peace is a fundamental objective of the United Nations. It is this desire which has prompted its Member States to highlight the question of the slave trade.”

“Right,” the man said.

“Also, the principle enshrined in the Organization’s Constitution, ‘that since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed’ points to the fact that ignoring or deliberately obscuring major historical events can constitute a menace to peace.”

“Yes, the victims will continue yearning for justice and the criminals may be wary of them; or even the children of the perpetrators of the heinous crimes may be emboldened to repeat the crime of their fathers,” Abdul said.

Raia nodded. “By recreating this slave route in 1992, the Republic of Benin and UNESCO wanted to establish the memory of that horrible past in order to avoid a total historical amnesia taking root and for the silence to allow the tragedy to strike again,”

A murmur of assent went up.

That’s something nice to hear, Abdul told himself and wondered how to thank Ian for suggesting coming here.

“Millions of our people died from the slave trade and other millions suffered untold atrocities from slavery by the desire of Europeans to develop the New World through forced African labor and most unfortunately by the complicity of our ancestors to satisfy the evil demand and their egotistical interests. May it never happen again.”

“Amen!” someone shouted jocularly, lightening the atmosphere.

            It is good to pray for slavery not to happen again, Abdul thought as he and Quenum left to look for zemidjan to Le Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah, but he wished it never did happen at all. He remembered reading that the kings of Dahomey aggressively captured and sold over three million of their neighbors into slavery in return for guns and other European goods. The source stressed that in this wise the kingdom of Dahomey was exposed, as other kingdoms, to the bitter experience of the slave trade. In the mid-eighteenth century, when it took over the port of Ouidah, one of the main centres of the trade in the Gulf of Guinea, it regarded the growing build up of firearms there as posing a threat to the security of his possessions. To maintain a strong state which could counter that menace, the rulers of Dahomey needed European rifles and gunpowder; to obtain the arms and ammunition, the monarchs must sell slaves to the Europeans. It was then powerful armies were raised to raid neighbouring peoples and make war on them for the purpose of taking slaves. How regrettable it is that kings for that matter allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into the slave trade for useless goods carried free of freightage, trifles that they happily exchanged for their kind! Quenum again stressed that that situation has not changed because today the West still manipulates African leaders to serve the former’s national interests. While Abdul agrees that in their dealings with Africa, the white race has proved itself to be heartless and fraudulent, he even didn’t want to think of what to call Africans for always submitting to the whims of the West, as that attitude makes him bow down his head in shame. Abdul wondered once again if the monarchs of Dahomey stopped at least once to ask themselves what happened to the slaves they sold and who were sailed to South America; idem for the Ashanti kings of now Ghana whose sold captives ended up in the plantations of the English Colonies in North America. Not even Quenum’s desperate arguments that: 1) even if the kings sold their like they never crossed the Atlantic to deliver the slaves to white people who should therefore carry the greater blame for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; and 2) the fact that ‘highly civilized’ ‘Christians’ bought human beings was more shocking than kings considered ‘savage’ selling their fellow Africans absolves the kings of their heinous crime against Africans. The slave trade could not have attained huge proportions and could certainly not have lasted all those centuries without the active collaboration of a huge chain of elite African rulers and local slave raiders, drivers, and merchants. It was in this sense that he couldn’t entirely agree with Quenum that the West should carry more blame for the deportation and the enslavement of Africans in those hellish four centuries and a half. All he could wish for these accomplices of the slave trade was for them and their descendants to pay the price of the treason.

Abdul, feeling hurt, so longed to bury his pain by visiting the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah that Quenum’s entreaties to him to prolong his stay and visit certain places of interest rolled over his ears like distant sounds. This, despite Quenum telling him that at the Temple des Pythons, opposite the Basilique de Ouidah, where the centuries-old revered serpent-god Dangbé was still represented by tens of live pythons, he could be photographed with a snake around his neck; at the Maison du Brésil, the former residence of the governor of Brazil also known as Casa do Brazil and situated near the town prison, he could see in the museum objects linked to voodoo culture and the African Diaspora; at the Forêt Sacrée de Kpassè Zoun he could see wooden sculptures representing voodoo gods among giant ancient trees, especially an iroko tree which, according to legend, grew at the spot where King Kpassè, the founder of Ouidah, turned himself into a tree to escape capture by his enemies; nor that he could find accommodation in good hotels on the beach, on the Cotonou-Lomé road, near the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah, and behind the Sub-Prefecture where local and international cuisine was served.

From the beach, they hopped on zemidjan to the museum four kilometers away. Abdul took last, wistful looks at the large concrete statues erected along the slave route representing voodoo symbols, especially the statuette of Mamiwata, the water goddess.

Soon the speeding motorcycle skilfully driven by the young men turned right at the main monument of Ouidah—consisting of snakes which twirled around pillars—toward the dull Ouidah town where Abdul and Quenum found the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah on their left.

            The museum was a large, sand-colored colonial building Quenum said was a former Portuguese fort. It was surrounded by a wall. Two steps running opposite each other to meet at a balcony led up to its entrance.

Abdul bought his ticket of 1,000 Francs CFA—about US$2—the cost for visiting foreigners and half that much for Quenum as a visiting national and joined three male and two female white tourists accompanied by two male Africans who looked like their guides.

            The museum guides: two men,—one lanky and the other medium sized,—and Miss Raia Ayaba de Souza, welcomed them.

            “We were on the tour at your family’s place,” Abdul, tickled to see her here, reminded heartily.

            A phantom of a smile appeared on Raia’s well proportioned face. “I recognize you,” she spoke softly, hardly making eye contact with Quenum who scowled in defiance.

            “This museum opens Mondays to Fridays from 8 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.,” the lanky male guide said after Raia had nodded at him and disappeared inside. “On Saturdays and Sundays, one can visit it from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. However during public and national holidays it is opened from 9 a.m. right through to 6 p.m.”

Nodding, Abdul made a mental note of the opening hours in case he had to come back.

“The museum staff is headed by a lady curator,—” The guide gave a name Abdul did not get. “—whom we’ll meet soon as our colleague Raia has gone to inform her of Diaspora people from IPA coming to visit. At your disposal to show you around during the opening hours and answer any questions are several highly qualified guides.” The guide smiled and glanced at his colleague who broke into a modest smile. “The Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah forms part of a network of museums under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, Crafts and Tourism.”

A few more Diaspora tourists arrived, nodding and beaming smiles of recognition at Abdul and Quenum.

“The Portuguese built this fort for trading in slaves that they bought from the Kingdom of Xweda,” the guide continued after summarizing what he had just said and Abdul sighed and shook his head. He noticed the other Diaspora visitors whisper fiercely among themselves and the expressions on their faces changed to hard looks. “From its beginning until it was captured by the Kingdom of Dahomey, the fort also served as the diplomatic hub of the Portuguese in this region. The Portuguese again took possession of the fort and it wasn’t until four decades ago that it became the property of the Republic of Dahomey which seized it on gaining independence in 1960. The government restored the fort, and in 1967, it was renamed the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah.”

Nodding, the visitors shuffled over a cool corridor with a high ceiling that the guide waved them along.

“When was this building erected?” one of the white lady visitors asked.

“The fort was put up in 1721 by Joseph de Torres.”

“God damn him,” a large, dark Haitian man boomed in French.

The guide glanced at him, smiled, and continued. “Its walls cover about a hectare of land and the fort itself contains a residency for the official representatives of Portugal, a chapel, …”

“Chapel?” Abdul couldn’t help shrieking.

“Yes, a chapel,” the guide answered quietly, staring at Abdul who was shaking his head in disbelief. The Diaspora visitors shook their heads too. “A chapel, a garrison …”

“Okay, for that goes well with a devil activity,” Abdul cut in again. “But a chapel in a place where slave trading was going on …” He again shook his head mournfully.

“These people were Christians,” the guide said.

“You can say that again,” someone hurled back and the group burst into laughter.

“There were barracks too,” the guide continued lamely.

“Garrison, barracks, those things make sense with a violent activity such as slave trading,” Abdul came in again and people murmured their assent and nodded. “But not the chapel. And don’t tell me Christians worshipped in there.” The visitors burst into laughter, including the white tourists, one of whose female’s voice rang out so much that all glanced at her. Her peachy hand flew to her symmetrical mouth and she giggled behind it while her large, pale blue eyes displayed surprise in her longish face flushed red. 

            “Here comes my boss, the curator,” the guide said as Raia strutted towards them in the presence of a sprightly-looking lady with a face not long and not round either, curled greying black hair, a small nose, medium-sized lips glistening with brown lipstick, large green earrings dangling in her small ears, and glasses hanging in her long neck.

            Pulling on her glasses, the smiling curator with flashing white well-set teeth introduced herself but asked the visitors to call her Jocelyne, which was all Abdul had caught anyway. He asked Quenum to note it down for him.

            “Our museum has quite a collection coming from excavations from sites in Savi and Ouidah,” she said. “Some of these excavations have been carried out under the direction of famous archaeologists such as Merrick Posnansky of the University of California in Los Angeles, Ken Kelly of the University of South Carolina, and Neil Norman of the University of Virginia.”

Shaking his head mournfully, Abdul wondered what Africans did themselves. Even in this matter as important for them as the slave trade, Americans had to do the work for them. But Jocelyne soon had the answer for him.

“Besides these American universities, the museum also has a cooperation research program with our local Université d’Abomey-Calavi.”

Okay, Abdul said to himself, while nodding quietly.

“The main museum collections are held in the residency and the temporary ones are displayed in the chapel.”

They moved towards the collections.

“The Portuguese burnt down the fort and everything it contained when they were expelled from here in 1961 by the first government of independent Dahomey.”

“What?” a Trinidadian Abdul had spoken to on the first day at IPA shrieked.

Nodding slowly, the curator affirmed what she had said.

“Characteristic of the wicked race,” Abdul burst out and stared back at the white tourists who averted his defiant gaze. Ignoring them and catching the curator’s raised eyebrows, Abdul pouted. Quenum patted him on the shoulders. Abdul wondered if it was to tell him to take it easy or to console him. Not sure which, he began to tremble slightly with rage.

“The museum has on display a large number of objects linked to the history and the traditions of the people who had lived here. We have objects of Portuguese origin which were recovered from the former fort in the mid-sixties. There are also collections such as illustrations, artefacts, and geographical maps. The historic and cultural significance of these articles allows visitors to the museum to appreciate the past of this region, especially concerning the kingdoms of Xwéda and Dahomey and their active implication in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in search of power and wealth.”

This further pricked Abdul’s keen interest in the past of the region, especially the one linked to the slave trade.

“The tour of the collections is done according to the layout of the museum around six principal themes: The Portuguese Fort, which is the head office of the museum; the Kingdom of Xweda; the Kingdom of Dahomey; the Slave Trade; the Vodoun, or voodoo or hoodoo as it is known in the western world; and the Cultural Links between Benin and the New World.”

She led them forward.

“This fort is built in the form of a trapezium. Formerly it was surrounded by a moat, which was a large, deep ditch. To get in and out, one had to go over a bridge which was drawn up in the night to prevent unauthorized entry and possible seizure as was frequent in those days.”

“Who could pounce on the fort?” one of the Beninese accompanying the whites asked.

“Other European powers and powerful local kingdoms.”

“I see,” the local man said doubtfully.

“Yes,” the curator said. “There was intense rivalry among Europeans installed here in those days for supremacy over zones considered strategic. And local monarchs also sought to conquer such places which they themselves or their rivals had allowed Europeans to put up.”

“Why?” the man asked.

“The Europeans sometimes became too powerful for the comfort of local powerful monarchs.”

            The curator and the group crowded into the main living quarters. It displayed bygone grandeur.

            “This is where the Portuguese received and accommodated their visitors.”

After seeing the main collections, including the fort’s bell—large, long, black, showing signs of rust—and a safe—a rectangular steel box,—both not burnt down because made of iron, they shuffled over to an office, the garrison, the armoury, the barracks, and what interested most of the visitors most: the chapel and the area where the Portuguese kept the slaves. The chapel now contained temporary collections. They observed a minute’s silence in the room where slaves were kept.

“As I said earlier, the Portuguese used this fort to maintain diplomatic and commercial relations with the reigning kingdom.”

“Do you mean diplomatic and commercial relations or dupery and criminal relations?” Abdul suggested and the room burst into laughter and exclamations of excitement.

The curator smiled mildly, peering short-sightedly at Abdul over the top of her glasses. “Well, officially it’s the former.”

“And in reality it’s the latter,” a well-built Diaspora woman in blue jeans affirmed, and smiling, the curator shrugged slightly. 

“As social, religious and commercial changes took place in the region, the function of the fort also changed to reflect these. Slowly the fort lost its military character and became a place where visitors could be received in comfort.”

“All the better,” a slim black American man said.

The curator nodded, with a smile which made Abdul think she blinked.

“The Catholic Church established its base in the fort in 1861. They opened the first school in Dahomey here.”

“Bravo,” a loud male voice thundered and Abdul saw a large, fair-complexioned man from whom the cry had come, clap and the others nodded.

“Soon after, the church began its primary duty, which was to baptize people.”

“Where were they when people were being enslaved?” Abdul yapped.

“Tight lipped,” someone said and laughed hard.

 “When the French colonized Dahomey in the 1890s, they still allowed the Portuguese to keep the fort as their exclusive property.”

“Birds of a feather flock together,” the man who had said the church was tight-lipped, said and laughed hard again.

It was in a gay atmosphere that they came to the section of the museum dealing with the history of the Kingdom of Xwéda.

“It will be interesting to talk about the slave trading sites on the Slave Coasts on the territory of the present Republic of Benin eastwards before going into the history of the Kingdoms of Xwéda and Dahomey,” the curator suggested.

Abdul noticed that he was not the only one who was all ears.

“At the mouth of the Mono was located an important town, Grand Popo. This was Xwlagan or Xwla, written Afla. The economic importance of this area where the Mono empties into the sea attracted the Dutch who, in the 1660s, built a lodge there described in 1670 as being as big as a village. Since then all the slave trading companies established posts there which survived to a greater or lesser extent with varying fortunes.”

“They should all have died out!” a Haitian spat out.

The curator smirked. “The eastern Slave Coast between the Mono and the Weme however was the true epicentre of the slave trade with Glexwe, Offra, Jakin, Ekpe, Sèmè, Appah and Gbadagri.”

Abdul sighed.

“The history of slavery at Glexwe can be divided into two distinct periods. The peak of the slave trade there coincided with the independence of the kingdom of Xweda, the town of which was the maritime outlet opened to the outside world, especially during the first quarter of the 18^th century when Glexwe became by far the most important slave port on the Guinea coast with 18,000 captives exported each year.”

The visitors shook their heads quietly.

“Despite that figure, slave trading wasn’t easy at Glexwe.”

Abdul wondered why.

“Politically the three European forts—English, French, and Portuguese—built there in the beginning of the 18^th century had no power; therefore the European traders were obliged to accept certain bothersome constraints.”

This shows that Africans could have restrained the Europeans from engaging in the slave trade if they had wished to do so, Abdul thought.

“For example, Glexwe was situated at about five kilometers from the sea, behind the marshy area of the coast. The forts therefore were used as warehouses since the trade was done at Saxé or Savi, capital town of the kingdom, at about 10 kilometers north of Glexwe where the fort managers had their residences and sales depots. The goods for the slave trade were handled in three phases: first they were unloaded from the ships onto the beach; then carried to the forts, from where they were taken to Savi.”

All this trouble for bauble’s sake! Abdul wondered-sneered.

“Offra, also called Petit Ardres, was Allada’s port on the Atlantic Ocean. It was situated at the present site of Godomey at some thirty kilometres east of Glexwe. The European slave traders settled there at the same time as at Glexwe. A very keen commercial competition opposed the two centers.”

 Outdoing each other to sell us! Abdul sneered and sighed.

“Further east, near to the mouth of Lake Nokwe, were the centers of Ekpe ou Ekpen and Sèmè. It seemed to have served as outlet for Dahomey from the end of the 17^th century as well as to the caravans from Oyo in the 18^th century. The Dutch and the Portuguese had been slave trading there right from the middle of the 17^th century.”

Why, why, why?

“Apa, or Appa, situated east of Sème and at about 80 kilometers from Glexwe, was founded by the Yoruba Egbado of Benin maybe in the 16^th century. A real hub of the slave trade and a wholesale market where most of the merchants of the surrounding areas came for supplies, the West India Company, WIC, established a trading post there from 1670. The local authorities, favourable to the trade, left the payment of taxes to the discretion of the slave traders. They in turn assured the security of the human cargo in the trading posts.”

Abdul shook his head sadly.

“A total of some fifteen posts were more or less actively involved in the slave trade on the Slave Coast for more than two centuries, daily supplying their human goods against numerous slave trading goods, the selling of which contributed a lot to the European economy during the 18^th century.”

Yet they pretend the contrary.

“Now to the Kingdom of Xwéda,” the curator said. “The capital of Xwéda was Savi. Ouidah, also called Gléwé, was its port. It played a crucial role when trading got intensified between Europe, the Americas and Africa towards 1600.”

Abdul noticed the atmosphere getting tense as the curator continued to speak.

“The powerful kings of Xwéda, who had developed immoderate appetite for European goods and exotic articles Europeans brought from the Indian Ocean islands, did not hesitate to give away prisoners for them.”

Abdul, whose anger was rising against those kings, noticed hard looks on the faces of the other visitors.

“Why did they have to give away their people against trash?” a luscious, almost white woman said, more to express anger than to ask a question and angry murmurs rose up while her beautiful face turned hard.

The curator answered with a hint of embarrassment in her tone: “If we keep in mind that people captured in war were killed and at best used for manual labor, then you will appreciate how easy it was to barter them against European goods which these kings found irresistible.”

“Goddamn ‘em!” a tall African-American man with bushy hair hurled out.

Smiling faintly, the curator seemed to nod as the visitors murmured their assent.

“The progression of this infamous trade in the coastal zone of present-day Benin made Savi, in addition to being the center of the worship of vodoun, to become the political center of business and of the regional administration and Ouidah one of the most important slave warehousing and loading points on the West African coast.”

Abdul felt the heavy, measured breathing of the visitors.

“Savi became so important during that unfortunate period that thousands of people attended the weekly markets organized in its environs to barter—” Abdul held his breath. “—local goods with each other and above all to sell them for cowries, the local currency.”

“That was better,” somebody said and Abdul who had released his breath in relief, nodded.

“Seeing Ouidah today I wonder if the kings made money out of the slave trade,” a local visitor with a long head and a stony face said.

“I’m obliged to say this,” Jocelyne confessed. “Nothing much has changed in Euro-African relations since the days of slavery. The West continues to exhibit duplicity and a cheating attitude while the African still displays complicity and a docile nature. Today we sell tons of our raw materials and produce to the same people our ancestors sold slaves to, but where’s the development?” Jocelyne wore a wry face and the visitors nodded. “The kings sold off their prisoners to Europeans just as today we do our crude resources. And the little money the kings made was invested in trash just as our Heads of State do today in white elephants and rare wasteful and prestigious projects. Why should one be astonished that Africa, which exports so much natural resources, should remain underdeveloped and poor? In the same vein how can one be surprised that Ouidah, which sold off millions of Africans, should look so desolate today?”

“All the best for Ouidah,” Abdul hurled out. “Nobody should profit from our deportation.”

“Ill gotten ill spent,” the local man said.

“Yes, ill-gotten gains seldom prosper,” Abdul added and people nodded.

“The kings of Xwéda made wealth not only from trading in slaves but also in levying taxes on activities in the markets and in taxing goods crossing their territory.”

“If only they had stuck to these activities!” a lean man with a large voice whined.

“Yes, they could have,” Jocelyne answered. “For these activities were so profitable that they made Agadja, the king of Dahomey, envious. Thus, in 1727, his troops invaded Savi and burnt the palace down to ashes. But even destroyed, the palace continued to display its political aura, so much so that Agadja was forced to prohibit the inhabitants from settling around it.”

The visitors sighed.

Then scrutinizing historical illustrations and archeological findings—such as pieces of objects imported from Europe and the New World: porcelain, fragments of bottles of wine and gin, bricks, and beads; and pieces of objects manufactured in the kingdom or from other parts of the African continent: pieces of pottery, metal tools, beads of quartz and stone tools—made by American archeologists Kenneth Kelly and Neil Norman, the visitors had an insight into the way of life of the people of the kingdom of Ouidah, of the palace itself, and of the surrounding villages. The curator explained that the objects, discovered following years of intense archeological research conducted around the present village of Savi, date back to the period 1600-1900.

If Abdul felt like any other tourist in taking pictures of the bricks discovered by Kenneth Kelly in the palace of the king of Xwéda at Savi, he experienced deep pain photographing imported ceramic objects and fragments of bottles of wine, etc., found in the palace: beyond the objects, he was imagining the Africans they helped to deport to the New World. Maybe one of these objects was the price for his ancestor. Even if it wasn’t this one here, it was another one somewhere else. The last object he captured on his camera was a European engraving of the crowning of the king of Xwéda. It showed the bare-chested monarch with a rich cloth thrown around his waist right down to his feet sitting on a throne while a servant, on his knees, held an umbrella over the king’s head. On the left hand side of the king, a group of women squatted. What surprised Abdul were the pillars of the thatch-roofed palace building in the background. He never thought such things existed in ancient Africa.

The curator now invited them to the section dedicated to the history of the Kingdom of Dahomey.

“Here you’ll find several objects which tell about the history and the culture of the kingdom. These include a traditional drum and wall hanging showing the emblems of the kings of Dahomey. On display are also images of ceremonies and of the war between France and Dahomey.”

“Colonial war?” Abdul said.

The curator nodded.

“Unfortunate Africa,” Abdul whined, feeling pain that people came from elsewhere to battle Africans for their own lands.

 “The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful military empire of Fon (or Aja) peoples,” she continued, her voice hardly hiding her awe. “No doubt her subjects and the kingdoms it conquered or dominated bowed totally to the authority and the influence of its kings. The Abomey plateau, an early center of Aja and Yoruba populations, became the capital of the Dahomey monarchy beginning in the 17^th century.”

Abdul noticed the tense atmosphere as everybody waited for the big news.

“Dahomey was the most centralized and the most militarized state of all the kingdoms which had existed on our territory. The 1720s saw the rise of the kingdom on the ‘Slave Coast’ based on slaving and firearms right into the 19^th century. Her conquests and traditions, characterized by violence, made it a dreaded kingdom feared by all its neighbors in the sub region.”

Some of the visitors sighed.

“For example, when Dahomean king Agadja conquered the kingdoms of Allada in 1724 and Xwéda three years late, he killed thousands of captives and sold others into slavery.”

“Savage!” the light-skinned woman burst out as the visitors sighed. “Barbarous even.”

The curator nodded lightly and smirked. “With these conquests, Dahomey then assumed control of the trade in slaves with European powers established at Ouidah, called Gléwé at that time.”

“So Dahomey fought these bloody wars just to become a slave-trading kingdom?” a Haitian who could have been mistaken for a Beninese asked, anger in his voice.

“It was their objective,” Jocelyne said. “In the early 18^th century, the Kings of Dahomey became big players in the slave trade, waging bitter wars on their neighbours and capturing thousands of them for sale to Europeans.”

Abdul sighed, loud, bitterness dripping in it. Everybody felt revolt. It was therefore with a bit of disdain that the visitors shuffled alongside the wall coverings exhibiting the emblems which, traditionally, represented each king of Dahomey.

“These kings demanded absolute respect from everybody,” Jocelyne finally said.

“They were deified like the Pharaohs,” a chocolate-colored visitor with a Caribbean accent said.

“Not really,” Jocelyne answered. “But religiously they were highly thought of. Thus, complex religious ceremonies were often organized, and … accompanied with human sacrifices.”

The visitors sighed in horror.

“Yes, that was one of the unfortunate characteristics of Dahomean culture.”

The murmurings of the visitors became insistent.

“Why don’t we go on to the next section?” a squat Haitian suggested.

“Patience, we’re almost through with Dahomey,” Jocelyne pleaded and smiling through the vociferations, brought them to a decorated white ceramic pot. “This is used as a drum only to announce the death of a king of Dahomey.”

“And the human sacrifice followed.”

Jocelyne glanced short-sightedly at the speaker, a lanky man with a bald head and withering skin, smiled, then led them to a tall drum like a congas painted horizontally green, brown, yellow, and green, like a flag. Wooden pegs held an old skin leather over the top.

“This drum is one of the exhibits which serve as evidence of the cultural exchange between Benin and the New World,” Jocelyne announced. “Our brothers and sisters from Haiti will note that this drum is perfectly similar to the Haitian one.”

The Haitian visitors nodded vigorously, proud smiles on their dark faces.

“Only children orphans are required to touch it.”

They advanced towards a bright yellow wall covering. It had people who seemed to be carrying crossed objects. All around them were dark patches, looking like heads.

“This is the flag of Dahomey,” Jocelyne said. “The small circles represent the heads of decapitated captives and enemies.”

“What a vile kingdom! Abdul jabbed in.

“A bloody one indeed!” another visitor added.

Jocelyne displayed professional calm. “The king of Dahomey sent an image of this flag to the king of Portugal and also to the prince regent of Portugal to show how powerful his kingdom was.”

“How barbaric or how powerful?” Abdul sneered, out loud.

“Savage,” someone corroborated and the curator nodded and the unfavorable humming rose up again.

They then came to scenes of the war between Dahomey and France.

“This was the period of European scramble for Africa. France, desirous to have Dahomean territory as a colony, sent troops here in 1892. In several clashes with Dahomey, the kingdom won all the battles. The most memorable was the battle of Dogba at which an officer of the French army was killed.”

Abdul normally clapped hysterically at such news. But in the case of Dahomey, its active participation in the slave trade took away any sympathy he could have had for her. Abdul noticed with satisfaction the lukewarm attitude of the other visitors.

“Despite its fierce resistance to French colonization, Dahomey was finally conquered and ended up becoming a French dominion.”

Abdul again felt torn between joy at the conquest of an enemy state and the fall of an African territory to colonial usurpers.

 “King Béhanzin was deported to Martinique.” 

“Let him taste it too,” a Haitian said, tickled.

Jocelyne smiled faintly. “King Agoli Agbo became the next king of Dahomey but he was also exiled to Gabon in 1900.”

“Yes, they and their descendants need to pay, one by one,” Abdul wished.

“Despite French interference, Dahomey never totally lost its aura. So much did Dahomey carry this karma that when our country became independent in 1960, the leaders did not hesitate to adopt that name.”

Some of the visitors nodded, others shrugged.

The curator shrugged too, smiling. “Now, to the section about the Slave Trade,” she said and Abdul’s blood raced while quite a stir washed over the visitors.

“From its modest beginning as a small village in a small kingdom called Xwéda, nobody could have predicted that Ouidah would one day play a leading role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Nevertheless that became the case during the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries when almost one million Africans were sold from here …”

The visitors sighed.

“… and exported to the New World through the beach at Ouidah.”

The female Diaspora visitors began to hum sad songs again.

“So, from a small self-sufficient village through agriculture, hunting and fishing in the coastal lagoons, Ouidah which avoided the dangers of the sea and its tides, was to use it to enrich itself at a huge human cost and immense suffering to them.” 

The humming rose a pitch.

“Nobody in Ouidah knew that would be the case when the kingdom first came into contact with Europeans in the course of the 16^th century. Yet the trade in slaves in the Bay of Benin became a reality not long after. Worse, by the end of the next century, the trading in slaves between the kingdom of Xwéda and European slave buyers became so intense that the various European powers put up forts and trading posts in the town of Gléwé.”

“Cursed kingdom!” someone whispered fiercely.

The curator nodded quietly.

“So many slaves were sold from here that it became known as the Slave Coast.”

The visitors shook their heads.

“The sale of human beings made the kingdom of Xwéda so rich and so important that at the height of its economic activity toward the middle of the 18^th century, 10,000 people lived in Ouidah alone. The neighbours of Xwéda even began to become jealous of her.”

“Lawd ’ave mercy!” a bulky, almost white African American man with bushy hair and bushy greying beard cried out, shaking his head in disbelief.

“The kingdom was therefore attacked by that of Dahomey in 1727. The inhabitants of Xwéda were killed, made captive, or scattered. Dahomey then took over the trade in slaves.”

The visitors sighed and small sobbing began.

“In 1818 Dahomey appointed Francisco Félix de Souza, commonly known as Chacha, as head of the slave trading activities.”

Abdul glanced at Quenum who nodded vigorously, with a proud smile.

“Chacha amassed so much wealth from the abominable trade that even today his descendants still occupy a privileged position in Ouidah,” Quenum said.

Abdul frowned, wondering why the offspring of a notorious slave trader should be held in high esteem.

“Soon European governments began to denounce the slave trade as inhuman,” Jocelyne said and Abdul winced but he had no time to challenge that assertion as she continued: “As things changed at the other side, of course, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began to decline.”

“No demand no supply,” a local man said.

“So much so that at the end of the 19^th century Ouidah was obliged to change to a less lucrative but honorable activity: the export of palm oil.”

“Better,” a local visitor said.

“While the export of slaves from here ceased, the repatriation here of descendants of slaves exported to the New World began.”

The visitors sighed and smiled at each other. Abdul bit his lips that his family was not so lucky.

“Made up mainly of third generation descendants of slaves in Brazil, on returning to Benin, particularly to Ouidah, they contributed immensely to the culture here with their customs and traditions. Concrete illustrations of this influence can be seen in the Afro-Brazilian architecture here and in Porto Novo, our nation’s capital city.”

Abdul’s eyes met Quenum’s who thumbed him. Abdul nodded quietly back.

“Dahomey controlled Ouidah until both fell under French colonial subjection in 1902.” 

Abdul again wondered whether he had to cry or jubilate.

“The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which raged here from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries, had a big and a lasting impact not only on the culture but also on the balance of power among Europe, the New World and the states in Africa.”

Noticing dead silence, Abdul glanced around him and found everybody listening as if in a trance.

“Violence characterized the trade in slaves. First, we can cite the intense rivalry which existed among the Dutch, British, French, Danish, Portuguese, and Spanish trading companies, both private and state-owned, in their efforts to have total domination of the circuitous or triangular trade which, in the first leg, consisted in shipping money and goods from the European slave ports to Africa to be exchanged against human beings and goods stocked in slave trading areas; then to haul the slaves and the goods to the Caribbean islands and the Americas for sale; and with the money to buy goods such as cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses, and rum produced with slave labor and ship them on the final leg to Europe where the goods, used in a variety of manufacturing industries (refinery, dyeing, cloth or weaving mill), were sold for money, part of which was used to buy goods for Africa and the wheel came full circle.”

Someone cried out in pain.

The curator continued, “Brazil (the main importer of slaves) however, did not take part in the triangular trade because it traded the goods manufactured in South America directly with African merchants and kings in the African ports. The impact of this activity on the lands, economies and peoples of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean was enormous. While able hands available for agriculture and handiwork in Africa were getting fewer, free labor was growing for the New World; while economic activity in Africa was becoming stagnated, forced African labor was opening up the New World; while Africa was getting depopulated, the population of the New World was booming and becoming multiracial. There was no respite for the enslaved African. While they had been obtained through violent means here, they were transported in inhuman conditions to the New World where a life of agony awaited them.”

Some visitors began to weep. Quenum reached for Abdul’s hand and squeezed it. Pressing Quenum’s too, Abdul felt a tremor coursing through him and he fought back the tears.

“The tension which had characterized relations between the first Africans deported to the New World and the Europeans who bought them continues up to this day.”

The visitors nodded quietly, a few wiped tears from the corners of their eyes.

“Violence characterized the trading in slaves also at the level of the states in Africa. Trading in slaves meant power and riches for the states.”

“Where did the money go?” Abdul shouted out.

The curator sighed and continued: “Exercising control over the trade called for military power.”

            “For which the wicked race gave you, the stupid race, arms to kill, maim, disperse and capture each other,” Abdul came in again, evoking murmurs of approval from the visitors.

The curator’s face took on a shocked look and her lips trembled slightly. “Three kingdoms here were involved in the slave trade: Allada, Xwéda and Dahomey.”

“Cursed be them and their generations forever!” someone bawled.

The curator seemed to nod. “For decades, those three kingdoms fought each other bitterly to have the control over the trade. As you already know, Dahomey won the decisive battle characterized by violent appropriation and complete destruction and wrenched the trade from Allada and Xwéda and monopolized it as from 1727. The ensuing wealth enabled the kings of Dahomey to maintain a high level of centralization of power and regional domination never attained by their predecessors.”

“May the descendants of those kings pay for the heinous crime of their ancestors,” a Haitian boomed.

While the Diaspora visitors whispered fiercely among themselves, some of the local people frowned and the others, including Quenum, lowered their heads.

“The impact of the slave trade was not only socio-political but also on the individual and family levels, it affected many African lives.”

The visitors shook their heads sadly.

“The kingdoms and the African slave dealers obtained their booty through wars and raids right up to the interior of the continent. The coastal people only sold theirs involved in certain offences and crimes. So captured, like animals, the enslaved Africans were chained, beaten, abused and driven to the coast, equally like beasts.”

The sobs began again.

“Here, they were kept in narrow lodgings …”

“Why?” a woman cried out.

“Marked with hot irons …”

“No!” another woman cried out and began to tremble.

“ … before being dragged to the ships which hauled them away forever.”

A woman intoned a sad song.

“Apart from the death toll at each level of the diabolical chain of the slave trade up to the coast, up to a third of the slaves died on the ships before they reached the New World. Over there, as you know, the Africans were resold to work as plantation laborers, carpenters or blacksmiths or as house slaves.”

The curator now led them to inspect exhibits such as historical illustrations, artistic works, and archeological findings, showing the way the enslaved Africans were treated by their African capturers and dealers, the European traders, during the Atlantic crossing, and on arrival in the New World. The visitors spent some time with an artistic depiction of Africans in chains and coffles being marched to the coast, image calcined on wood by the artist Gouvide; and more time commenting on a real chain used to restrict the movement of the slaves while they were being loaded on board the slave ship. Abdul wondered how many Africans that rusting iron tool, looking like elongated rings of a necklace, had shackled and a sigh escaped from his nose while his head bobbed from side to side. The curator had a hard time getting them to the next section dedicated to the vodoun. 

“The Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah throws some light on the practise of the Vodoun here nowadays and in the past with the exhibition of cultural objects discovered during archeological search, those used at the worship of the gods, the veneration of the ancestors and for divination purposes, and photographs of sacred ceremonies of the local religious traditions.”

The visitors nodded slightly, apparently not yet shirked of the emotion of the former section.

“Ouidah is indisputably the most important center of voodoo in Bénin, certainly in West Africa, and probably in the whole world. Unquestionably it is the birthplace of Vodoun, the original Fon word for the rite. Maybe it was to express this privileged position of Ouidah that the first world festival of Voodoo art and culture was held here in 1992. Also, in recognition of the importance of Voodoo in our society, 10^th January, the day of the annual festival of Voodoo in Ouidah, was made a national holiday.”

“All this would have been appreciated if Ouidah hadn’t been a damn slave state,” a Haitian muttered.

The curator nodded quietly.

 “Not all of us liked that holiday granted animists by Soglo,” a local visitor who described himself as a born-again Christian, complained.

“He’s talking about the former president, Nicéphore Dieudonné Soglo, under whose presidency the holiday was voted into law,” Jocelyne explained for the foreign visitors. “You know, my brother,” she spoke to the local visitor, “The Christians have their holidays, the Moslems also. Officially there are three major religious practices in Benin; isn’t it democratic to observe a holiday for the adepts of traditional religions too?”

“Maybe,” the man confessed. “But I don’t like the idea.”

“How can you embrace national holidays for the feasts of foreign religions but disdain that of the local one?” the Beninese-looking Haitian chided.

“I’ve the right to like or refuse,” the local man retorted, raising murmurs of disapproval.

“Please, continue,” someone advised the curator in a vexed tone.

Smiling, she nodded.

“The way Vodoun is practised in Benin and the objects used in the rites have not changed in centuries. What has changed about it is the diminishing number of followers under the onslaught of Christianity and Islam, especially in the urban areas.”

“Thank God,” the born-again local Christian visitor hailed.

“Nevertheless, these two monotheistic beliefs have not succeeded in signing the death warrant of the Vodoun.”

“Thank the ancestors,” another local visitor praised and laughter rang out.

“But Christianity will, one day,” the other local man came in again, evoking hard laughter.

“But Islam will be the ultimate winner,” Abdul affirmed and that generated a debate.

“Maybe that guy’s a newly converted Christian,” Quenum whispered into Abdul’s ears; “especially to one of the Pentecostal Churches.”

Abdul nodded-shrugged.

“The followers of the Vodoun are called Vodounsi,” the curator continued. “They adore a multitude of independent divinities and the spirits of the dead. For a variety of wishes, such as protection against enemies and witchcraft or help to overcome them, to win a lawsuit, success at an examination, for the favor of the vodoun, successful undertaking of a business or an important undertaking, help in finding a spouse, to drive away or overcome an evil spirit, successful marriage, childbirth, help in finding a job, to gain one’s love or to make a lover submissive, punishment for wrongdoers, prevention or cure against a disease or lunacy, or protection against charms, poisoning and deadly weapons …”

“Yeah?” someone cut in.

The curator nodded while the local Christian preached. “ … one approached the Vodounsi to intercede on their behalf with the Vodoun or the ancestors.”

“Does it work?” an African American woman asked doubtfully.

“Vodoun and ancestral worship wouldn’t have lasted all these centuries if they didn’t,” the curator said.

“Only Jesus Christ saves,” the local Christian man came in truculently and Abdul and Quenum stared at each other with amused looks and tittered while some of the visitors murmured their disapproval.

“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved,” he added defiantly.

“Amen!” somebody answered humorously and smiling, the curator continued.

“To be close to them, the worshippers use the sea, the moon, the sun, trees, fire, iron, soil, and even a disease—smallpox—to represent them. Special mention must be made of the serpent-god Dan or Dangbé, whose ancestors were the python and is still represented by this snake, and is highly revered here in Ouidah just as it was done in the kingdom of Xwéda.”

Their eyes meeting, Quenum fluttered his eyebrows at Abdul to inquire if he would now like to visit the Temple des Pythons and Abdul shook his head firmly. Quenum tittered with some embarrassment.

“In addition to having their own priests,” Jocelyne continued, “each divinity is worshipped with specific liturgical objects and strict religious practices.”

The local Christian man muttered something under his breath in the Fon language and Abdul raised his eyebrows at Quenum.

“It’s the old thing,” Quenum said through a quaint smile. “He’s asking people to turn away from dirty spirits.”

Abdul’s eyelids jacked up a little higher and shaking his head in amusement, turned his attention back to the curator.

“At specific moments, big ceremonies are held for the Vodoun. The followers put on rich clothing, decorate their bodies, and sing and dance to the sound of instruments such as drums and small bells.”

“Sounds colorful,” someone said.

“Sure is,” the curator affirmed.

“Besides the worshipping of the ancestors and the Vodoun, divinatory science is also practised here with special instruments and techniques. This enables people to find out any matter hidden to them or what awaits them in the future.”

It interested Abdul to find out where his people came from in Africa or his future on the continent, but he pushed it aside for lack of time. He could come back.

The curator now invited the visitors to inspect the large number of objects of ancestral veneration, Vodoun worship as well as instruments of divination. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, the Christian local man stomped out of the group. What most interested Abdul were Bochio, a wooden statuette said to possess powers, used by the followers of the Vodoun to negotiate with the divinities of the worship and a cylindrical divination board with decorated edges which is used with other objects such as shells, larges grains, or flour to predict the future.

“You can join us now,” the curator shouted to the Christian man who leaned against a wall far away. “We’re now going to see the cultural links between Benin and the New World,” and the visitors burst into laughter.

The man shambled toward them, murmuring anathemas about the Vodoun.

“In this last section you will see photographs and works which will let you appreciate how Benin’s culture, exported to the New World by the slaves, influenced the society over there and inversely how the massive repatriation of former slaves from Brazil had an impact on Benin’s culture.”

            While the visitors beamed with pleasure at this mixture, Abdul felt sad: why didn’t this happen to his people?

            “On arrival in the Caribbean islands and in the Americas, the slaves kept up a certain number of habits they had in the ancestral home.”

“No triumph for the agadia tree,” Abdul sang and Quenum gave him a high five.

“They mixed the African languages with the European, producing Creole; they prepared food in the same way they did in Africa; and especially they maintained certain religious practices or, as in the case of languages, mixed them with that of the new home. For artistic creations, nothing reflected their African traditions more than in this regard. In the case of Benin, these strong cultural links can best be observed in Haiti, Cuba and Brazil.”

The Haitian visitors nodded vigorously.

“Even today, the same religious practices and the same types of food can be found on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The Haitians nodded again, proud looks on their dark faces.

“After staying in the New World, the slaves forcibly learnt and took on certain new habits. Therefore when descendants of some former slaves were repatriated here, they brought back some new ways of doing ways. The most visible influence is in the architectural styles of buildings. Porto Novo, our nation’s capital, and Ouidah here, have several examples of such buildings erected in Afro-Brazilian architecture. Certain religious practices found here were also brought here by the returnees.”—Eyebrows raised, Abdul glanced at Quenum who nodded eagerly— “The most interesting example is the worshipping of the water goddess Mamiwata, always represented by a snake.”—Abdul and Quenum nodded at each other—“This practice was imported from Brazil and has attracted many followers, even up to today.”

“I never even suspected this,” Abdul said in an undertone.

“It’s true.”

The visitors glided alongside photographs, costumes, objects and models, allowing them to appreciate more about the cultural exchange between Benin and the New World. Abdul was particularly fascinated by the costume of Mamiwata worn by the dancers who incarnate the goddess. It was made of brightly colored silk or lace material consisting of a top arm-length blouse in which red and dark colors predominate and a dress displaying a strong yellow color. The white model of mamiwata wearing the dress held a green python—wrapped around her waist—in her outstretched arms.

“That’s all we have for you in the Musée d’Histoire de Ouidah,” the curator said with a bright smile. “I hope you enjoyed it and wish you happy stay in Benin, safe journey back to your homes, and look forward to seeing you soon in our museum again. Thank you.”

“Thanks too,” most of the visitors whispered back and began to file away.

Abdul pulled Quenum towards the curator.

“I’m going back to Togo today,” he said to the curator. “Could you tell me where I can find vestiges of the slave trade?”

            “In the south I can think of eight places,” she said. “Atoêta, the only village founded in Togo by an Afro-Brazilian; Aneho, Glidji, Nimagna and Agbodrafo, all in the Ge country; also Goumoukope, Klouvidonnou, and maybe Anfoin. These are the localities in the south where the slave left the most impact in Togo. The vestiges there are not developed however. Those worth visiting are maybe Atoêta, Nimagna, and Agbodrafo.” The curator noted the places as well as a name and a telephone number on a piece of paper and handing it to Abdul, said: “This guy at Aneho, who is a historian and an anthropologist, is very knowledgeable in such matters at Aneho and its surrounding areas. He’d gladly take you round for a small fee.”

Quenum craned his neck and read the name Lonlon Locoh in a whisper before Abdul slid the paper into his purse and they left.

“Look at poverty everywhere,” Abdul blurted out between clenched teeth as they passed through rundown neighborhoods. “What did the slave trade benefit the African accomplices?”

“The Atlantic slave trade couldn’t profit them,” Quenum said. “Nineteen men for instance, were worth a canon which, worse, causes more destruction. No wonder the slave trade ruined Africa demographically, politically, economically, historically, socially, morally, and religiously. The European slave trade was truly genocide and a crime against humanity. Therefore, we think we have the right to claim acknowledgement of the many harms done Africa and its peoples and consequently demand the corresponding reparations.”

Abdul stopped. “I’m not much in favour of this idea of reparations for the slave trade except maybe for Diaspora Africans of slave parentage.”

“What do you mean?” Quenum queried, his voice rising an octave, as Abdul started off.

“It was the Africans who exploded the slave trade out of proportion by going to the hinterlands to hunt for people to become captives they sold to the European slave traders who stayed in the castles and forts on the coasts. Who then should indemnify who and who should be compensated?”

Eyes folded into the sockets, Quenum chewed his lips. “That’s true but who brought the idea of deporting Africans to the New World?”

“You know the answers as much as I do.”

“To the question who was responsible for the coming of the transatlantic slave trade, the answer is clearly the European slavers. The African rulers were mere accomplices,” Quenum added and Abdul stared sharply at him forcing him to add quickly, “Of course that was most unfortunate since the African peoples became the sole victims. But since when has the accomplice become even as guilty as the perpetrator of a crime?”

“Another question is were the Africans just victims of the slave trade or were they conscious and consenting partners?”

“I must admit that that question is a controversial one and has always generated heated debate concerning the part played by Africans in the slave trade. For a long time, the European slave-traders hid behind two arguments that the slaves they bought were war captives who were wasted and that had they not bought them as slaves from Africans, the Arabs who were already doing so would have continued in that way. But African intellectuals contend that, just like today, the Europeans always resorted to violence to get the Africans to co-operate with them against their will. This is what prompted the British historian Basil Davidson to argue that the assertion that Europe imposed the slave trade on Africa is as baseless as the European argument that institutions of bondage were peculiar to Africa.”

“This means that the two sides were guilty.” Abdul said.

“Of course,” Quenum agreed. “But one side was more guilty than the other. And you know which.”

Abdul shrugged.

“Although Africa and Europe were jointly involved in the slave trade, the business was a one-sided relationship, founded by Europe and maintained by the threat of use of force. This is what Basil Davidson meant when he said, ‘Europe dominated the connection, shaped and promoted the slave trade, and continually turned it to European advantage and to African loss’.”
            “But why the hell did they continue participating in it for centuries?” Abdul fumed.

“At the peak of the slave trade, Africans found themselves in a dilemma, as the trade somewhat became a diabolical plot in which they had to be implicated or become its victims,” Quenum explained and Abdul pouted. “This is why almost all the lineage or state societies of the African seaboard got involved in the transatlantic slave trade.”
            “But charity begins at home: Africans must therefore acknowledge their part in the slave trade and draw the necessary conclusions. In the case of the African American, after he was freed, white America frustrated his efforts to insert himself into the society with discrimination and Jim Crow laws; it’s for these we can ask for reparation.”

“I’m sure you remember a sculpture on the slave route representing a hyena swallowing its young?”

Abdul nodded.

“It symbolises the African Chiefs who sold their own people.”

“I was glad to see Africans not eager to hide their implication in this tragedy.”

“On this subject, one of our intellectuals and politician said that the local Chiefs were less guilty than the European slavers. He argued that it wasn’t because there was Papon—a French collaborator of the Nazis—in France that the Germans should be absolved from Nazism and that France didn’t suffer from it.”

Abdul nodded quietly.

“That personality was also happy the French parliament in March 2001 recognized slavery as crime against humanity. You know, there’s no crime without reparations.”

Abdul shrugged.

They settled in the open space outside of a beer parlor and Quenum requested the unsmiling barmaid who had taken their order to tell the keeper to turn down the volume of the music.

“The confusion and the poverty among Diaspora Africans today cannot be dissociated from the centuries of slavery, racism and discrimination their ancestors went through,” Quenum said and Abdul nodded. “The level of development, or rather underdevelopment, in Africa now cannot be understood without taking into account the severe destruction of its societies and the systematic and persistent human, intellectual and cultural haemorrhaging to which this continent was subjected over centuries of trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trade. It is evident that this state of affairs is largely responsible for Africa’s economic and political retardation. This is why reparation is due us.”

Abdul huffed.

“According to the London-based Africa Reparations Movement, ARM, the fight for reparations is as old as slavery itself. But in Africa, the first international Conference on Reparations was held in December 1990 in Lagos, Nigeria. Three years later, representatives from all the African Diaspora attended the Abuja Conference in Nigeria. The Abuja Proclamation issued a call for the setting up of national reparations committees throughout Africa and the Diaspora.”

“Yeah?” Abdul said, with some interest.

Quenum nodded eagerly. “The Africa Reparations Movement itself was formed in 1993 following this Proclamation,” Quenum said and Abdul’s eyelids arched upwards. “The call for reparations gathered momentum when mobilization began before and during the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban South Africa, from 31^st August to 08^th September 2001. The founding of the ‘African and African Descendants Caucus,’ whose mandate includes the follow-up to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, the maintenance of the quest for Africa Reparations on the international agenda and ensuring that reparations are due to people of African descent strengthened the Reparations movement.”

“So we’re going to receive the monetary compensation one day,” Abdul observed.

“Reparation is not only about money.”

That peaked Abdul’s interest.

“That is what Chinweisu, a renowned reparations expert, claims. He says money doesn’t represent even one percent of what reparation is about. According to him, reparation above all concerns making repairs. Self-made repairs, on ourselves: mental repairs, psychological repairs, cultural repairs, organizational repairs, social repairs, institutional repairs, technological repairs, economic repairs, political repairs, educational repairs, repairs of every type that we need in order to recreate sustainable black societies.”

“He’s right,” Abdul said quietly.

“In the Diaspora it would mean eliminating the pockets of the exploitation and oppression and their effects that people of African descent there have been subjected to for centuries. Here on the continent, reparation will be done by the creation of viable African institutions at the structural level and concerning the individual the reinforcement of the African personality or identity.”

Abdul nodded in acquiescence.

“There is therefore the need for people of African descent, both here on the continent and over there in the Diaspora, to be freed from neo-colonial bondage and imperialist structures that oppress, exploit, and dehumanize them.”

“Interesting,” Abdul said.

“A new world international order must be put in place to allow Africa occupy its rightful place in the world. In this wise the countries which engaged in and benefited from the slave trade, slavery and colonialism will have to make reparations for those crimes against Africans. For the slaving nations we have Brandenburg-Prussia, the United States of America, Britain, Scotland, the Netherlands or Holland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Sweden, and Norway; for the countries which practiced slavery on their territories there is Venezuela, Peru, the United States of America, Argentina, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and Bolivia. Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, Granada, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago today belong to Diaspora African people and could be absolved from this payment. For the colonial states, Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal are the ones concerned.”

“What about individuals and companies?”

“I think Malcolm X answered that question in a speech he delivered on reparations on 23^rd November 1964. He estimated that if someone was the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and he inherited his father’s estate, he had to pay off the debts that his father incurred before dying.”

“That’s right.”

“He continued that the only reason the present generation of white Americans is in a position of economic strength is because their fathers had made our fathers work for them for over 400 years without paying a dime.”

“The same happened in Africa with forced labour and the plundering of natural resources.”

Quenum nodded eagerly. “My grandfather told me that during the two world wars, they were also made to contribute in kind towards the war effort, especially by bringing a certain amount of copra and other agricultural produce for export.”

“What a crazy thing to make Africans do!” Abdul sneered, foaming at the corners of his mouth. “The colonial states must pay for this as well as for their dragging us into those savage wars.”

“Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also made a case for reparations in his 1964 book, ‘Why We Can't Wait’ when he wrote that no amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America (or the Caribbean, or Brazil) down through the centuries. Although he acknowledged that not all the wealth of the affluent (American) society could meet the bill, he esteemed that a price could be placed upon unpaid wages. In this wise he reminded that the ancient common law had always provided a remedy for the appropriation of one human being by another.”

“Shouldn’t we have asked for reparation long ago?” Abdul wondered. “Since the slave trade was abolished two hundred years ago, isn’t it too late now?”

Quenum shook his head violently. “That’s what the detractors of the reparations movement will have us believe. The question is: did we refuse to ask for reparations or was it the powers that be that did not so much as dream of paying us? Note that at the abolition of slavery, the slavers were paid for the loss of their human machines and some slave trading nations for the loss of their income-generating activities. Why then weren’t we paid for the loss of our manpower and development potential and why shouldn’t we now?”

Abdul nodded solemnly.

“Besides, there is no statute of limitations under international law for capital crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping and genocide.”

Abdul’s head bobbed again.

“If people of African origin are still smarting from racism it was not only because their ancestors were enslaved in certain countries but also because enslavement was replaced with discrimination which continues up to this day, even if in subtle forms, thus blocking all chances of black people to remake their lives.”

Abdul thumbed Quenum who, grinning, thumbed him back.

“Just as Diaspora Africans have the right to reparation because of those reasons, Africans here also have the same rights because the enslavement of our common ancestors was followed with colonisation of our fathers and the end of colonialism by neo-colonisation of us.”

“Lord, how wicked they have been to us!” Abdul’s voice sounded strangled.

“Yes. While African Americans emerged out of slavery 141 years ago and active discrimination just 42 years ago, most African countries and Black countries in the Diaspora only came out of colonialism some 46 years ago; and even some countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Djibouti attained their national independence only in the mid seventies. As for South African blacks, they were saved from the ugly clutches of apartheid only a few years back.”

Abdul lowered his head, and shaking it slowly, sighed loudly.

“Monetary compensation as well as apology are therefore due us for crimes of slavery, discrimination, racism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and apartheid.”

“You’re right, brother,” Abdul said to Quenum’s satisfaction.

“Blacks in America still suffer from the ravages of slavery.”

“You’re right, brother.”

“One doesn’t have to look further than America’s racist institutions and policies and the systemic segregation and ghettoization of African American communities.”

Abdul nodded quietly in agreement.

“That can also be seen in US state terror unleashed on African Americans as police brutality, state-sanctioned murder of African-American activists (especially during the civil rights era) and the lynching of wrongly convicted African American inmates placed on death row. In this wise, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, NCOBRA, observed at its 13^th annual convention that the fight against terrorist oppression that had begun with enslavement continues to this day in the targeting of African peoples for police stops and subsequent police brutality, torture, and even murder; and also the continued denial of equal access to housing, education, health care, and the use of punishment and unequal justice.”

Abdul saw the whole system which had disillusioned him about America passing infront of his inner eyes and his legs began to shake in irritation.

“The Prison-Industrial-Complex, with the complicity of the racist US criminal justice system, keeps one in three young African American and Latino men, either in prison, on probation or on parole, helping American corporations to reap huge profits from it.” 

Abdul sighed hard.

“Reparations are due for these crimes, my brother.”

Abdul nodded, almost remorsefully.

“The America government will accomplish reparation by abolishing racism, dismantling its racist institutions, halting its racist practices, restoring civil liberties for blacks, closing down the prison-industrial complex, quashing the racist death penalty, and releasing political prisoners among whom members of the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army and the Republic of New Afrika.”

Abdul nodded, as if in a trance.

“NCOBRA also estimates that reparations for African Americans would mean for the United States and its government to admit and banish the acts of terror against African American communities and make the monetary compensation for the repairing and the rebuilding of African American communities. In sum, reparations in America are about the ways and means of making up for inequalities of all sorts resulting from slavery and discrimination in order to build vibrant black civil society, elimination of poverty, racism, state terror and the transformation of inner city ghettoes.”

“That’s right.”

“Here, economic reparations to undo past and present harm to Africa caused by the west would entail the dismantling of the neo-colonial system; the cancellation of the external debts strangling African economies and the pumping in of fresh generous development aid which should no longer be regarded as some form of help but legitimate compensation to give the economies life for the possibility of human, intellectual, demographic, social, cultural, economic, and moral development that Africa lost in those four centuries of horror and thereafter, two centuries of deceit; transfer of technology from the west; aid for rapid industrial development; investment in the social infrastructure and a global campaign to reduce or eradicate the ravages of pandemic diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS.”

“Right on.”

“It goes without saying that the explanation for all the major problems currently facing Africa can be found in the brutal blood-letting and unprecedented violence of the transatlantic slave trade. These include economic underdevelopment, tribal hatred, a certain culture of violence, psychological trauma, the disintegration of society and family, etc. Historical repairs would involve giving the historicity of the Africa continent its due by reinserting Africa’s glorious past before the coming of the Europeans in the 14^th century and our bitter experiences from that moment up to today back into the world’s history books.”

“I agree with you.”

“Political repairs would necessitate the elimination of all forms of African state terror. Reactionary, tyrannical African regimes imposed on their countries and backed by western nations have unleashed and continue to heap savage brutalities on millions of poor Africans in a frenzied, even schizophrenic, attempt to protect so-called western interests in Africa. The crack down by such despotic regimes on legitimate dissidence and their curtailment of civil and political liberties through terror tactics such as arbitrary imprisonment, exile, torture, silence, ideological drugging, political assassination, single party dictatorship, Mickey mouse elections and vote rigging have done much harm to this continent and its peoples.”

“The aim of neo-colonialist western powers in propping up these diabolical regimes was to grow fat on African natural resources and for Africans never to be happy.”

“They will have to pay for this crime against us,” Quenum blurted out.

“Yes, especially since legal precedents exist for reparations claims.”

“Yes, there are many cases of reparations paid to countries and individuals for crimes committed against them,” Quenum said. “The one which prominently comes to mind is the state of Israel, to which Germany pays millions every year as reparations for the near genocide of Jewish people under Nazi rule.”

“That’s a good example, since we also suffered a near-genocide based on race.”

Quenum nodded. “The Koreans too received reparations from the Japanese for the cruelties they suffered during World War Two; the Maoris of New Zealand have been compensated for colonial crimes perpetrated against them during British rule; Native Americans by the US for similar crimes; Japanese Americans for imprisonment during the Second World War by the Roosevelt administration; the United Kingdom has been paid by the Japanese for the mistreatment of British prisoners during World War II; Germany even has not yet finished paying France monetary compensation for damages she suffered during World War II; in Canada, reparations were paid slave owners for the loss of their human chattel and slave labour following the abolition of slavery. Curiously the victims of slavery were sidelined. Nearer to us in time, the United Nations ordered Iraq to pay reparations to Kuwait for attacking it during the Gulf war. Everybody has been paid, and it irks me to know that we are still ignored for the greatest crime against humanity.” Quenum’s voice rose.

“It’s because we’re black and ignored,” Abdul said. “The wretched of the earth, thank you Franz Fanon,” he added emotionally. The discrimination continues; we’re still looked down upon.”

“All that childish hide-n-seek game playing must come to an end!”

“Yeah,” Abdul said, embarrassed now at having refused reparations for Africans.

“And it’s coming to an end, even if slowly,” Quenum assured. “Activists in the US have been busy taking legal action to address the issue of reparations. In New York and New Jersey in 2002, lawsuits were filed against corporations that profited from the slave trade. One class action lawsuit filed in Brooklyn, N.Y., named Fleet Boston Financial, an offshoot of a bank established by a merchant whose ships transported African slaves; an insurance company, Aetna, that encouraged slave owners to insure their human property to protect their investment in case of the slaves dying; and CSX which was born of a company that used slave labor to build railroad lines.”

“Yeah, the heat is on.”

“Yes, it will be laid on many other corporations and institutions in America that have benefited from slavery.”

“Yes, they can run but they can’t hide,” Abdul almost sang the words.

“Political activist and attorney Roger Wareham who filed the lawsuit on behalf of all African Americans claimed it was not about demanding monetary compensation for the descendants of African slaves in the U.S. yet he assured that any money won from the lawsuit would go to a collective fund to help improve housing, health care and education of African Americans.”

“I agree with him.”

"Wareham assures that our strength is that the reparations lawsuit is part of a movement. The stronger the movement, the greater the possibility of the success of the suit.”

“That’s right.”

“According to him the most important thing is the success of the movement and the suit is just another part of that river of struggle that we are involved in.”

“I heard fleetingly about those class action suits when I was staying in New Orleans, Louisiana, but I couldn’t follow to know what came out of them.”

“A Federal judge dismissed them on 28^th January 2004 but the door is still open for plaintiffs to file an amended complaint.”

“Good,” Abdul said, keeping the idea in mind.

“Backing the reparations lawsuits is a good way of bolstering the movement, but a better way of giving it visibility is organising public rallies since they send a vivid and an instantaneous message to the public. An example was the ‘Millions for Reparations’ national rally jointly called in Washington, D.C., on August 17, 2002 by the December 12^th Movement and the National Black United Front to coincide with the 115^th anniversary of Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey's birth. This clearly showed that the movement was growing in all directions. Yet we need intense mobilizing, lobbying, agitating and negotiating. Meanwhile another important milestone in the fight for reparations was the call in October 2002, by the Congress Against Racism Barbados Inc, of the African and African Descendants World Conference Against Racism (AAD-WCAR), a follow-up to the Durban WCAR conference.”

Abdul thumbed Quenum for the depth of his knowledge.

“Let’s hope that the global justice movement will take up the demand for Africa reparations so that the culprits of slavery, racial discrimination, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and apartheid are finally held accountable and made to pay reparations that are too long overdue.”

Amen! Abdul said and they laughed.

The barmaid soon brought the drinks.

“Cheers!” Abdul and Quenum said cheerfully and clinked glasses.

“Can we talk about UNESCO’s Slave Route Project?” Abdul asked.

“Yes,” Quenum said.

“Before we come back to our subject, what do you think about it?” Abdul said and listened intently to Quenum.

            “I think the initiative which follows on naturally from the United Nations Year for Tolerance is laudable since it seeks to spread awareness and bring out more detailed information about the various aspects of the slave trade. It also wants to enable the actors of the trade and other people to come to terms with this tragedy, and in so doing strengthen co-operation among them.”
            Abdul nodded.

            “The Slave Route Project also aims at arousing interest in or increasing demand for original documents on slavery and the slave trade. In this regard, it wishes to encourage the repositories of such records not only to preserve them but also allow access to them. For the repositories to be able to do this, UNESCO will assist them to upgrade their preservation capabilities as well as identify, process, and create finding aids and catalogues for the material. UNESCO is also keen on assisting the repositories in acquiring microfilm, electronic or photocopies of complimentary records in the possession of other repositories.”
            “Sounds really laudable.”

            “Materials that reveal African and African American self-initiated activities and African-derived individual and group behaviors are high prized on the UNESCO Slave Route Project research agendas.”

            “I see.”

            “I’m sure that the Slave Route Project will make us better understand the origins of slavery, the slave trade, the slave system, the problems created by enslavement, the role of the descendants of slaves in their respective countries and, above all, the place of history in the shaping of national identity in societies that practiced slavery.”

“I think this is an important project,” Abdul said it like a prayer.

“Yeah,” Quenum agreed. “It is important because generally the relations between the white slaver and the enslaved African have thrust virtually all the descendants of the latter into a position of underdevelopment and disadvantage.”

“That’s right,” Abdul said, almost trancelike.

“Poverty, violence, neglect, sickness, lack of education, inexistence of social cohesiveness, absence of social security and the loss of a sense of national solidarity among the children of former slaves makes it imperative to find practical ways of ensuring them a sense of their humanity and of belonging.”
            Sighing, Abdul straightened himself and said, “This project amply describes us. I wish I could take part in it.” He took a long drink and sighed with pleasure. “Now, let’s get back to our subject.”

After taking a long draught and sighing with pleasure too, Quenum licked the foam off his lips, the upper ones joined to the sides of his nose by a deep groove. “I guess we were talking about some anti-slavery African monarchs?” Quenum said and Abdul nodded. “I’ve already mentioned Queen Njingha Mbandi of Ndongo in Angola in the seventeenth century, King Agaja Trudo of Dahomey in the eighteenth century and King Afonso (Nzinga Mbemba) of Kongo in the sixteenth century. In letters he wrote to King João III of Portugal, King Afonso blamed Portuguese goods brought into his kingdom for fueling the slave trade there and implored the Portugal monarch to stop that and instead send missionaries.”

Abdul tittered. “He didn’t know how important slavery was for the Portuguese.”

“He wrote in one of his letters: Each day the traders are kidnapping our people - children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves.”

Wishful thinking, Abdul thought.

“When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote to King João III on October 18, 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice: Many of our subjects eagerly lust after Portuguese merchandise that your subjects have brought into our domains. To satisfy this inordinate appetite they seize numbers of our free or freed black subjects, and even nobles, sons of nobles, even the members of our own family ... They sell them. After having taken these prisoners [to the coast] secretly or at night..... As soon as the captives are in the hands of white men they are branded with a red-hot iron.”

Abdul closed his eyes and sighed.

“Concerning Agaja Trudo of Dahomey, and Nzingha Mbandi of Ndongo in Angola;” he continued. “in 1726 the King of Dahomey suggested that Europeans establish plantations in his kingdom for which he would supply the slaves. In the Congo region a Sonyo prince who was captured was returned with apologies when the Sonyo people refused to trade from then on with the Dutch. People of Ghanaian descent, like Tacky, Albert Sam, Quamina, Cudjoe, and Adoe were recognized as rebel slave leaders. The Jola of Casamance and the Baga (modern Guinea, renowned for being unbeatable in battle) refused to negotiate with Europeans at all. Coming back to rulers; from 1472 to 1484, Fante ruler, King Ansah in present-day Ghana, stood up against slave traders; Queen Nzingha of Angola even declared war against all slave traders in 1626 and continued to resist them after that; and in 1787 the King of Almammy, a Senegalese monarch, banned the slave trade in his kingdom.”

“Yet resistance to slavery, the anti-slavery movement, and abolition are little known facts of slavery,” Abdul said. “All people heard about were Sambo and Uncle Tom.”

“Although the Atlantic Slave Trade whisked away millions of Africans over four centuries, it will not reflect reality to think that this forced migration over such a long period went on unopposed. The enslaved African was not so subservient. That was why Captain Philip Drake, a slaver for 50 years wrote that slavery was a dangerous business at sea as well ashore. And in 1776 a certain Edward Long also wrote that Africans committed many acts of violence, including murdering whole crews and destroying ships when they had the opportunity to do so.”

“Goddamn this Long guy,” Abdul cursed. “Acts of violence, my foot. All that this evil Long guy is saying is that Africans should have submitted quietly to slavery.”

Quenum nodded.

“What the hell didn’t he see acts of legitimate resistance for what they were?”

A faint smile crossed Quenum’s face. “That was the oppressor’s opinion; or the desire not to admit the truth. But determined captives ignored the cannons pointed at the boarded exits spiked with chevaux-de-frise and a cushion of nails and used makeshift arms to attack the armed sentries keeping close watch over them; and when they succeeded in leaving the ship’s hold, they didn’t spare the life of a single member of crew.”

“Of course!”

“Knowing that their death was certain under such circumstances, the attention of the Europeans never wandered from the exits, the slaves were always kept in chains, and the master shipwright checked the iron chains everyday. And any attempt at revolt was quelled mercilessly to serve as a deterrent to the others.”

“Yet the insurrections continued.”

“Yes, forcing the insurance companies to introduce a new kind of insurance for the slave ships: insurrection insurance.”

“Mao Tsetung explained this situation of rebellion succinctly,” Abdul said happily. “He says that where there is oppression there is resistance also.”

“Of course,” Quenum agreed heartily, “Oppression breeds resistance.”

“Yet these acts of bravery on the high seas represent only one hidden chapter in the history of the daring African rebellion, revolt, and every other kind of resistance to the savage, racist, evil slave trade on the high seas which include 150 recorded rebellions at sea during what W. E. B. Dubois called the murderous trade.”

“Yes, resistance took place at various levels of the chain of slavery: from the zone of capture in Africa, during the forced march from inland to the coast, at the shore in Africa, on the high seas during the Middle Passage, at sight of coast at the New World, and at the area of slavery in the New World itself.”

 “I was thrilled to hear in Ghana that resistance to slavery began in Africa even before the inception of the transatlantic slave trade,” Abdul announced, took another draught and refilled his glass. “When the Portuguese first began grabbing Africans in the early 15^th century by their filhamento system, the Africans reacted by attacking and murdering any Portuguese they saw.”

Quenum nodded. “Nobody likes to lose his freedom. When in 1516 the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, authorised slave-raiding expeditions to Central America, one group of slaves aboard a Spanish caravel rebelled and killed the Spanish crew before sailing home.”

Abdul clapped and took a happy swig.

“This was the first successful slave rebellion recorded in the New World.”

“But that didn’t teach the sons of vipers any lesson.”

“No. Even the monarchy that caught and sold slaves sometimes acted contrary to the good of the slave trade. For example, Agaja who reigned in Dahomey from 1708-1732 grabbed Allada in 1724, and Ouidah in 1727 and ravaged the trading posts erected on the Slave Coast by the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and the English. But as I said earlier, like elsewhere, slavery existed in Africa even before Europeans set foot on our continent. It was the scale and the totally inhumane nature of the European trade which let all hell break loose.”

“The biggest hell was the bringing in of firearms by Europeans in exchange for slaves and to be used in hunting for more of them.” Abdul shook his head sadly and took a quick sip as if to wash off his gloom.

“Yes, the Turks too supplied arms to Africans. For example, from 1580 to 1617 the most popular Bornu ruler, Mai Idris Alooma, purchased firearms from the Ottoman Turks. This was terrible for at its pinnacle, Kanem-Bornu controlled the eastern Saharan routes to Egypt, before entering a slow decline by the middle of the 17^th century. The availability of large quantities of firearms, especially in the 19^th century, severely changed the nature of the relationship between Africans, especially antagonistic ones or strong and weak neighbors. Whichever group had European firearms could considerably upset the balance of power and reduce the unfortunate neighbor to slaves. But even that did not dissuade our people from resisting slave raiders. Admiral Sir John Hawkins learnt that bitter lesson when he went up the Sierra Leone River in 1564 on his second slaving expedition.”

Abdul set down his glass and leant forward.

“Towards 1559, John Hawkins got the green light from the British Crown—which had just emancipated itself from the supervision of the Vatican following the reformation—to engage in the slave trade.”

“Can you imagine the height of hypocrisy of these people?” Abdul cried. “The British Crown, after emancipating itself from the Vatican, did not hesitate to subjugate other people.”

“It’s always that way. Oppression tastes bitter if one has to endure it but one relishes it if one subjected the other to it. May we never do it one day.”

Abdul raised his dripping glass to Quenum. They cheered and took long sips.

“Coming back to our friend Hawkins …”

“Whose friend?” Abdul asked seriously. “Maybe yours, but not mine.”

Laughing together, Quenum, who was shaking his head, said: “Okay, our fiend.”

“Well said.” Abdul raised his cup to Quenum again.

“He reached Sierra Leone in 1562 and bought 300 slaves that he sold in Hispaniola. This success spurred Queen Elizabeth to finance his next expedition by putting a ship, Jesus of Lubeck, at his disposal.”

Abdul’s eyes widened and a triumphant smile lit up his face. “Yeah,” he said with pride, “that the Queen of England participated in the slave trade and even gave a slave trader a ship with Jesus’ name on it are the facts that our people must know so that it’s the other who henceforth must hang down his head in shame while we must raise ours with pride.”

Quenum nodded vigorously. “Hawkins sailed calmly up the river to repeat his earlier feat. But a band of Africans launched a surprise attack on him and his party, chasing them right up to their boats and hacking to pieces those they caught up with.”

Abdul clapped, drained his cup, poured himself a frothing glass of bubbling golden Castel beer, and chinked glasses once more with a not less tickled Quenum. “Right from the building of forts on the coastlines, West Africans proved that they did not accept European intrusion. Hence the presence of armed soldiers to provide security for the construction of those God-forsaken places called forts or castles whose real missions Europeans usually hid from the autochthons when asking for land. Still Africans constantly launched attacks against those cursed buildings.”

“In the same way enslaved Africans were far less docile than Europeans thought them to be.”

“It’s damn racist to think so lowly of us.”

“Yes,” Quenum agreed. “While Europeans thought so debasingly of us, our people acted otherwise. For example Europeans resorted to slaving from their ships thinking that was safe. But a man known only as the brother of Captain Ingledieu discovered otherwise when some eighty Africans pounced on his sloop.”

Grinning, Abdul raised his sweating cup dripping with water. “This is to those brave ancestors,” he said with pride and they clinked glasses and took long draughts.

“Yes, obtaining slaves was not like grabbing a fowl and carrying it calmly away in one’s armpit,” Quenum said.

“Even a fowl in this situation squawks and flaps its wings.”

“Yeah!” Grinning, Quenum gave Abdul a high five. “So you see, no easy task for slavers then. Men, women and children would often respond to capture with shrieks, cries, or by singing mournful songs. Others hung themselves to escape the bonds of slavery, believing that death would transport them back to their homeland. In West Africa however a number of ethnic groups shunned the slave trade, including the Jola of Casamance and the unconquerable Baga in modern-day Guinea. Others devised methods to keep their people from being kidnapped by slave raiders.”

A smile lit up Abdul’s sunken-in face. “This was the case of a great king who built two walls around his village in the Gwollu area in the Sisala West District of present-day Ghana to prevent his people from being kidnapped when they went to farm, or to fetch firewood from the bush and water from ponds. I visited the wall almost two and half weeks ago.”

“Yeah?” Quenum marveled, respect gleaming in his curious eyes. “Wow! You saw history with your own eyes.”

Abdul nodded proudly.

“Wow!” Quenum sighed lengthily and gave Abdul a high five. Then he continued: “While the King or Oba allowed slave trading in Benin—in today’s Nigeria—in the early 16^th century, after 1530 the monarch realized this was draining the kingdom of male manpower and banned it. Soon pepper and elephant tusks became the main export items.”

If only all African monarchs had reacted in that way! Abdul thought wistfully.

“This was also the case of Afonso I, King of the Congo when, seeing the slave trade undermining his authority and the wealth of his kingdom, wrote to the King of Portugal, João III, on October 18, 1526, to help him banish the slave trade. Nasr al-Din, a Muslim leader and reformer, denounced slavery to the people of Senegal in the 1670’s and banned the sale of slaves to Christians.”

“Only to Christians?” astonishment colored Abdul’s voice.

Quenum nodded.

Abdul puffed.

“Not even all the captains of slave ships accepted the enslavement of Africans.”

Abdul looked up with a furrowed brow.

“A certain Captain Thomas Phillips, in his autobiography published in 1694, stated that whites were biased in their judgment that they were superior to blacks.”

“But I bet he continued to transport the poor slaves across the Atlantic,” Abdul said contemptuously.

“Possibly. Kidnapping was one of the strategies of slave raiders. As late as 1824 the Commissioner for Sierra Leone revealed that as a result of that technique for obtaining slaves, the targeted groups became so wild that they didn’t hesitate to jump on any European slaver.”

A sort of the filhamento revisited, Abdul said to himself and took a quick draught.

“Millions of Africans were extracted from the so-called Grain, Ivory, Gold, and Slave Coasts …”

“Which places were so called?” Abdul wanted to know.

“The Grain Coast stretched from Cape Mesurado in present Liberia to the Cape of Palms; the Ivory Coast covered Grand Lahou in the Ivory Coast to Assini in the Gold Coast, now Ghana; the Gold Coast went from Cape Three Points to Accra or even Axim to Ada, all in today’s Ghana; and the Slave Coast comprised Keta in now Ghana to Ouidah in today’s Republic of Benin, via Aneho in modern day Togo and Grand-Popo in the Republic of Benin.”

Abdul nodded in comprehension.

“And from the Mende, Ashanti, Ibo, Yoruba, Krumen, Awikan, Mandingo, and many other peoples millions were shipped away and by inhumane methods.”

“Talking about the numbers of African captives shipped into slavery, what vexes me about it all is the wide variation in the numbers of deportees. Had our ancestors even been swine, they would certainly have counted them to the last stinking one!”

That made Quenum laugh. “You’re right,” he said. “And even where historical documents containing details about the slave trade exist,—such as shipping records which are a central source, documents relating to the running of plantations and deeds of ownership—they are not always very reliable. For instance, statistics for Arab slavery compiled by the British government after the abolition of slavery were inflated as part of the propaganda war against the Arabs in East Africa.”

“That was joking with us.”

 “Yes. And up to today a great deal of controversy still surrounds the figures for the Arab slave trade.”

Abdul sighed.

“The African historian of Congolese origin Elikia M’bokolo claimed that the Arab and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trades drained the African continent of its human resources across routes such as the Sahara, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean ports and the Atlantic. According to him the slavery carried out by the Arab-Islamic countries lasted at least ten centuries …”

“One thousand years?” Abdul howled.

“Yes, from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries.”

Abdul sighed, hard.

“Four million slaves were deported via the Red Sea, another four million exported through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million hauled along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Another historian brought up the figure of 17 million slaves, but this is for a period of thirteen centuries and covering trade in North Africa, the North East and South Africa.”

“Thirteen centuries!” Abdul howled.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Quenum said. “More appropriately more than 3,000 African slaves were exported annually towards Arab lands from East Africa in the first half of the 19^th century. In comparison, the estimate for slaves hauled across the Atlantic in the late 18^th century was at an annual rate of 44,000.”
            “The Transatlantic was a holocaust of unimaginable dimensions. Not even the deplorable failed pogrom of Jews under Nazi rule or the genocide committed by the first Europeans against the indigenous America Indians attained such proportions.”

“Figuring out the statistics in terms of the number of deaths or that of slaves taken from Africa since the 15^th century is a question of guess work. Even where figures are available, another problem is their reliability. For example, figures for the Spanish and Portuguese colonies are less reliable than those for North America. Poorly documented also is the slavery which continued in Africa in the 19^th century after it had been abolished elsewhere. The wide difference between the highest figure proposed—150 million by Duncan in 1948—and the lowest of less than 10 million advanced by some modern authors comes from the lack of population records within Africa at that time and the total disregard for African lives.”

“Shame upon European apologists of the slave trade who don’t hesitate to quote low numbers of captives landed alive in the New World of the Americas, the Atlantic islands and Europe as indicative of the number of Africans deported. Not only can there be no apology for any number of our people deported into slavery but worse, the apologists overlook: one, the numbers killed in raids to capture captives; two, those who died of exhaustion during the overland march to the coast; three, others who perished in the European dungeons at the coast; and four, an estimated twenty percent mortality rate of the human cargo in the terrible holds of the slave ships during the Atlantic crossing or the Middle Passage. How many millions perished without reaching slavery abroad?”

“Many more millions than those who got there,” Quenum interjected and Abdul nodded.

            “That should be the number of Africans removed from the continent because of the haughty naughty European wish for Africans as slaves and the subservient African complicity with this diabolic idea.”

“The brutality of the slave trade, producing most of the slaves as prisoners from wars in Africa, led to the destruction of individuals and cultures. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade thus resulted in a huge and impossible to assess loss of life for African captives both in and outside the continent. Therefore any figure offered for Africa’s population loss during the trans-Atlantic slave trade could only be approximations. Lives were lost at various levels between capture and the landing of captives in the New World. First, people got killed during raids and wars to obtain captives; second, others lost their lives from the destruction and the insecurity resulting from the violence to extract slaves; third, among those taken captive, an estimated five percent died of exhaustion, hunger, and thirst during the long march from extraction areas to the coast, sometimes over hundreds of kilometres; fourth, more captives died of exhaustion and diseases in the slave holding depots, forts, and castles of the ports of embarkation; and finally there were those who died of exhaustion, diseases, suicide, and uprising during the Atlantic crossing, estimated at thirteen percent. In the case of slaves sent to the West Indies, that is, those destined for island or South American plantations, still another thirty percent died during the three-month seasoning period at the seasoning camps scattered throughout the Caribbean. At these camps, the slaves were tortured in order to ‘break them in,’ just like the practice of breaking horses.”

Abdul shook his head sadly.

“This was meant to condition them to the harsh life they were going to face,” Quenum explained. “Jamaica held one of the most notorious of these camps. The historian Meltzer also states that thirty-three percent of Africans perished in the first year in such camps. Many slaves shipped directly to North America however did not undergo this ordeal. Still more than half of those originally captured in Africa died before they could become European slaves. It is estimated that some 8 million Africans died during their storage, shipment and initial landing in the New World. The number killed in the actual procurement of slaves is not known but may equal or exceed those actually enslaved. Hence, the total number of deaths would be between 16 and 20 million. Even this figure, high as it seems, does not tell the whole story of the human cost involved in the slave trade.”

“Nobody recorded those deaths so how do we know how many people the slave trade deprived Africa of?” Abdul fumed, his eyes shooting sparks. “If we take the figures of 150 and 10 million, are they telling us that those victims were fourteen times superior to the number of captives who arrived at destination? I’m inclined to agree with W. E. B. Dubois who gave the figure of 100 million captives, of which 40 million were extracted by the Oriental slave trade.”

“In his American Holocaust, David Stannard estimates that 50% of African deaths occurred in Africa as a result of wars between native kingdoms—which produced the majority of slaves—and forced marches from inland areas to slave ports on the various coasts. He mentioned the Kaabu, Asanteman, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala war bands as African groups which proved particularly adept and brutal at the practice of enslaving. Finally, no less than 18.3 million Africans were herded into ‘factories’ to await shipment to the New World. But for P. Curtin, the figure hovers between 8 and 10.5 million.”

“Goddman him,” Abdul cursed. “Would he have said that had the captives come from his race?”

“The Nigerian historian, Inikori, between whom and Curtin a fierce controversy flared up about these figures, gave 15.4 million.”

Abdul turned aside, gulping air like a fish out of water. What he felt choked to say was how he hated Africans who also quote low figures.

“The French historian Cathérine Coquery-Vidrovitch estimated that between 1450 and 1900, 11,698,000 Africans were sent away.”

Abdul tut-tut quietly. “Another source I read said between the years 1650 and 1900, historians estimate that at least 28 million Africans were forcibly removed from central and western Africa as slaves.”

“Olivier Petré-Grenouilleau on his part gave the equivalent of 60,000 deportees a year from 1701 to 1900.”

“That comes to … Mmm … 1900 … 1701.” Abdul thought a while, clicking his fingers in the air. “199 years; practically 200 years.” Face raised, and right fingers clicking in the air, he estimated. “So, almost 12,000,000. So, you see what I was saying? The first person estimated the number of deportees in 450 years—the entire duration of the Atlantic slave trade—to be almost 12,000,000 whilst the second gave an identical figure for less than half that period. Who is fooling who?” Abdul fumed.

Quenum nodded in agreement with the question. “Another source says that after the English had inaugurated black slavery in Virginia towards 1620, more than 2 million captives were hauled from Africa to the English colonies in America and the West Indies between 1680 and 1780.”

“A mere average of 20,000 per year,” Abdul sneered.

“But things changed towards 1790, when it is estimated that the captives brought to America and the West Indies annually could be broken down as follows: 38,000 for the English, 20,000 for the French, 10,000 for the Portuguese, and 4,000 for the Dutch.”

Abdul waved the statistics aside.

“To Coquery-Vidrovitch’s figure for the Atlantic slave trade, one must add 3.6 million for the trans-Saharan, 1.2 million for the Oriental, and 3 million for the Indian Ocean (half of whom were extracted during the 19^th century), all of which add up to 20 million.”

“Twenty million for all the slave trades Africa passed through when Dubois gave 40 million only for the Oriental is a big joke indeed!”

“What is certain is that Africa occupies a little more than 20 percent of the earth’s land surface and has approximately 20 percent of the world’s population, but the European slave trade in the 17^th century and the next will decimate the continent by getting innocent millions killed, exporting millions of human chattels and introducing new mortal diseases. From the early 16^th to the mid-19^th centuries, whether between 10 and 11 million Africans or much more were taken from their homes and dragged to a strange new land, Africa’s loss of population was catastrophic. The slave trade had the greatest impact upon central and western African. According to James Rawley, West Africa supplied three-fifths of the slaves for exportation between 1701 and 1810. If experts contest the numbers shipped away by the transatlantic slave trade in the largest forced migrations in history, what they find difficult to reject are the demographic, economic, social, political, and even religious effects of the slave trade on African societies.”

“Here too American and European historians minimize the effects of the transatlantic slave trade. What these sons of vipers are seeking to do is to let the slave trade sound less ominous and less destructive so as to soothe the conscience of the slaving nations they belong to. Can any of them dare do the same with the shoa?”

Quenum shook his head. “Any apology for slavery is indecent. Every aspect of the trade was horrible. Consider the case of bringing slaves to the coast: shackled, chained together, many of them—men, women and children—were force-marched, sometimes for 1000 miles, to the crackling sound of whips and the barking of insults, right down to the slave holding centers on the coast. Two out of five people could not survive the death march.”

“That’s not surprising,” Abdul said calmly. “The distance, the thirst, the hunger, the whips, the insults, the loss of freedom for no reason, these were enough to hack anybody off from life.”

“Raymond Jalama, a merchant of Luanda in the late 18^th century, noted that almost half of the captives from the inland dropped dead before the caravan reached the coast. Those who survived were by miracle.”

Abdul nodded vigorously.

“Mungo Park, a European traveler in Africa observed that a woman named Nealee being marched to the Coast to be sold got ill and refused to walk any further. The drivers lifted her onto a donkey but the animal threw her off, breaking her leg. Every attempt to carry her forward having failed, the coffle—slave caravan—began shouting: ‘kang-tegi, kang-tegi,’ meaning ‘cut her throat, cut her throat.’

Abdul recoiled as if something was about to strike his face and buried his forehead in his clasped fingers and shook it.

“Shameful that we were so mean to each other,” Quenum said in a trembling voice.

Surprised, Abdul lifted his head to see tears hugging Quenum’s eyes. He wiped off his own.

“Mungo Park said Nealee was left by the road to die.”

“My God,” Abdul roared, lifted the glass, set it down again and then stared unseeingly into the distance.

“Certainly not everybody in Nealee’s group reached the coast, but for those who did that was not the end of the rebellion.”

“Yes, rebellion on the African coast was the most frequent and the most fearsome.”

Quenum nodded. “And for a very good reason! If up to the coast the captured African had any hope of returning home or at least remaining on African soil, he knew leaving the shores of Africa was the end of his dreams. The despair of leaving the land one was seeing, the horrible treatment meted out to captives, the hope of recovering one’s freedom, the packing together of a large number of captives in a small area, the action of a leader, any of these led to rebellion.”

“Also, traumatized by the savage capture, the death march, and the harsh detention on the coast in the European slave factories of the fortified islands and coastal forts, the African couldn’t but become wild.”

Quenum nodded. “Yes, the European slavers further traumatized the African captives by keeping them in cages.”

Abdul sighed.

“After being branded, our people were held there naked and subjected to brutal and humiliating inspections, exercises which made the Europeans to lust after the women captives whom they raped at will. Not even being a servant of God did change the European’s attitude toward the captive African. A Catholic bishop lounged comfortably in an ivory chair on a wharf in the Congo and stretched out his hand to baptize the slaves as they were being rowed in chains to the slave ships as if it was the most natural—in this case, Christian—thing to do.”

“This’s how slavery became an accepted institution, even by those who should have known better, although this bishop was doing what the church had advocated: enslave the pagan Africans so that they could be baptized?”

“From the coastal forts, the captives were loaded into slave ships in which they were chained to racks that were sometimes only 18 inches apart.”

Abdul puffed, shaking his head.

“Gustavus Vasa, a former slave’s description of the atmosphere in the hold of the ship shows how terrible it was in there. He said the exiguity of the place, the heat of the climate, and the large number of captives so crowded into the ship not only scarcely left room to turn in but also almost suffocated the human cargo.”

“Jeez,” Abdul murmured, hung down his head again and shook it slowly.

“The slavers knew the treatment was inhuman,” Quenum said, while rifling through a notebook “and took steps to avoid the expression of any resentment.” He read: “‘We always keep sentinels upon the hatchways, and have a chest full of small arms, ready loaded and constantly lying at hand, together with some grenade shells, and two of our quarterdeck guns pointing on the deck, and two more out of steerage,’ wrote the captain of a slave ship in 1693. ‘We shackle the men two and two while we lie in port, and in sight of their own country, for ‘tis then they attempt to make their escape and mutiny.’”

“Goddamn ‘em!” Abdul’s voice was raw with agony while his fingers curled into tight fists biting into his palms.

“In a sense the captain was right,” Quenum said and Abdul stared at him. “I mean, right about the attempt to escape and mutiny,” he added quickly and Abdul sighed. “Such attempts to rebel when the kidnapped were in sight of the African coast are too numerous to recount here. This is why Captain Van Alstein of the slave ship l’Affriquain of the port of Nantes in 1776 said that before sailing off to the islands, they hired sixteen native guards put under the orders of a tent captain, a tent guard, a water captain, a messenger, a home nurse, and the ‘bomb.’…”

“Bomb?”

Quenum laughed. “That was a person, who, in addition to maintaining order among the captives, also plays the bombard—the old form of the oboe—and makes the captives sing and dance.”

Abdul shook his head sadly.

“Van Alstein gave a more complete picture of the life of the captive aboard the slave ship. He said before bringing new captives on board, and to avoid any trouble, they drove the slaves already on the ship into the steerage and separated the children they pejoratively called piccaninnies.”

“Why did they drive the captives into the steerage?”

“He said on seeing a relative, wife, or child, the men often got piqued and rebelled; as for the women curiosity pushes all of them to one side to see if there was a familiar face coming on board they could talk to, thus risking falling into the sea with the children.”

“Jeez, how those women were dying to have familiar contact!” Abdul whined.

“To ensure the security of the crew, Captain Van Alstein said the Africans were clapped in irons by twos as soon as they came on board; and twice a day, morning and evening, the shipwright checked that they had not meddled with the claps. In order not to push the Africans to rebel, no one was allowed to beat them.”

“These people have not ceased to amaze me,” Abdul said. “Van Alstein is talking as if being on board a slave ship was not enough condition for resentment which boiled over into rebellion.”

“Yes. That’s why he added that instilling total discipline into the captives before the departure assured the safety of the crew.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“Yes. Jacques Savary, a businessman, writing at the end of the 18^th century, also confirmed that the worst moment for crew and slaves alike was when the ship was leaving the African coast. For this reason the sails had to be up as soon as the slaves were embarked. He said the captives were so fond of their country that the thought of leaving it forever filled them with despair which made them die of grief. Savary said merchants confirmed to him that captives died more often before leaving the port than during the voyage. If they did not throw themselves into the sea, they hit their heads against the ship or simply held their breath to try and smother themselves. And as already said, others resort to hunger strike to kill themselves.”
            “How they ran us crazy!”

“To ensure complete hygiene of the captives and avoid the outbreak of epidemics, cleaning teams supervised by ‘leading seamen’ and ‘leading sea women’ chosen among the ‘wisest captives’ …”

“That is, so-called submissive ones.”

“Yes. They cleaned the deck and the steerage and fetched water for the ablutions. The children were given constant medication, which they took under threat of and the actual use of a whip.”

“Didn’t you say he said no one was allowed to beat them?”

“I’m sure he meant to beat them unnecessarily. Whipping wasn’t totally absent on the l’Affriquain, for Van Alstein said that if the Negroes made a racket at night, or even if they just sang at that time, each was given half a dozen lashes with stirrup leather …”

Abdul winced.

“ … with the threat of receiving a full dozen should they repeat the offense.”

He sighed now, hard.

 “All seamen on slave-ships, because of the constant threat of insurrection, become brutes. They affirmed that only such an attitude made the Africans totally submissive.”

“Wishful thinking, Abdul said again.

“Yes,” Quenum agreed. “Around the year 1699, unknown to any of the crew of a Dutch slave ship docked in the Gulf of Guinea, their human cargo used a hammer and broke all their fetters in pieces.”

A smile broke on Abdul’s sunken-in face and he clapped.

Smiling too, Quenum continued: “The Africans came above deck and surprised the crew, leading to battle. Only the timely arrival of a French and British ship saved the Dutch slavers. However 20 Africans lost their lives and the other captives were driven below decks.”

“S---!” Abdul swore.

“A crewman on a New England ship anchored off the coast reported that the Africans ‘got to the powder and Arms at about 3 in the morning, rose upon the whites, and after wounding all of them ... ran the vessel ashore ... and made their escape’.”

“Wow!” Abdul shrieked, jumped to his feet and gave Quenum a popping high five. Lifting his glass, he thundered: “This is to those worthy ancestors.”

Quenum continued when the emotion died down: “In 1757, Africans from the shore attacked several slave ships anchored in the harbor and freed their friends and family. And on the Gambia River two years later, 80 Africans struck but their rebellion did not go to the end only because the wounded captain fired his gun into the ammunition room, causing the ship to explode.”

“The sonofabitch!” Abdul swore and slowly set his glass down without taking a draught. “Not even the Door of No Return, thought to definitely seal the fate of the African squeezed through it, killed the dream of the enslaved to regain their freedom.”

“Sure,” Quenum agreed. “This was exemplified first during the long voyage across the Atlantic—dubbed the Middle Passage—and at destination.”

“This was why slavers worried a lot carrying away their cargo of Africans in the hold of their ships,” Abdul explained. “The journey was hardly a safe one.”

Grumbling, Quenum swiped a fly off the neck of his bottle for the umpteenth time and barked to the barmaid to bring them glass covers. “Let these damn flies go suck up the sea if they’re so thirsty,” he fumed.

“It’s not salty water they’re dying for,” Abdul said through their laughter.

“Then let them zoom to the brewery.”

“Quality assurance wouldn’t allow them in.”

They laughed about that.

“The only solution is glass covers,” Quenum said and laid his right palm over the glass. “Okay, let’s go back to our story. Concerning the trans-Atlantic crossing, in addition to disease which could wipe out ten to twenty per cent of the human cargo and crew, the captain had also to worry about the slaves who brimmed with imagination to regain their liberty or escape going into slavery.”

The pouting girl brought Heineken beer paper glass covers, hurled them on the table and stomped away. Abdul and Quenum stared at each other.

“I don’t blame you,” Quenum said in English, not really to the girl. “How much do they receive monthly? $12. Twenty-five maximum. The hell of slavery continues.”

Abdul sniggered. “Let’s get back to the subject. Our ancestors experienced European racism right on the ship,” Abdul said. “Thinking that some Africans were naturally submissive and others inherently rebellious, Europeans treated their cargoes differently using their perception of the area of origin.”

“Yes,” Quenum said, “slave traders believed that the various African peoples had traits ranging from docile to rebellious and exercised preferences for slaves from specific areas. But that was a misinterpretation. African uprising was a result of loss of freedom and the desire to regain it. That was why kind treatment by a captain lessened African resentment and minimized the threat of slave rebellion on board a ship but did not eliminate either altogether.”

“The colonists in the New World also held such opinions of which African ethnic groups made the most desirable slaves and which the most dreaded. This perception varied with the work and the era. For example, for a time the Gold Coast slave was thought to be submissive and therefore sought after but later it was the Senegambian who was so regarded.”

“As for the Ashanti they were believed to be vengeful and therefore not much prized as slaves. In Jamaica, they were associated with rebellion and maroonage.”

“Why should it be otherwise when for six to ten weeks the Africans being carried into a life of slavery endured the tortures of the Middle Passage? During this time for instance, pious European ship captains wrote hymns like ‘How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,’ while the suffering Africans were forced to lie in their own waste.”

“Who can believe that a slaver wrote that hymn which thrilled us a lot at school?” Quenum said and burst into song:

“How sweet the name of Jesus sounds

In a believer’s ear!

It soothes his sorrows heals his wounds,

And drives away his fear.

Do you think such people were believers?”

“How can people who handed chained Africans rotten food and whipped them if they refused to eat be believers? One captain even broke the teeth of the Africans who refused to eat.”

Shrieking noiselessly and eyes tightly shut, Quenum’s hands flew to his jowls and his face knotted into a look of pain.

“Yet this man considered himself naturally compassionate.”

“An African proverb rightly says that nobody indicates their village with their left hand.”

“Because it is with that hand that they wipe their bottom?”

Quenum nodded. “It’s considered derogatory.”

It was Abdul’s turn to nod and continue: “The ship’s crew raped the women. Epidemics of dysentery and smallpox swept the ships. A third of the prisoners died during the crossing. An African man, designated as Charles Ball, recounted that more than a third of the captives of which he was a part perished on the passage. And so cramped did he feel that on arrival in Charleston, he was not able to stand. It took him more than a week before he could straighten his limbs.”

Quenum winced. “Look how painful a few minutes cramp is,” he moaned. “And, imagine theirs!”

“Yeah, that’s how our ancestors were tortured. Any wonder that they seized every opportunity to resist their captors? For instance, when disease had weakened the crew on the British ship Don Carlos, the Africans didn’t hesitate to attack them. According to one crewman, the African prisoners had improvised knives from pieces of iron they had wrenched off the forecastle floor.”

Quenum clapped.

Abdul sighed hard, causing Quenum’s hand to stop in mid air with his glass of beer. “But the crew had guns and you can imagine the rest.”

Quenum nodded and his glass sank onto the table.

“Such a horrible treatment was meted out to Africans after a rebellion that they preferred to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the sea, rather than be taken by the inhuman race. In 1701 for instance, a white crewman reported that during a shipboard revolt, of the 28 African prisoners lost, some were killed and others leapt overboard and drowned themselves in the ocean with much resolution.”

Quenum shook his head.

“So much did ship captain’s dread rebellion that they did not hesitate to cut food and water to keep the prisoners weak to avoid the possibility of insurrection. The same ship captains ordered public executions, whippings and other forms of torture to intimidate the prisoners into submission.”

“Lost effort.”

“Exactly!” Abdul said. “These tactics failed to stop the revolts. So in 1727 a British captain tried a more benign approach. For nine days he joined the Africans at mealtime, sitting on the deck and eating with them out of small bowls. On the tenth day a crewman recounted they beat out his brains with the little tubs.”

Quenum burst out into laughter and Abdul joined him. “Here!” Quenum proposed a toast and they chinked glasses and took long draughts.

“Ah!” Abdul sighed with pleasure and set down his glass.

“In 1730 some 96 Africans aboard the Little George broke their chains and overwhelmed the crew,” Quenum recounted. “When armed crewmen sought refuge in a cabin, the rebels put guards on the door and sailed back to Africa which they reached in nine days.”

“While we’re told that Africans had no knowledge of navigation,” Abdul sneered.

“If it happened only once, we could’ve called it an isolated case. But in 1732, Africans on the ship William killed the captain, set the crew adrift and returned home.”

They chinked glasses again.

“Mutinies at sea were not only the making of men,” Quenum said. “Women also played key roles. In 1721, off the coast of Sierra Leone, in a revolt led by a certain Captain Tomba on the Robert, a woman served as a spy.”

Abdul’s eyes lit up.

“The captives had been looking for an opportunity to rebel. When all was clear, the woman gave the signal. Together with Tomba and another man, they killed two members of the crew. But with the use of muskets, the crewmen overwhelmed Tomba, the woman spy, and the mutineers.”

“S---!” Abdul swear.

“The captain made a terrible example of the rebels but spared Tomba.”

Abdul stared wide-eyed at Quenum.

“Not out of compassion,” Quenum explained. “The profit motive influenced the ship captain’s decision not to kill Tomba.”

Abdul shook his head.

“A certain John Atkins wrote that Captain Harding, weighing the stoutness and worth of the two slaves—Tomba and his accomplice—had done, as in other countries they do by rogues of dignity: whipped and scarified them only. But he sentenced three others to cruel deaths although they were abettors and not actors, nor capable of it. He first made them eat the heart and the liver of one of the slain mutineers.”

Abdul’s eyes clicked shut again and the taut look came over his face again.

“In front of the other slaves he hoisted the woman spy up by the thumbs, whipped and slashed her with knives till she died.”

Abdul shut his eyes hard and laid his head on the back of his right fist, his fist curled and his body shaking.

“For fear of such African women, in 1734, another civilized and Christian European, Samuel Waldo, owner of the Africa, ordered his captain and crew not only to engage the services of many armed guards but also cautioned them not to have too much confidence in captive women and children ‘lest they happen to be instrumental to your being surprised which might be fatal’.”

            “They did to Africans what they dreaded Africans to do to them.”

“An Akan proverb says that the throat cutter never sleeps on his back.”

“He’s afraid to have his throat slit too.”

“Exactly!” Quenum said. “Having seen the death throes of his victims, he knows having one’s throat sliced is no joking matter.”

“Slavery, this pest!” Abdul spat.

“Yeah, so much so that even pregnant women were embarked,” Quenum whined.

Abdul bowed down his head and shook it slowly.

“Joseph Jekyll, Ignatius Sancho’s biographer wrote that Sancho was born aboard a ship in mid-Atlantic.”

“How come the European mariners did not expect our people to entertain hard feelings against them?”

Quenum nodded. “It was the indignation at being enslaved which made the African cargo mutiny especially at the sight of land in the New World. A case which comes to my mind happened at dawn of April 14, 1750. When the Snow Ann was about to dock, sixty African prisoners rioted on board it. They seized powder and arms and attacked the members of the crew, two of whom only were able to escape their assault.”

“Lucky bastards!”

“Then the slaves ran the boat ashore south of Cape Lopez and absconded.”

Abdul’s sleepy, blood-shot eyes shone like a viper’s.

“Only five members of the crew were able to flee the sinking vessel and made their way to safety; the rest drowned or died from wounds or illness.”

“That’ll teach them a lesson, the fiends!”

Quenum toasted him and Abdul replied gaily.

“The Snow Ann story reminds me of the Amistad Case,” Abdul said. “I got the story from …” —Abdul drew out a book and read: “In Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance, in which William Loren Katz documents this little-known event.”

“I know that celebrated story,” Quenum blurted out and noting Abdul’s disappointed look, encouraged: “Tell it, brother, I may learn new things since this episode would be far better known in the United States than on this side of the Atlantic.”

“The Amistad revolt was led by Sengbe Pieh,” Abdul began. “He was a young Mende man, popularly known in United States history as Joseph Cinque, the name assigned him by his captors.”

“The Joseph was given to him as a Christian name but the Cinque was a deformation of Sengbe.”

“Yes, Jose Ruiz, the Spaniard who bought Sengbe and his group in Cuba, was obliged to name him Jose Cinque for a reason we’ll see later, the Cinque being the Spanish approximation of Sengbe.”

“And Joseph the English equivalent of Jose.”

“Yes. Sengbe was born around 1813 in the town of Mani in Upper Mende country, which was at a distance of ten days’ march from the Vai or Gallinas coast.”

“That was how our people indicated distances then,” Quenum said gaily.

Abdul nodded. “Married with a son and two daughters, Sengbe was believed to be the son of a local chief. A peasant, he was on the way to his farm in late January 1839, when four men pounced on him and tied his right hand to his neck.”

Quenum winced. “This shows that it is appropriate to talk of Africans taken to the New World as the captives and not slaves. They were captured in Africa and reduced to slaves only when they reached the New World.”

Abdul nodded. “The captors dragged Sengbe to a man called Mayagilalo in a nearby village where he was held for three days.”

“This Mayagilalo must be the boss of the kidnappers or a slave buyer.”

“It’s not clear from the account. What is certain is that Mayagilalo handed Sengbe over to Manna Siaka, the son of the Vai King, in settlement of a debt.”

“That was how some people ended up in slavery.”

“Yeah, I heard it in Northern Ghana,” Abdul said. “After being held in Siaka’s town for a month, Sengbe was marched to Lomboko, a notorious slave-trading island near Sulima on the Gallinas coast, and sold to the Spaniard Pedro Blanco, the richest slaver there.”

“The slaving activities of that Spaniard enriched King Siaka as well.”

“Sure,” Abdul said. “At Lomboko, Sengbe was held at a slave camp with other captives, waiting for a sufficient number before they were hauled over the Atlantic.”

“And during this time the raiders hunted for more unfortunate people,” Quenum observed and shook his head.

“Yes, new captives were marched in from Mende country, Kono, Sherbro, Temne, Kissi, Gbandi—found in present-day Liberia,—and Loma—situated in actual Liberia and in today’s Guinea, where they are known as Guerze.”

“Quite a diverse crowd.”

“Yes, not only in nationality but also in profession. While most of them were farmers, the others worked as hunters or blacksmiths.”

Quenum’s eyelids arched upwards. “Blacksmiths also?” he almost cried. “This is surprising, since all over West Africa blacksmiths held a sacred place in society and could neither be enslaved nor killed, even in war.”

“The profit motive shoved that injunction aside. As usual, the captives were force-marched through Mende country to the coast. It was during this time that those from outside the area picked up the Mende language.”

“Linking them more into one destiny.”

“Their fate was sealed in March when they were shipped from Lomboko aboard the schooner Tecora, which arrived at Havana in the Spanish colony of Cuba in June.”

            “Three months of hell,” Quenum whispered and took a short drink.

Abdul took a sip too. “But that wasn’t the end of their troubles. They were advertised and sold at a slave auction.”

“As usual,” Quenum remarked.

“Jose Ruiz, a Spanish plantation owner, bought Sengbe and 48 others for $450 each to work on his sugar plantation at Puerto Principe,—now called Camaguey,— another Cuban port three hundred miles from Havana. Pedro Montez, another Spaniard, bound for the same port, bought four children: three girls and a boy.”

“And that destination saved Sengbe and his group from ending up in slavery.”

Abdul nodded.

“The strange thing about the enslavement of Sengbe and his group was that the slave trade had been abolished by Spain.”

“Yes,” Abdul agreed, “they had been brought illegally to Cuba because since 1820 Spain had prohibited the importation of new slaves into her territories. Yet the two planters managed to obtain official permits to transport their slaves.”

“The interests in the trade were too high,” Quenum observed and made a wry face. “That’s why I get so angry with apologists who cry on all roof tops that the slave trade wasn’t a profitable venture.”

“That’s an insult to their own race to have engaged in a losing business for well over 400 years. Of course, that’s not the profit-minded white race as I know it.”

“So the least said about that matter the better.”

“Certainly.”

“The Spaniard planters chartered the Amistad, a 19^th century two-masted American-built schooner of about 120 feet (37 m), formerly called Friendship, but whose name was changed to the Spanish equivalent of La Amistad when purchased by Ramon Ferrer, a Spaniard living in Cuba.”

“Ramon Ferrer was both owner and captain.”

“You’re right,” Abdul said. “On June 26, the 53 Africans and their Spanish owners got on board the schooner which also carried a crew of five: Ferrer, the master; his two black slaves, Antonio—the cabin boy—and Celestino—the cook;—and two white seamen.”

“I wonder how Ferrer’s slaves felt about the other slaves.”

“Maybe bad, maybe they’d gotten used to slaves.” Abdul shrugged. “Sad as it sounds, maybe they had no choice but to carry out their jobs.”

It was Quenum’s turn to shrug.

“Loaded on board La Amistad was also a cargo of dishes, cloth, jewelry, and various luxury items and staples. While the cargo was insured for $40,000, Ruiz insured his 49 slaves for $20,000, and Montez did the same for the four children for $1,300.”

“Insurance was one ramification of slavery which boosted the European economy.”

 “Exactly.”

“Being shipped aboard La Amistad was another factor that saved the Africans.”

“Yes,” Abdul said. “For La Amistad was not a slave ship, neither was she designed to carry slaves; she did not engage in the Middle Passage of Africans to the Americas either. La Amistad was used for shorter, coastal trade. Besides passengers, she primarily carried sugar-industry products on her usual route from Havana to her home port of Guanaja. As for slaves, La Amistad took them on occasionally.”

“While real slave ships such as the Tecora were specifically designed for transporting captives; and as many of them as possible.”

“Yes, the largest slave ships held up to 400 slaves. One feature which made the loading of this number possible was the half-height between decks level. Slaves were chained down in a sitting or lying position, since the area was not high enough for them to stand in.”

“No wonder the captives felt cramped on arrival,” Quenum said and sighed: “Lord, how they suffered!”

“Yeah, it was hell, as you said.”

 Quenum sighed, shaking his head.

“Since La Amistad did not have slave quarters, the crew was obliged to place half the captives in the main hold where they were chained to a wall; the other half on deck was not as constrained as those on normal slave ships, which aided the revolt of the captives and their commandeering of the vessel.”

“All the better,” Quenum said and Abdul laughed.

“It usually took three days to sail to Puerto Principe, but strong winds hindered this trip. While they had been out at sea for three days, Sengbe broke his wrist chains and iron collar and unshackled his fellow slaves, all with the help of a loose spike he had removed from the deck. That was June 30.”

Quenum nodded.

“I think another factor which spurred Sengbe and his fellow captives to revolt was the fact that they had not only been whipped and maltreated but at one point they had been made to believe that on arrival they would be killed for supper.”

Abdul nodded vigorously. “Arming himself and the others with cane knives from the cargo hold, Sengbe led them on deck, where they killed Captain Ferrer and the cook Celestino. Montez was only wounded. Ruiz and Antonio, the cabin boy, were spared.”

“Sengbe knew he’d need them to navigate the ship.”

Abdul nodded. “Montez had some experience as a sailor. On the side of the mutineers, two of them were killed by Captain Ferrer. The two white seamen jumped ship and managed to escape back to Havana in a small boat.”

Quenum burst into a horse laugh and toasted Abdul.

“Sengbe ordered the Spaniards to sail eastwards, in the direction of the rising sun.”

“That is, toward Africa.”

“Sure. During the day, Montez sailed slowly eastward. At night, however, he cleverly changed course northwest and, navigating by the stars, moved more rapidly and sailed westward, hoping to remain in Cuban waters.”

“The fiend!”

“But there’s always someone cleverer than you,” Abdul said. “And that someone this time was Mother Nature. A gale dragged La Amistad northeast along the United States coastline.”

“And that was another factor which saved Sengbe and his friends.”

Abdul nodded. “There are other factors. They were just lucky fellows.”

“It wasn’t their destiny to be enslaved,” Quenum said and added quickly: “Well, I don’t mean slavery was anybody’s fate.”

Abdul sighed and continued. “For two months the schooner moved with the current. Unable to stand the thirst and exposure, eight more mutineers died. Still Sengbe economized food and water, allowing only the four children a full ration, giving the others just enough to keep them going and taking the smallest portion himself.”

“Selfless leader.” 

Abdul agreed with a nod. “In late August 1839, the Amistad drifted off Long Island, New York.”

“Courtesy of Ruiz and Montez,” Quenum added jocularly.

“Sengbe and others profited to go ashore to replenish their stock of food and other supplies and most importantly to try to find local seamen who would sail them back to Africa.”

“Aha!” Quenum exclaimed.

“In the weeks that the ship sailed northeast along the U.S. coastline, newspapers published stories of the ‘long, low, black schooner,’ and news soon spread of a mysterious ship with her ‘sails nearly all blown to pieces’.”

“And that was when rumors spread that Cuban slaves had revolted on a Spanish ship, killed the crew, and were roaming the Atlantic as buccaneers.”

“Yes. This attracted official attention and the United States Navy and the Customs Service issued orders for the capture of the schooner. Therefore, when Lt. Commander Thomas R. Gedney on board the United States survey brig Washington sighted the battered La Amistad near Culloden Point on the eastern tip of Long Island on August 26, he seized the ship and towed it to New London, Connecticut, where he arrived the next day.”

“The beginning of the end of the suffering of the captives.”

“Just the beginning,” Abdul reminded. “Meanwhile a reporter from the New York Sun who went aboard La Amistad reported Sengbe not only as defiant vis-à-vis his captors but also desirous to avoid recapture through repeated attempts to escape. Thus when Sengbe jumped overboard and was dragged back onto the schooner, it was judged safer to take him to the American vessel and away from his fellow captives whom he encouraged not to give up.”

“Brave guy,” Quenum said with respect.

“Yes. When he was being sent to the American ship Sengbe protested so vehemently that the naval officers allowed him to remain on the Washington’s deck, where he stood glaring at the Amistad all night long.”

Quenum whistled admiringly.

“Yes, the New York Sun reporter was so impressed that he wrote: He evinces no emotion...and had he lived in the days of Greece or Rome, his name would have been handed down to posterity as one who had practiced those most sublime of all virtues—disinterested patriotism and unshrinking courage.”

“That was a guy.”

“Meanwhile Gedney sent a message to the United States Marshall at New Haven who also informed United States District Judge Andrew Judson about La Amistad.”

“And another martyrdom began for the blacks.”

“Certainly, for Judge Judson had previously shown himself not to be a friend or a sympathizer of Blacks when he prosecuted a certain Miss Prudence Crandall in 1833 for admitting Negroes into her school in Canterbury, Connecticut.”

“Le malheur n’arrive jamais seul,” Quenum said and Abdul stared at him. “It’s so simple, but how can I translate this proverb into good English?” Quenum wondered and peered into the azure sky.

“Doesn’t matter,” Abdul soothed him, with a shrug. “Just a rough idea.”

“It’s something like when you have some trouble, it’s then that other troubles come,” he explained and Abdul nodded encouragingly. “You go on, I’ll remember.”

“August 29. Aboard the Washington moored in New London harbour, Judge Judson held court, examining La Amistad’s documents and hearing the testimony of Ruiz and Montez, who made an urgent request for the ship and all its cargo,—of course, including the Africans too,—to be handed over to the Spanish Consul in Boston. Satisfied, Judson released Ruiz and Montez but held Sengbe and his friends for trial for murder and piracy at the next session of the Circuit Court scheduled for September 17 at Hartford, Connecticut.”

“This nut is certainly not somebody Negroes could count on.”

“Sengbe and his friends were sent to the county jail in New Haven.”

“S---!” Quenum swore.

“Now, to the significance of Sengbe’s new name. You know Spain had abolished the importation of slaves into its colonies since 1820.”

Quenum nodded.

“Ruiz renamed Sengbe Pieh Jose Cinque in order to hide the fact that he was a recent importee. By declaring fraudulently that Sengbe and his group were slaves born in Cuba, Ruiz hoped to avoid falling under violating the prohibition law of 1820.”

“Goddamn him!”

“Yeah, the fiend.”

“And in the press Cinque became Cinquez, Sinko, Jinqua, etc.”

“Yes, Sengbe’s name was further deformed as each wrote it the way they could.”

Suddenly Quenum blurted out elatedly: “Yeah, I’ve got it now! I’ve got it!”

“What?” Abdul wondered.

“The translation of Le malheur n’arrive jamais seul,” he said triumphantly. “It’s ‘Troubles never come singly’.” Quenum drained his cup in a long, slow sip, his Adam’s apple bobbing slowly up and down, and then he licked the foam off his lips with the tip of his small pink tongue, as if congratulating himself for his knowledge.

Abdul smiled politely, took a drink too and continued: “A widely publicized legal tussle opened in New Haven, CT, about La Amistad and the legal status of the Africans on board. Since the transport of slaves from Africa to the Americas had long been prohibited, but the Spaniards had declared the Africans as having been born in Cuba, the court had to rule if the captives were to be considered salvage and the property of Naval officers who had seized the schooner, or whether they were the property of the Spaniards, or of Spain as the Queen of Spain had claimed, …”

“Goddamn her!”

“… or, if the circumstances of capture of Sengbe and his friends and their transportation meant they were free. It was these issues which became the focus of the Amistad case.”

“It was at this time that the abolitionists saw the opportunity to close their ranks and step in.”

Abdul nodded. “The U.S. anti-slavery movement was split into antagonistic groups with divergent views on questions such as political action, women’s rights, American churches and slavery, and the basic nature of American government. As you rightly said, the Amistad Case fused them into a coherent whole which came out in defense of the Africans, since they were convinced of their innocence.”

“Innocent they were!” Quenum affirmed.

“This was corroborated in the Herald of Freedom: Cinques is no pirate, no murderer, no felon. His homicide is justifiable. Had a white man done it, it would have been glorious. It would have immortalized him. Joseph Cinques ought not to be tried. Everybody knows he is innocent. He could not be guilty.”

“Of course not!”

“The paper further stated that Lt. Commander Gedney had no authority to capture the Amistad, because she was ‘the lawful prize of Commandant Joseph Cinques....That she was 'suspicious' looking, is no warrant.’”

“That was a strong argument.”

“But unfortunately it wasn’t enough,” Abdul said regretfully. “The Africans’ version of the events was needed as well as the engagement of a counsel to prove their case before a Circuit Court.”

“Getting the Africans’ version of events was no joke.”

“Sure. Though the abolitionists knew this, the day after Judge Judson’s orders, those of New Haven met and wrote to their colleagues in New York to verify the validity of the ship’s documents, find an African interpreter for the captives, record their own version of the events, and then obtain the services of a qualified counsel.”

“May God bless these guys,” Quenum said thankfully.

“A committee was formed to defend the captives,” Abdul continued.

“Thank God,” Quenum murmured.

“Made up, inter alia, of Joshua Leavitt, editor of the Emancipator, the official organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society; Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn, a white pastor of a black church in New York; and Lewis Tappan, a wealthy New York merchant and prominent abolitionist, it formally became known as the ‘Amistad Committee’ on September 4.”

“It’s God who drives away flies from a tailless animal,” Quenum added dreamily.

“Tappan, the principal leader of the Amistad Committee, launched the campaign for the defense of the African captives and issued an ‘Appeal to the Friends of Liberty’ which read: Thirty-eight fellow men from Africa, having been piratically kidnapped from their native land, transported across the seas, and subjected to atrocious cruelties, have been thrown upon our shores, and are now incarcerated in jail to await their trial for crimes alleged to have been committed by them. They are ignorant of our language, of the usages of civilized society, and the obligations of Christianity. Under these circumstances, several friends of human rights have met to consult upon the case of these unfortunate men, and have appointed the undersigned a Committee to employ interpreters and able counsel and take all the necessary means to secure the rights of the accused. It is intended to employ three legal gentlemen of distinguished abilities, and to incur other needful expenses. The poor prisoners being destitute of clothing, and several having scarcely a rag to cover them, immediate steps will be taken to provide what may be necessary. The undersigned therefore make this appeal to the friends of humanity to contribute for the above objects. Donations may be sent to either of the Committee, who will acknowledge the same and make a public report of all their disbursement.

Simeon S. Jocelyn, 34, Wall Street.
Joshua Leavitt, 143, Nassau Street.
Lewis Tappan, 122, Pearl Street.”

            “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Certainly moving,” Abdul agreed. “The defense counsel was made up of Roger Baldwin, Seth Staple, and Theodore Sedgwick.”

“If only a similar thing had happened at the beginning of slavery!”

Abdul sighed. “Although they were a formidable team made up of the best legal brains of the time, the lawyers realized they couldn’t do much without an interpreter to recount the story of the captives.”

“A formidable task in those days.”

“Yet a desperate search began and made some success, but partially. Lewis Tappan got three Africans that he brought from New York; one of them was a Kissi, a neighboring ethnic group of the Mende. The two groups could not understand each other very well. But the interpreter managed to do his job which confirmed the suspicions of the abolitionists that the Amistad captives had been kidnapped in Africa and sold illegally into slavery.”

“Why were the Spaniards claiming the contrary?” Quenum fumed.

“That was not the only difficulty. The Amistad Committee was faced with a delicate and sensitive issue. Some of the sympathizers of the captives weren’t abolitionists. It was therefore not advisable to fit the Amistad Case into the framework for the abolition of slavery.”

“This would have alienated the non-abolitionists from the Amistad case.”

“Yes. The loss of their sympathy would have weakened the financial and moral base of the Committee. Someone for instance, made it clear that he was responding to the ‘Appeal’ as ‘a friend of human rights, but not an abolitionist’.”

            “Is an abolitionist not the best friend of human rights?” Quenum sneered.

“More complicating still, the Spanish government made some demands to the United States.”

“What do the shameless people want?”

“The Spanish Minister, de la Barca, wrote to the Secretary of State, John Forsyth, a former Minister to Spain and a keen defender of Negro slavery, that the Amistad should have been released to return to Cuba when it was ‘rescued,’ for the Africans to have been ‘tried by the proper tribunal, and by the violated laws of the country of which they are subjects.’”

“Goddamn his soul!” Quenum blurted out seriously and Abdul sniggered. “Does this pompous sonofabitch know the laws of his own country?”

“Fortunately the United States did not heed his request.”

“Wise decision. Continue, my brother.”

“September 14. All the prisoners, except one who was not fit enough to travel, were transferred from New Haven to Hartford, the capital of Connecticut for the trial. It opened on September 17, presided over by Judge Smith Thompson. Three days of legal battling sufficed for the judge to rule that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction over the charges of murder and piracy, since the alleged crimes were committed on a Spanish ship and in Spanish waters; …”

“Good.”

 “… the various property claims, including Ruiz’ and Montez’s to the African ‘slaves,’ should be decided in a District Court; …”

Quenum seemed to shrug.

“… and the writ of habeas corpus for the release of the small girls was rejected.”

“S---!” Quenum swore.

“Immediately after adjourning, Judge Judson reconvened a District Court in the same room. He adjudged that the property claims needed more investigation but decided to release the captives on bail, based on their appraised value as slaves on the Cuban market.”

“Had he fallen on his bald head?”

“Was he bald?” Keen interest was written all over Abdul’s face.

“No idea.” Quenum shrugged and the two burst into hilarious laughter.

“Of course, the defense lawyers rejected this bail formula, because of its implication that the Amistad captives were slaves.”

“Good defense work.”

“The Africans were therefore returned to prison.”

“Too many troubles brought to them by African kidnappers.”

“As expected, the interpreter wasn’t very effective during the trial, and the Amistad Committee began a fresh search for one who could speak Mende fluently.”

“Who seeks finds.”

“Fortunately the Amistad case drew J.W. Gibbs, Professor of Theology and Sacred Literature at Yale Divinity School, to the plight of the captives. His strategy in finding a Mende interpreter consisted in learning to count from one to ten in that language. Having mastered it he went to the New York docks, counting to every African sailor he saw. In early October, he chanced upon James Covey, a seaman on the British warship Buzzard, who could understand him.”

“Wow!”

“Covey was a Mende. While a child, he was kidnapped and sold. Fortunately for him, and then for the Amistad captives, Covey was recaptured by British squadrons and brought to Freetown and freed.

“Yes, when the British outlawed the slave trade in 1807, they made Freetown the principal base for the Royal Navy’s West African Squadron which was charged with enforcing compliance with the prohibition. They intercepted slave ships illegally transporting captives to the Americas and released them in Freetown.”

“This was what happened to Covey. Having learned to speak English fluently, he joined the British Navy. Professor Gibbs went with Covey to see the Amistad captives in the New Haven jail. As you could expect, they cried with joy to see someone speak their language.”

Quenum’s face broke into a grin. “They knew they could then relate their version of the events.”

“Exactly,” Abdul said and added sadly: “But not all of them were so happy.”

“What happened?” Quenum asked in a shocked tone.

“Several of them had already died in custody from the lingering effects of exposure, hunger, and dehydration they suffered during the ordeal at sea.”

“S---.”

“The Amistad Committee therefore set out to ensure the physical well-being of the captives as well as their intellectual and religious instruction.”

“Commendable initiative.”

“Rev. George Day, a former professor at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, was employed to supervise Yale Divinity School students who were to teach the Mende captives. They did so with simple pictures and sign language.”

Quenum wriggled his fingers comically in the air and grinning, took a small drink.

“Since the earlier demand of the Spanish government had not been met by its American counterpart, de la Barca,—you know, the Spanish Minister,—once again put forth a new set of demands.”

“This must be some stubborn guy.”

“He was working on behalf of a government.”

“Accomplices of kidnappers or government?”

Laughing, Abdul continued: “Anyway he claimed the vessel and its cargo, …”

“Meaning the Africans too.”

“Yes.”

“Goddamn them.”

“On behalf of the Spanish Monarch, Barca asked that the cargo be returned to Havana for adjudication, since ‘no tribunal in the United States has the right to institute proceedings against, or to impose penalties upon, the subjects of Spain, for crimes committed on board a Spanish vessel, and in waters of the Spanish territory’.”

“Legalism.”

“Barca even cited articles of treaties signed between the United States and Spain as a buttress for his argument.”

“He could have done better to cite the Ten Commandments of God or even swear by Heaven and Earth.” 

“Yet he found somebody listening attentively,” Abdul said.

Quenum looked up. “Who?”

“The U.S. President, Martin Van Buren.”

A queer look came on Quenum’s face.

“Yes. Van Buren took no clear sides on the question of slavery, but he needed the support of the Southern pro-slavery Democrats for the upcoming presidential election in 1840.”

“Politicians!”

“Logically, on September 11, the President asked Forsyth to instruct District Attorney William S. Holabird to ‘take care that no proceedings of your Circuit Court, or any other judicial tribunal, place the vessel, cargo, or slaves beyond the control of the Federal Executive’.”

“That was diplomatic language.”

“Yes, by that injunction the President expected that the courts would order the Amistad and the captives returned to Cuba, thus relieving him of political pressure from both the Southern Democrats and the Spanish government; …”

“Supposing the court refused?”

“Then he would be obliged to return the schooner and the Africans on his own authority.”

“S---.”

“In this regard, Van Buren demanded U.S. Attorney General Felix Grundy’s point of view on the matter. Not surprisingly he declared that the Africans were to be regarded as the bona fide property of those on whose behalf the Spanish Minister was claiming them, and that the ship should be returned with all its contents to Cuba. The Cabinet subsequently endorsed this opinion.”

            “One can imagine the anxiety of the Africans wallowing in jail.”

“Yes; but outside, the Amistad Committee was working out a defense strategy to counteract the President’s initiative which could condemn the captives to permanent slavery, or possibly death. They built up a case around the argument that the Africans could not legally be considered as slaves, as they had been brought to Havana and sold there in violation of the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1820, which had prohibited the transatlantic slave trade. They did not fail to recall that this treaty had not only been re-affirmed in 1835 but followed by a Royal Order from the Queen of Spain in 1838 directing the Captain-General of Cuba to enforce the law with ‘the strongest zeal’.”

“Yet it was on behalf of the same Monarchy that that Barca was reclaiming Amistad and its cargo.”

“Maybe he was short of arguments. But not the captives’ defendants. Dr. R.R. Madden, a native of Ireland, a former servant of the British government in the Gold Coast …”

“Now Ghana.”

Abdul nodded. “… and in Havana, Cuba, as a Commissioner on the Court of Mixed Commission for suppressing the slave trade, made a deposition.”

“Sensational case.”

“Really was. Dr. Madden revealed that flagrant violations of the anti-slave trade treaty were openly sanctioned by the Spanish Captain-General and other government officials in Cuba, and that the American Consul there, Nicholas Trist, was a collaborator who reaped huge financial benefits from the slave trade.”

“See how honorable people were living big off our misery. No wonder slavery lasted so long.”

“Anyway, after meeting with Lewis Tappan in New York in November, Dr. Madden paid a visit to the captives at New Haven and continued to Hartford to give evidence at the trial. Meanwhile the trial had been deferred, so he gave testimony to Judge Judson in chambers.”

“So many twists in this story,” Quenum said, wrinkling his nose.

“Like a suspense thriller,” Abdul agreed and continued: “Dr. Madden pointed out that despite their being designated on the licenses for transporting them from Havana to Puerto Principe as Ladinos, i.e., slaves brought to Cuba before 1820, the Amistad captives were recent importees. Madden stressed how common this type of forgery was in Cuba and consequently declared Ruiz’ and Montez’ papers of ownership not legally valid.”

“The end of the imposture.”

“Two of the Amistad captives brought charges of assault, kidnapping, and false imprisonment against Ruiz and Montez who were then arrested in New York.”

“Good thinking on the part of the two Africans.”

“Lewis Tappan was however blamed for this action which horrified political conservatives.”

“While the plight of the poor Africans did not move them in the least. How racism killed humanism in whites!”

“Bail was fixed at $1,000 each. Montez paid immediately and got back to Cuba.”

“Better for him.”

“Ruiz however preferred to remain in jail.”

“Why?” Quenum sounded horrified.

“To enlist sympathy.”

“He knew he could count on pro-slavery people and conservatives.”

“The Spanish Minister sent an immediate protest to the State Department that the U.S. Courts had no jurisdiction for alleged offenses committed in Cuba.”

Quenum twisted his mouth.

“Forsyth, the Secretary of State, instructed the District Attorney to give any assistance possible to the Spaniards.”

“Meaning, release the vessel and its cargo.”

“I guess. The charges brought by the two captives cost the abolitionists the support of moderates.”

“Let them go!”

Abdul laughed. “The abolitionists were also accused of ‘making sport of the law....’”

Quenum twisted his mouth again.

“Ruiz finally got fed up with confinement, paid the bail, and went back home to Cuba.”

Quenum burst into laughter, and Abdul joined him.

“November 19, 1839. The U.S. District Court opened at Hartford, Connecticut, to hear the case in a second trial, but it had to adjourn to January because some key witnesses were not present.”

“Another step backward again.”

“Meanwhile the Spanish Minister once again pressed his government’s claims …”

“The devil.”

“… and Forsyth promised to make a ship ready to transport the captives to Cuba …”

“The devil’s mate.”

“… should the verdict go against them, …”

“God forbid.”

“… so that the abolitionists would not have the time to appeal.”

“What meanness!”

“And when hearings resumed on January 8, true to Forsyth’s word, the U.S. Navy schooner Grampus stood in the New Haven harbor on instructions of the President, who, many felt, ‘went to disgraceful extremes in his persistent attempts to thwart justice as promulgated by the courts’.”

“That’s my feeling too.”

“The three defense counsels urged the President not to meddle in the case but leave it to be decided in court instead of ‘in the recesses of Cabinet, where the Africans can have neither counsel nor produce proof...’.”

“The American Presidency has come a long way from being like the almighty African ones we know today.”

“Right. Working in shifts, the abolitionists stood watch over the New Haven jail.”

“They didn’t want any surprises.”

“Yes, they were apprehensive that the President might have the Amistad captives smuggled out even before the trial ended.”

“What?”

“Yes. And they were ready to hide the captives, if need be.”

“Thank God they didn’t have to go to that extreme.”        

“But during the trial, Sengbe described in great detail how he and the other prisoners had been kidnapped, bound, and mistreated.”

“Must be really emotional.”

“Yes. At one point, Sengbe, overwhelmed with emotion, got to his feet and shouted in English: ‘Give us free! Give us free!’”

Quenum burst into laughter at the English and Abdul again joined him. “Look at how goose bumps are breaking over me,” Quenum said in a strangled tone and swallowed hard.

“Sengbe’s detailed testimony through the interpreter made a favorable impression and Judge Judson gave his verdict on January 13, 1840 saying that the Africans had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in violation of Spanish law; they were legally free and should, therefore, be sent back to Africa, where they had been abducted.”

Quenum clapped and hurled a drink down his throat.

“Oh!” Abdul cried and burst into laughter when some of the beer splashed onto Quenum’s chest and shirt.

“Don’t mind it,” he said. “This is worth a celebration.”

“But this looks like a libation,” Abdul remarked and they shook with gales of laughter.

Abdul had a hard time getting out: “But not many people agreed with the judge that the Africans were free.”

“What were they then?” Quenum said and cleared his throat.

Abdul shrugged. “Among them was President Van Buren. Not surprisingly he ordered District Attorney Holabird to take immediate steps to appeal against the verdict.”

“Just as happens in the Africa of stone age dictators.” 

“In the midst of this hullabaloo, the Amistad captives went about their studies, concentrating on reading, writing and the doctrines of Christianity.”

Quenum shut his eyes hard and seemed to have gone into a trance.

“And this, despite bitter disappointment at still being held in custody even after a favorable court decision.”

Quenum threw his eyes open. “While the fiends Ruiz and Montez were home enjoying its comforts.”

“Despite the harshness of prison life, the Africans continued to study hard,” Abdul said. “A typical school day began with James Covey translating Christian prayers into Mende for them, then they had a short sermon, and finally instruction in the English language. The captives so developed such a taste for learning that sometimes they just couldn’t let their Yale Divinity School teachers go after classes, entreating them to stay a few minutes more. Eleven-year-old Kali especially distinguished himself as the best pupil by learning to read and write very quickly.”

“Naturally gifted boy who might have ended up an ignorant slave.”

“That was how slavery destroyed the African. It was during this period that little Kali wrote: We talk American language a little, not very good. We write everyday; we write plenty letters; we read most all time; we read all Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, and plenty of little books. We love books very much.”

            “One must have a heart of stone not to be moved.”

“For the third and final trial before the United States Supreme Court, the Amistad Committee saw the urgency to have a public figure of the highest standing to plead the cause of the captives. They therefore approached former President John Quincy Adams to lead the defense.”

“Good.”

“But Adams was not keen on the job.”

“Why?”

“He was seventy three years old and had been out of legal practice for thirty years; so he was afraid that he might not win the case and thus jeopardize the lives of the Amistad prisoners. To this end he wrote in his diary: The world, the flesh, and all the devils in hell are arrayed against any man who now in this North American Union shall dare to join the standard of Almighty God to put down the African slave trade; and what can I, upon the verge of my 74^th birthday, with a shaken hand, a darkening eye, a drowsy brain, and with my faculties dropping from me one by one as the teeth are dropping from my head -- what can I do for the cause of God and man, for the progress of human emancipation, for the suppression of the African slave-trade? Yet my conscience presses me on; let me but die upon the breach.”

“God bless him.”

“Adams accepted the sensational case and it came to be known as ‘the trial of one President by another’.”

“Of course! The humanist Adams against the devil Van Buren.”

They laughed about that.

“Attorney Baldwin prepared an elaborate defense and opened the case. On February 24, Adams addressed the Court for a total of four and a half hours.”

Quenum whistled. “Let me see,” he said, quickly counting his fingers. “This means if he started at 7 a.m., then he finished at 11.30!” He whistled again, long and slowly.

“Yes, this made Adams to be called ‘Old Man Eloquent’.”

They laughed about that too.

“On March 9, 1841, the United States Supreme Court issued its final verdict: the captives were free!”

“Praise God!” Quenum shouted, as in a charismatic church.

“Halleluiah!” Abdul answered instinctively and grinning, continued: “Adams sent word at once to Lewis Tappan: ‘Thanks—Thanks in the name of humanity and of justice, to YOU’.”

Quenum nodded and took a drink.

“Released from custody, the Africans were sent to Farmington, an early abolitionist town in Connecticut. There, they received more formal education throughout 1841. Since President Van Buren had refused to provide a ship to repatriate them …”

 “Just like an African dictator of today.” Quenum shook his head. “Really, there’s nothing new under the sun.”

Abdul nodded.

“But I must admit that the difference with our continent is that despite his objection the President allowed the court to go ahead with its work and above all he respected its decision even though he didn’t like it.”

“… the Amistad Committee assumed complete responsibility for the freed Africans.”

“May God bless them.”

“The abolitionists organized a speaking tour in the Northern states to raise funds to charter a ship to take the Africans back home. Going from town to town, appearing before sympathetic audiences, the Amistad captives told the story of their ordeal with a mastery of written and spoken English. Many people were anxious to see Sengbe, the modern day Greek- or Roman-like hero, since he had become a public figure.”

“From captive to ‘captivator’.”

“Oh, I wish that word existed,” Abdul said, giving Quenum high five. “Towards the end of the year, enough funds had been raised …”

“Thank God.”

“… and the barque Gentleman was chartered for $1,840.”

“Bye bye Jose Ruiz. Bye bye Pedro Montez.”

“The remaining thirty-five Africans …”

“Down from the fifty-three.”

“Yes, eighteen died. The rest sailed to the Colony of Sierra Leone in the company of five American missionaries: two black Americans—Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wilson, who had taught at Farmington—and three whites—Rev. and Mrs. William Raymond and Rev. James Steele. The missionaries had received instructions from the Amistad Committee to start a ‘Mendi Mission’ in Sierra Leone.”

“A humble beginning which will pay big dividends.”

“Yes. Before the departure, Lewis Tappan addressed the passengers and Sengbe replied on behalf of his people.”

“Must be moving.”

“Yes. The newspapers reported a deeply moving scene in which many of those present couldn’t help weeping openly.”

“I can imagine that.”

“The plan of the departing Africans was ‘for all to keep together and somewhere in the vicinity of Cinque’s town to settle down and commence a new town and then persuade their friends to come and join them, and then to adopt the American dress and manners’.”

Quenum winced about the last part as Abdul had done.

“The Gentleman arrived in Freetown in mid-January 1842 amid great excitement.”

“Of course.”

“Many of the returnees got reunited with friends and, in some cases, family members.”

“Sensational!”

“Sengbe however learned from Mende Re-captives that his home had been ravaged by war and most of his family wiped out.”

Quenum soughed. “What an unfortunate guy! Wasn’t that some form of sabotage?”

Abdul shrugged.

“That cannot be a coincidence,” Quenum refuted, shaking his head. “The local accomplices of the slave trade might have been informed about Sengbe’s fight in America and they decided to teach his people a lesson.”

“If it’s a coincidence, then it’s a strange one.”

“No, it’s no coincidence,” Quenum affirmed. “It was planned.”

“In any case, the plan to locate the Mendi Mission near Sengbe’s town never materialized.”

“Voila,” Quenum exclaimed in French. “A well planned plot.”

“Another setback for the mission: Having found many of their countrymen in the Colony, the desire to join them became stronger for many of the returnees than the necessity of remaining with their American patrons.”

“I understand them,” Quenum said sympathetically. “The family tie is very strong in Africa.”

“They drifted away, and only ten adults and the four children remained behind. Sengbe, himself, procured an investment of goods and proceeded to Sherbro country to purchase produce for the Freetown market.”

            “He will finally set up his own business.”

“Yes; but setting up the Mendi Mission was no easy task.”

“Every beginning is difficult.”

“It was a Herculean task finding an alternative site for establishing a mission station.”

“It would’ve been easier to join the former slaves who had returned to Freetown some fifty-five years before,” Quenum said. “I wonder why they didn’t do so.”

“Maybe because they weren’t former slaves.”

“But they were returnees like the others,” Quenum reasoned and shrugged.

“With different missions. Anyway, Rev. Raymond’s several attempts paid off in 1844 as he finally secured a place at Komende in the Sherbro region.”

“Okay.”

“Raymond viewed this success philosophically.”

Quenum stared at Abdul.

“Although it was through his efforts, he attributed it partly to Sengbe’s influence.”

Quenum nodded.

“Then he interpreted the dispersal of the former captives as an advantage.”

“How?”

“He said they would carry news of the Mission far and wide.”

“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” Quenum sang.

“It was through the untiring efforts of the same Raymond that the Mendi Mission was established.”

“Slowly the Mission opened stations in several places, one of which was named ‘Mo Tappan’ in honor of the selfless assistance of Lewis Tappan.”

“They’re right.”

“In 1846, the Amistad Committee became the American Missionary Association and assumed full financial responsibility for the Mendi Mission.”

“Who could have believed the revolt of the Amistad captives would have led to such a great venture?”

“Yes, the setting up of the Mendi Mission made lasting impacts both in Sierra Leone and in the United States of America,” Abdul said. “First, it was the genesis of American missionary activity in Sierra Leone.”

“All because of Sengbe.”

“The American Missionary Association ultimately handed over its mission stations in Sierra Leone to the United Brethren in Christ, UBC, which was charged not only with evangelization work but also the establishment of an expansive system of mission schools in the southern part of the country, especially among the Mende and Sherbro peoples.”

“Noble mission,” Quenum whispered.

“The UBC opened a lot of schools and, as part of vocational training, introduced quite a number of new technological skills. The most famous of the schools are the Harford School for Girls at Moyamba and Albert Academy founded in Freetown in 1904.”

“Such schools often turned out elites who marked society.”

“That turned out to be the long-term impact of those developments,” Abdul affirmed. “They helped create an elite group which excelled in both Sierra Leone and the United States.”

“In the US too?”

Abdul nodded. “Albert Academy was the first secondary school for upcountry boys; many of its early students were promising boys studying on scholarship. After completing their early education at the Mendi missionary schools, some of the students continued to the United States for further studies. Two important examples are Barnabas Root and Thomas Tucker. After their original Mendi Mission school education and further studies in the United States, Tucker and Root were employed by the American Missionary Association.”

“Okay.”

“Tucker in 1862 as a teacher in a school for freedmen in Virginia, and Root in 1873 as pastor for a Congregational Mission Church for freedmen in Alabama.”

“I’d have liked them to return home.” Quenum pouted.

“Root later came back home to Sierra Leone but Tucker remained in America.  Together with Thomas Van Gibbs, he founded the State Normal College (for blacks) in 1887 at Tallahassee, Florida. Tucker served as the first President of the College, which evolved into the present-day Florida A&M University.”

Quenum’s face broke into a grin. “Exciting. Sengbe’s fight was divine-inspired.” 

            “I agree, for many of the elite group produced by the American missionary schools in the 20^th century led the nationalist movement to achieve independence from colonial rule. We can mention the first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Dr. (later, Sir) Milton Margai and the first Executive President of Sierra Leone, Siaka Stevens, who were both products of American mission primary schools in the southern part of the country and, later, graduates of Albert Academy.”

Quenum’s grin widened. “There’s no doubt now: Sengbe’s action was divine-inspired.”

“The impact his revolt left in the United States is equally impressive. The Amistad Case so poisoned relationship between the anti-slavery North and the slave-holding South that it could be considered as one of the events which contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1860.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. First, the Amistad Case, and especially the Supreme Court’s decision on it, having soldered the abolitionist movement together, bolstered the move to quash slavery.”

“Yeah; I see it now.”

“Second, it was the case which gave birth to the missionary work that led to the setting up of the American Missionary Association, which was the largest and best organized abolitionist society in the United States before the Civil War.”

Quenum’s head bobbed.

“After the war, the Association established over five hundred schools and colleges in the South and in the Border States for the education of newly liberated blacks.”

“Wow!”

“These schools are Atlanta, Howard, Fisk, and Dillard Universities; Hampton University; Talladega College; etc, we know today to which countless Black Americans owe their higher education.”

“All because of Sengbe!”

“Yes. From a desire to be free, the Amistad revolt gave rise to an impressive network of institutions in the South that turned out the leaders of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, including the venerable Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

            “Sengbe’s move was not only divine-inspired,” Quenum declared emotionally. “Sengbe was a prophet!”

“His determination not to accept enforced slavery and the rallying of fifty-two other Sierra Leoneans to his courageous act, have had far reaching consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Although largely forgotten, the Amistad incident will continue to influence the course of historical development in both the United States and Sierra Leone.”

“Amen,” Quenum said and they laughed and drank a long draught of the warming beer.

“A word must be said about Kali,” Abdul said on setting down his cup.

“Ah, the young boy among the captives.”

“He had been kidnapped from his village at age ten, marched too to the slave-trading base at Lomboko, and the rest is history.”

“Terrible things happened in the days of slavery. Imagine that little boy’s suffering and the pain of his family at being brutally torn from each other.”

“He played a role in the success of the rebellion on board the Amistad.”

“Yeah?”

“While Sengbe and the others waited for the opportunity to climb up to the deck and attack their captors, Kali sat with the three little girls and kept them quiet.”

“Wow!”

“In prison, he displayed high intelligence by learning to speak and read English not only very fast but much faster than the other Amistad captives. He used this knowledge in 1840 while waiting for the verdict of the United States Supreme Court: Kali wrote to his lawyer former President John Quincy Adams, pouring out his anger at his arrest and imprisonment; declaring his gratefulness to all, like Mr. Adams, who have helped him and the other captives; and expressing his deep homesickness.”

“Awo,” Quenum exclaimed.

“Kali, not surprisingly, was the other star performer during the speaking tour to raise money for their return passage to Sierra Leone. Audiences were impressed by his ability to write correctly any verse read to him from the Christian gospels, and this, after less than two years of instruction.”

“And this is someone who would have gone to slavery to rot away.”

“On return to Sierra Leone in 1842, Kali stayed with the American missionaries and the Mendi Mission ultimately employed him. He got married, but contracted a disease that crippled him for the rest of his life.”

“S---!”

Abdul and Quenum bowed down their heads in pain.

Quenum broke the silence. “What became of La Amistad?”

“After being moored at the wharf behind the US Custom House in New London, Connecticut, for a year and a half, it was auctioned off by the U.S. Marshal in October 1840 to Captain George Hawford, of Newport, Rhode Island. After the required Act of Congress was passed, Hawford registered La Amistad as Ion. In late 1841, he sailed Ion, loaded with a typical New England cargo of onions, apples, live poultry, and cheese to Bermuda and Saint Thomas. After sailing her for a few years, Hawford sold the schooner in Guadeloupe in 1844. Track was lost of the Ion under her new French owners in the Caribbean thereafter.”

“La Amistad should have been kept as a museum piece.”

“It’s interesting to note that in 1841, two years after the Amistad uprising, Madison Washington led a mutiny on the Creole sailing from Hampton Roads, Virginia to New Orleans with 135 slaves. Nineteen Black slaves seized the ship and sailed to the Bahamas, where they were granted asylum.”

“These are the stories that our people must know.”

“Yeah, that can emancipate us from the new slavery: mental slavery. That’s why between 1998 and 2000, Freedom Schooner Amistad, a replica of La Amistad, was built in Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut. Operated by Amistad America, Inc., a non-profit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut, the ship’s mission is to educate the public on the history of slavery, discrimination, and civil rights.”

“Commendable.”

“In addition to offering educational opportunities where she is based in her homeport of New Haven,—you know, where the Amistad trial took place—the vessel also travels to port cities for the same.”

“Sengbe never dies,” Quenum said with feeling.”

“Yes, his spirit lives on. The Freedom Schooner Amistad is due to set sail on June 21 next year on the ‘Atlantic Freedom Tour,’ a 14,000-mile (23,000 km) transatlantic voyage which will take her from New Haven to Great Britain, Lisbon, West Africa, and the Caribbean.”

“A sort of a triangular journey.”

“Yes. The aim is to commemorate the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in Britain in 1807 and the United States a year later. In August, next year, the ship is due to arrive in Bristol.”

“One of the notorious slave ports.”

“London, another slave port too, is on the itinerary of the tour of the Amistad to the United Kingdom. The schooner is scheduled to sail up the Thames under the Tower Bridge in August and moor for several days in London Docklands. She is expected to attract great crowds and immense attention.”

“No doubt.”

“Amistad has also featured in popular culture since 1839.”

“What a man, Senbge!” Quenum marveled.

“A play based on the revolt, entitled The Long, Low Black Schooner,—you know, the ship was painted black at the time of the revolt—opened on 2 September of that year, in New York City and played to full audiences.”

Quenum nodded in appreciation.

“Steven Spielberg directed a film, Amistad, in 1997 which dramatized the historical incidents. The major actors were Morgan Freeman, as a freed black man; …”

“His name tells it all,” Quenum observed and they laughed.

“Anthony Hopkins, as John Quincy Adams; Matthew McConaughey, as an unorthodox, but influential lawyer; and Djimon Hounsou, as Cinque.”

Quenum’s face broke into a bright grin. “Hey,” he cried, “that should be a compatriot of mine. That name’s from here.” He gave Abdul a high five.

“The artist Hale Woodruff did a mural depicting the events of the Amistad. The six-panel sequence is displayed at the Slavery Library, Talladega College, Alabama.”

“One of the schools set up by the American Missionary Association.”

“Yeah. A mural of the ship is embedded in the floor of the library. School tradition prohibits walking on it.”

“Yeah, it’s sacred.”

“A street in Havana, Cuba, is even named Amistad.”

“Who could have dreamed this in the 19^th century?”

“In his song “20k Money Making Brothers on the Corner” from their mix tape We Got It 4 Cheap, Volume 3: The Spirit of Competition (We Just Think We’re Better), Malice of the hip-hop supergroup Re-Up Gang referred to La Amistad with the lyrics: Big chain around my neck like I’m fresh off The Amistad... We won’t stop ‘till you give us free.

“Ah, a rendition of Sengbe’s exasperated shout: ‘Give us free! Give us free!’ in court during the second trial.”

“You got it. And Rage Against the Machine’s song “No Shelter” from the European/Australian/Japanese version of The Battle of Los Angeles calls out Spielberg’s account by claiming: Amistad was a whip, the truth was feathered and tarred Memory erased, burned and scarred.”

            “Great story, the Amistad. I learnt a lot from what anger at losing his freedom made Sengbe do.”

“Sometimes reasons beyond anger made African slaves revolt. John Atkins, a surgeon in the Royal Navy in the 18^th century, observed that Africans rebelled because they reckoned the slavers were taking them to be eaten.”

“That was the case with the Amistad captives too!”

Abdul nodded. “And they were not afraid to die in order to avoid being victims of cannibalism because they assumed that dying would enable them to return to their homelands. For these reasons, cases of uprising and killing of crew were commonplace, both at sea and especially at the coast.”

“That was where they were to be eaten,” Quenum observed humorously and they burst into laughter.

“Captains were therefore constantly on their guard and did not relax their vigilance until their cargo was delivered.”

“A proverb here says that a child who keeps its mother awake will itself not go to sleep.”

“Perfectly!” Abdul gulped down his drink and filled his glass to overflowing. “European slavers were so worried about the possibility of slave revolts that they used divide and rule tactics by sometimes mixing their cargo with slaves from a region of Africa—who were thought to be docile—to inform them of any threat of insurrection.”

“It’s disturbing to think that even on being carried into slavery the African was his own kith and kin’s enemy. How could the European respect us?”

Abdul nodded quietly. “Yes, since overt resistance was met with stiff punishment, slaves used other forms of covert on-board resistance which were less violent. For example, during the voyage, slaves were brought on deck to dance; but some of them refused to do so or moved lethargically. But they were compelled with a cat o’ nine tails. To cut matters short, some slaves committed suicide by jumping overboard. Less tragically, other slaves refused to eat. A ship’s surgeon, Alexander Falconbridge, observed in 1788 that in such a case red-hot coals were shoveled and brought to the lips of the slaves to singe them.”

 Quenum’s eyes flew shut tight and his face got slightly twisted.

“Then they were threatened to be forced to swallow the glowing coal if they persisted in their refusal of food.”

“No!” Quenum cried out, dropped his chin onto his chest. “How they suffered!” he sighed.

            “Sure. So much so that some slaves became deeply melancholic and no amount of intimidation could make them cooperate. The same Dr. Falconbridge related the case of a slave woman who was so despondent that she fell ill and refused all food and medical treatment and died soon after.”

            “That was somebody’s daughter,” Quenum began dreamily with eyes shut, “somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister, somebody’s aunt, somebody’s niece, somebody’s cousin, pining for home and loved ones.” Quenum sighed deeply.

            “Africans continued to resist their forced dehumanization even when the slave ship docked them safely in the New World; and also during their new life of labor which was often characterized by other forms of passive and active resistance.”

            “Slavery gave the African no respite,” Quenum again said dreamily. “Cursed is the one who brought it up and all those who participated in it.”

“Another round of beer,” Abdul proposed. “It’s still on me.”

Quenum paused to ponder the offer for a while and then shrugged. “Okay,” he agreed and both of them waved to the apparently bored barmaid.

When she brought the drinks, Quenum had to ask the waitress to clean the wet table. She went about it listlessly.

“She can throw it up if the job no longer interests her,” Abdul said when she dragged away.

“How would she survive?” Quenum replied. “The slavery continues.”

Abdul went back to their discussion. “In America Africans used everything from simple tricks to open revolt to resist slavery,” he said. Then his voice rose, clearly colored with indignation: “My ancestors weren’t the docile and the imbeciles they wanted us to believe. If they were, why did slave owners seek to make them thoughtless? Why did the massas depend on absolute power before the slaves could be submissive to them? Which newly-arrived slave did happily go to work? Didn’t it take a whole year to break them in or season them to their new work environment before being assigned to their actual chores? Even then Africans still resisted the life of toil, including the supreme sacrifice of committing suicide. Once, twenty slaves hanged themselves at the same time to escape the life of drudgery.”

            “What hell they went through!” Quenum sighed. “Our ancestors also used similar tactics here to rebel against colonialism.”

“Not surprising: both systems were rebellion-generating. According to historians the actual U.S. territory was rocked by more than 250 organized slave revolts and conspiracies while the Caribbean and Central and South America experienced thousands of them.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Contrary to white propaganda, the African did not passively submit to enslavement. They often rebelled, and usually in such a violent manner that whites, stunned, couldn’t but label the leaders murderers and lunatics.”

“Goddamn them!” Quenum swore. “Who were the murderers and lunatics?” he sneered. “Those keeping their kind as chattel and working them beyond exhaustion or the enslaved fighting to redeem their humanity?”

“The answer is clear.”

“Our people were freedom fighters and clearheaded.”

“That’s why the leaders were rather thought of by the majority of slaves as heroes and martyrs.”

“Of course!”

“But some slaves viewed leaders of slave revolts as inimical to their own survival.”

“Goddamn these Uncle Toms!”

Abdul laughed. “Among the slave revolts, the most famous are those led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1791, Gabriel Prosser in 1800, Charles Deslonde in 1811, Denmark Vesey in 1822, and Nat Turner in 1831. Although all the leaders of these revolts, except Toussaint L’Ouverture, were apprehended and executed, their courage not only inspired other blacks to fight for their freedom but also to court the hope that they would one day be free.”

“They’re right.”

“The first ever significant uprising of African slaves took place in 1522.”

“Yes, the rebellions are as old as slavery itself, or almost so.”

“Yes, the first slaves were shipped to Spanish colonies in South America via Spain in 1510. And 12 years later that major slave rebellion broke out on the island of Hispaniola. This seemed to have opened the door to other slave resistance because from that time slave uprisings became common.”

“Good, a child who prevents its mother from sleeping would itself not to go sleep.”

“Yes, so in Colonial America the first serious recorded slave conspiracy took place in Gloucester County, Virginia on September 13, 1663. However a servant betrayed the plot hatched by white servants and Negro slaves.”

“S---!” Quenum sounded disappointed.

“If the date of that rebellion seems early too, know that it was in November 1528 that a man called Esteban or Estevanico first set foot on what is now the United States of America as an African slave.”

“How come he was brought there alone as a slave?”

“He was one of only four survivors of Pánfilo de Narváez’s failed expedition to Florida. It took him and the other three eight years to walk to the Spanish colony in Mexico under the leadership of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who, in 1542, published an account of their journey through modern Texas and Mexico.”

“Whew! That must be interesting reading.”

“I think so too.”

“Another significant slave rebellion that took place in the colonial era was the New York Slave revolt of July 04, 1712. Not prepared to take any mistreatment anymore, some twenty-five slaves, armed with guns and clubs, set fire to houses on the northern edge of the city.”

“Good!”

“The first nine whites who arrived on the scene were killed by the rebels.”

“Good!!”

“Then soldiers arrived, killed some of the rebels, captured others and restored order.”

“S---!”

““Some of the captured slaves were hanged, others were burned alive at the stake, and others too broken on the wheel or subjected to other forms of torture.”

Quenum, who had clutched his head and was wincing, remarked: “Who were the murderers and lunatics?”

“This event speaks for itself. But such highhanded actions failed to stop the revolts. So on June 05, 1720 another slave revolt broke out at South Carolina, resulting in the death of three whites.”

“Nobody can stop the wheel of freedom from turning.”

“That’s right. Hence in 1739 three black revolts shook South Carolina, leading to the deaths of 51 whites and many more slaves. One of the insurrections was led by a slave called Cato on September 09 in Stono, causing the death of thirty whites before the insurrection was quelled.”

“It will be for another time,” Quenum declared.

“Yes. Freedom being innate, our people found other ways to liberate themselves from white oppression. Escapes into Spanish Florida were among the earliest successful attempts at freedom and even at founding black communities. This began near the end of the 1600s and stopped only when Andrew Jackson marched into Florida and eradicated the ‘Negro forts’.”

“These people thought themselves to be the most intelligent race. Why couldn’t they grasp our hunger for freedom?” It wasn’t really a question but a cry of despair.

“They did but it wasn’t in their interest. At this time England was at war with Spain, and in 1738, the Spanish governor of Florida offered freedom to British colonial slaves who escaped to St. Augustine.”

“What hypocrisy!”

“Yes, while Spain itself was a slave trading nation and had used slave labor throughout its colonies, it resorted to that tactic against the British because it disputed British claims to Georgia and South Carolina and wanted to create turmoil in those colonies.”

 “And we were the perfect tool for their hankering over the spoils.”

“Yes, encouraging runaways was the perfect way Spain found to destabilize those colonies.”

“Well, their politics became the slaves’ freedom.”

“Yes. After the edict, slaves ran away individually and in groups to Saint Augustine and nearby Florida villages, many of which were inhabited by remnants of Southeastern Indian tribes who banded together for survival, and became known as Seminoles.”

Quenum thought how heartrending it was to see these Indians become stateless persons in their God-given land.

“To stem that tide, Georgia not only entreated its citizens to be on the lookout for Negroes running away from South Carolina to Florida but also scout boats patrolled the water routes near the Georgia-Florida border.”

“With those Florida villages inhabited by Indians, the Negroes could count on their complicity.”

“Yes. That’s why a group of about eighty slaves took up arms and attempted to march to Spanish Florida. Unfortunately they were overtaken by armed whites …”

“S---!”

“… and a battle ensued. Some forty-four blacks and twenty-one whites were killed.”

“Many more of our people always get killed in such circumstances,” Quenum whined.

“That was to be expected, the balance of power not being in our favour.”

“Disproportionate force.”

“Yeah, that’s the term,” Abdul raved. “Despite that freedom still beckoned. In March and April 1741, a series of suspicious fires accompanied with reports of a ‘Negro conspiracy’ led to general hysteria in New York City. New Yorkers charge that Roman Catholic priests were inciting slaves to burn the town on orders from Spain.”

“Finding scapegoats.”

“When it was all over, five whites and 18 blacks were hanged and another 13 blacks were burned at the stake.”

Quenum winced. “Such terror unleashed on people whose only crime was that they were obliged to fight to reclaim their confiscated freedom is one of the reasons why I feel good about the Haitian Revolution.”

“That rebellion certainly gave hopes of freedom to black slaves in the New World. I don’t know if that was the case with Julien Fedon, a free colored planter and slave owner, who led Grenada’s largest slave uprising in 1795.”

“Happening just four year’s after the Haitian, I wouldn’t be surprised that there was a contagion effect. What surprises me is that Fedon himself was a slave owner.”

“Such aberrations are one of those things hard to understand about those crazy days."

“Yes, for how can one understand that a person who suffered the pain of slavery and pined hard for freedom and obtained it can himself own slaves? His sin is more grievous than the African who sent them into slavery.”

“If the African hadn’t sent them into slavery, people like Fedon wouldn’t have become slaves to own slaves,” Abdul grumbled.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Abdul said offhandedly. “Despite that status as a slave owner, Fedon and his free colored compatriots faced discrimination and restrictions on their political and social rights by the British because they were black and had French nationality.”

“We can’t say the same British later stood up against slavery for humanitarian reasons. Did they suddenly have a change of heart somewhere along the line?”

The remark made Abdul laugh. “The free colored then stood up against British oppression and they were joined by the slaves who saw their action as a means to bring slavery to an end.”

“Of course.”

“Even black women got involved, transporting weapons and plundering provision grounds of plantations and the property of planters.”

“Time for the plantocrats to pay for the years of extortion.”

“Two notable free colored women suppliers for Fedon’s troops were Madame Peschian and Madame Reynauds.”

“Kudos!” Quenum cheered, thumbing Abdul who thumbed back.

“The British were sent to Fedon’s Camp, the headquarters of the rebels, to be imprisoned.”

“Good.”

“An eyewitness, John Hay, said that while being sent to the Camp, they met a large number of both male and female Negroes. And on Sunday 8 March 1795, many of them, men, women and children, assembled at Fedon’s camp and enjoyed themselves in feasting, dancing and singing.”

“At last, a happy day!”

“Ain’t it?” Abdul said proudly, emotion coloring his voice. “The British prisoners were massacred …”

Quenum, who was going to make a remark, froze, open-mouthed.

“… and Hay, who was present as well as Fedon’s wife and daughter, described the two as unfeeling spectators of Fedon’s horrid barbarity.”

“Why should they care, they who had witnessed untold cold British savagery towards blacks whose only crime was the color of their skin? And why the hell describe Fedon’s action as horrid barbarity when he was only retaliating for wrong done them? How will Hay call British mistreatment towards the slaves? Doesn’t one bad turn deserve another?”

“I agree entirely with you,” Abdul said. “He who lives by the sword shouldn’t complain to die by the same.”

“But that’s what often happens,” Quenum said, a sad look over his face.

“Yeah. The insurrection left extensive damage in its wake and one of the plantations, Grand Bras Estate complained that every building was destroyed and every Negro fled.”

“Grand Bras Estate, why cry? Don’t you know the wages of sin is death?”

“Rather, the wages of slavery is death and destruction,” Abdul corrected and they laughed hard. “Another plantation, Lataste Estate, reported damages to the tune of £22,652.15.s 6.d.”

Quenum shook with laughter. “This Estate even had the indecency of assessing the damages up to the last sinful slave produced pence! White people!” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Europeans always put their hearts where their money is; that’s why everywhere they went they massacred and or subdued the natives for their rich lands, enslaved others for their labor and colonized others for their natural resources and today still covet other people’s riches under the cover of neo-colonialism. In this way they proved themselves to be covetous and devoid of human sentiment. But there was always a prize to be paid. In the Grenada insurrection, overall slave owners’ loss came up to £2.5 million sterling, including destruction of plantations, loss of harvests, and about 7,000 dead slaves.”

“What?”

“Shocking, isn’t it?” Abdul said and Quenum buried his face in his arms and shook his head mournfully. “Although no woman was executed, but in September 1796 the governor of Grenada set up a committee to look into ways free colored women contributed to the insurgency and rebellion.”

“White impertinence, did the British expect our women to be morons and look on unconcerned while slavery dealt them, their husbands and their children fatal blows?”

“The white settlers’ resentment against the free colored women was so strong that when some female relations of the executed rebels attempted to re-enter Grenada from Trinidad in May 1797, there was such a public outcry that Governor Charles Green heeded the Council’s advice not to grant them permission to land.”

“What they did to us, Lord!”

“And even an Act of 27 December that year contained a list of such women whom the Committee judged undesirable on the island.”

“Cheekiness! Is Grenada the ancestral home of the British?”

“Of course, not. But if Europeans were brutal to the natives of the New World, what surprise is it that they did horrible things to Africans they brought over as property? It was with the intention to end the oppression slave masters were subjecting their human property to and create a free black state in Virginia that <SMALL>Gabriel Prosser, a slave born about 1776 near Richmond, Virginia to the family owned by Thomas Henry Prosser of the Brookfield Plantation in Henrico County, Southern Virginia, thought of his plot.”

“Yeah,” Quenum sang.

“Maybe spurred by the success of the Haitian revolutionaries, Prosser plotted in the spring of 1800 with other slaves, notably Jack Bowler.”

“How bitter they made our people against them!”

“During several months of careful planning and organizing, the insurrectionists gathered clubs, swords and other crude weapons. Then they decided to divide into three columns: one group was to storm the penitentiary which was then serving as an arsenal; another one was to capture the powder house, and the third to attack the city itself. Should the whites not surrender, the rebels planned to kill all of them but spare Quakers, Methodists and Frenchmen.”

“Yes, show me kindness and I’ll do the same to you.”

“The insurgents hoped that when they gather a large quantity of guns and powder and take over the state’s treasury, they would be able to hold out for several weeks. Meanwhile, they hoped that slaves from the surrounding territory would join them and, eventually, their numbers would reach such proportions as to compel the whites to come to terms with them. In this regard Prosser organized a group of blacks to gather an ‘army’ of some 1,100 slaves.”

“Wow!” Quenum cried.

“Everything was going well. On August 30, the date of Gabriel’s rebellious attack, as many as 1,000 armed slaves gathered outside Richmond ready for action. Unfortunately for them, a torrential downpour and thunderstorm hit Virginia, washing off roads and bridges that the insurrectionists would have used.”

“S---.”

“This forced them to back off and their plans were delayed for several days.”

Quenum soughed.

“Meanwhile two slaves from the same plantation as Gabriel Prosser betrayed the plot …”

“S---!”

“… and alerted the plantation owner, Mosby Sheppard, who immediately made it known to Governor Monroe who ordered in the militia which succeeded in crushing the insurrection.”

Quenum dropped his head into his palms.

“Thirty slaves were captured and executed.”

Quenum rubbed his face in his palms.

“During the trials, one of the rebels claimed that he had done nothing other than what Washington had done, …”

“Yeah.”

“… that he had ventured his life for his people, …”

“Wow!”

“… and that he was a willing sacrifice.”

“What bravery!” Quenum said and clapped, making Abdul to smile amiably.

“As for Gabriel, he was able to escape the militia and he tried to leave. Governor Monroe offered a $300 award for his capture. On September 24, Gabriel was taken on a ship heading for Norfolk. On October 10, 1800, Gabriel Prosser was hung, at the age of 24, at the Richmond gallows at 15^th and Broad Streets.”

Quenum sighed, loud.

“Governor James Monroe described the insurrection as without doubt the most serious and formidable conspiracy they had ever gone through.”

“Mr. Monroe, those who abhor rebellion should not keep slaves.”

“In their bid to avoid rebellions, Virginians lent their support to plans for black emigration back to Africa.”

“After keeping them against their will in America for how many years? If the blacks were a thorn in their sides and must go back home, they too had been a thorn in the sides of Native Americans and must also go back home to Europe.”

“Oh, I like that,” Abdul said and gave Quenum a high five. “The state of Virginia passed a law forbidding African Americans from assembling between sunset and sunrise for religious worship or for instruction.”

“Gentlemen, you cannot stop the bucket from going into the well.”

“Yes; another serious case of Negro rebellion took place in 1811 in Louisiana. It was the largest in the United States.”

“Why did the whites want to sleep in peace while keeping their kind as chattel slaves?” Quenum wondered.

Abdul nodded. “African American History Alliance of Louisiana published a book about the revolt written by Albert Trasher in 1995. It is titled “On to New Orleans! Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt”.”

“I’ll like to have a copy of it.”

“I’ll help you to. In that year of 1811, New Orleans and its suburbs had a population of nearly 25,000 made up of some 8,000 whites, almost 11,000 slaves, and about 6,000 free people of color.”

“Quite a number of free people of color,” Quenum said admiringly.

“These were mainly children of slave owners born by African women whom they had raped.”

“Not impressive then,” Quenum retracted his statement and wrinkled his nose.

“What was notable was the make-up of the population of the outlying parishes.”

Quenum stared expectantly at Abdul.

“Slaves outnumbered whites by far.”

“Recipe for rebellion.”

“Yes, the fact that the slaves were more numerous than their owners increased the owners’ constant apprehension that the enslaved persons would one day revolt and overthrow the wicked system.”

“They wanted to have their slaves and their peace of mind too.”

“To prevent the blacks from exercising this inalienable right, the slave holders sought to divide and rule them by granting small privileges to their mulatto offspring.”

“Mirage.”

“Yes. So to keep the enslaved people in check, a volunteer militia as well as regular troops patrolled the towns and slave quarters on plantations.”

 “A child who prevents its mother from going to sleep will itself not close an eye.”

“The slaves were not allowed to freely practice any African customs, including their languages and religions. They were even compelled to be baptized in the Roman Catholic Church which was the state religion in French possessions at the colonial times. Since the Africans cherished their custom and ways of life, conflict and rebellions were inevitable.”

“Yes, in the same way one can force a horse to the riverside but one can’t force it to drink, one can enslave a person’s body but one can’t enslave that person’s mind as well.”

“At the time of the 1811 uprising, French, Spanish and Anglo-American colonialists had not only subdued most of the native inhabitants—the Choctaw, Houmas, Natchez, Tunica, etc.—but they had enslaved many as well. So the economy of Orleans Territory—the southern half of old Louisiana territory the U. S. purchased from France and partitioned into two between 1803 and 1812—was based on the cruel system of chattel slavery in which a few individual families and joint corporations controlled masses of Africans and Native Americans they considered property. If Bienville, Crozat, Pontalba, Kenner, Henderson, Destrehan, La Branche, Darensburg, Butler, Andry, Deslonde, Picou, McCarty, Dubbisson, and others were some of the slave owners, one of the biggest holders was the Roman Catholic Church.”

Opposing forces fought in Quenum, a Catholic, who tried hard to hide his confusion from Abdul.

“The Jesuits, Capuchins and Ursulines not only owned sugar cane plantations worked by slave labor, but they also engaged in the slave trade.”

Quenum shook his head in embarrassment.

“From planting, cultivating and harvesting the sugar cane; hauling it to the mill or sugar house and processing it into crystals; up to delivering the sugar and molasses to the ships to take it to the markets was the work of slaves.”

Quenum continued to shake his head.

“But it wasn’t finished. In the city of New Orleans, slaves worked on the docks and at the warehouses and commercial establishments. They did skilled craft work also as coopers, carpenters, bricklayers, holsters, etc.”

“Then why did the slave owners say that blacks were ignorant?”

“This was to bolster the baseless and racist theory of white supremacy which placed people of the white race at the top of a triangle of humanity and all others at the bottom where they were oppressed and treated as subordinates, even subhuman. With the complicity of arbitrary laws, the oppressors suppressed the political rights, as well as all other rights of the downtrodden to own property, have a say in the affairs of the government, and freely determine their future. A black person could be attacked with impunity by a White, but should a Black do the same to a White, or retaliate with an attack by a white person, or even defend himself when attacked by a white man, or worse, rebel to regain his God-given freedom, he was instantly put to death as punishment.”

“Such flagrant injustices could only breed revolt!”

“That is why despite draconian measures to subdue them, the spirit of self-sacrifice to liberate themselves from bondage has always been a trait in the history of the African under enslavement in America and, of course, elsewhere in the New World. The most sensational example was the mighty revolt of enslaved persons that rocked St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, and Orleans parishes of Louisiana in 1811.”

“Injustice is the breeder of revolts.”

“Yes! And that revolt involved a large number of people. Though the uprising led by Nat Turner as well as the foiled plots of Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser are well-known, the 1811 Revolt, involved more than 500 people, and as such, was the largest in the history of the United States.”

“Can the slavers tell us that all those 500 people had gone nuts?”

Abdul thumbed Quenum. “Charles Deslonde, a laborer on the Deslonde plantation, led the revolt some fifty miles up river from New Orleans. On the evening of January 8 the rebellion extended to the Andry plantation some fifteen miles away and barely thirty-five from New Orleans. Manual Andry managed to escape from the plantation, …”

Quenum giggled.

“… crossed the river to the west bank and organized the militia which will attack the freedom fighters later on. Meanwhile on the plantation of Louis-Augustin Meuillon too, one of the larger estates in St. Charles Parish holding 70 adult slaves, many enslaved persons joined the revolt and all but one supported it. Other slaves came to swell the ranks of the insurgents as they swarmed from plantation to plantation on the East Bank of the Mississippi river, over a distance of some 25 miles. As their numbers grew into the hundreds, the rebels divided into companies, each commanded by an officer, some of whom were mounted on horseback. By 8 p.m., Charles, his lieutenants and their followers had subdued their masters. They then declared themselves free. Arrayed in columns, with flags flying and drummers beating out a rhythm and the others chanting the rallying cries of “On to New Orleans!” and “Freedom or Death,” the insurgents, armed with cane knives, hoes, clubs, other farm implements, and few guns, marched down the River Road all the way to New Orleans. They left New Orleans in the afternoon of January 9 for the plantation of Jacque Fortier where they camped in the evening.”

“What determination!”

“Yes; the leaders’ intention was to create an army, set free all the slaves in the territory of Louisiana and seize state power.”

“No doubt, they were influenced by the Haitian revolution.”

“I think so too. At about nine o’clock of that evening of January 9, the encamped blacks were attacked by a force—made up of advanced elements of the U. S. militia, regular troops and merchant marine from New Orleans—led by Major Derrington.”

 “S---!”

“The attack was however warded off …”

“Good.”

“… and the rebels retreated to the sugarhouse. They further withdrew upriver to the plantation of Bernard Bernoudy in the middle of the night and encamped there.”

A cloud came over Quenum’s face. “Perhaps it was safer there,” he said doubtfully.

“Maybe,” Abdul answered equally doubtfully. “The next day at about 9 a. m., the combined forces of Hampton and Derrington marched upriver to the Beroudy plantation and attacked the blacks. They fought back valiantly but soon ran out of ammunition.”

“S---.”

“Of course, under such conditions and faced with well armed forces, there wasn’t much the insurgents could do.”

“S---!” Quenum cried again, his voice dripping with more bitterness.

“The counter-insurgency troops killed many of the leaders and the participants. By January 19, the revolt was crushed.”

Quenum sighed audibly.

“Other leaders were captured and executed.”

Quenum closed his eyes hard.

“The bodies were decapitated and the heads placed on poles along the River Road and at the gates of the city of New Orleans.”

“As civilized and Christian as they were!” Quenum sneered. “These were the people calling the negroes lunatics!”

“By this savage act and the grim spectacle which followed it, the oppressors sought to terrorize the downtrodden into absolute submission.”

“Wasted effort.”

“Some rebels were held for trial; sentenced to be summarily executed; and most of them were executed in short order.”

Quenum winced.

“The tribunal in St. Charles Parish, for example, was composed of Jean Noel Destrehan, Alexandre Labranche, Cabaret, Adelard Fortier, Edmond Fortier, and Pierre Bauchet St. Martin who acted as judge.”

“Goddamn them all.”

“Beginning on January 13 at 4 p. m, through January 15, the tribunal issued death warrants for 21 slaves for the crime of insurrection.”

“The so called crime of insurrection,” Quenum countered.

“Absolutely. The condemned were to be shot by a militia detachment, each one in front of the residence to which he belonged.”

Quenum stared wide-eyed at Abdul.

Nodding grimly, Abdul continued: “Then their heads were to be cut off and put up on the end of a pike, at the place of execution.”

“Kai!” Quenum exclaimed, his face a mass of disdain, revulsion and pain.

Abdul again nodded grimly. “As the tribunal said, ‘with the goal of making a terrible example for all who might in the future seek to win their freedom by force of arms.”

“How did they let the Africans to be made captives in Africa?” Quenum exclaimed. “How did they keep the captives in the coastal forts in Africa? How did they transport them to the New World? And how did they maintain the enslaved in subjugation?”

“As you said, the worst throat cutter dreads to sleep on his back.”

“My God, what hypocrisy! And these were the people who had the guts to label Africans savages.”

Abdul nodded. “The sentences were carried out without delay.”

Quenum soughed.

“Condemned and executed in St. Charles Parish were Cupidon, Eugene, and Charles, all of Labranche Bros.; Dagobert of Delhomme; Harry and Guiam of Kenner & Henderson; Jean of Arnauld; Hippolite, Louis, and Joseph of Etienne Trepagnier; Koock, Quamana, and Robaine of James Brown; Etienne and Nede of Trask; Acara of Delhommer; Amar of Wid. Charbonnet; Simon of Butler & McCutchen; and Gros Lindor and Petit Lindor of Destrehan.”

Quenum who was counting the names on his fingers, said: “That comes to twenty.”

“Yeah?” Abdul said in confusion. “Then a name is missing.”

“Never mind.”

“The slave owners also held a tribunal in St. John the Baptist Parish. Although few records exist, it is known that at least eight enslaved persons were executed on the orders of this panel headed by Judge Hoaud.”

“Executioner or judge?” Quenum sneered.

“That was what he called himself. The martyrs were Charles, Lindor, Nontoun, and Smillet, all of Kenner and Henderson; Louis of Daniel Madre Estate; Pierre Grisse of Degruy;  Hans of George Weinprender; and Jacques of Pierre Becknel.”

“Eight exactly.”

“In the case of the Prisoner Daniel Garret of Messrs Butler and McCutcheon, the Judge and the Parish Jury not surprisingly found him guilty of the charges as laid in the indictment and pronounced the following sentence against him: ‘He shall be hung at the usual place in the City of New Orleans within three days from the date hereof and his head shall be severed from his Body and exposed at one of the lower gates of this city’.”

Quenum winced again.

“’Dated: New Orleans January 17, 1811

Signed: Daniel Clark, Charles Jumonville Jacques Villere, J. Etienne Bore P. Dennis Laronde. Approved by L. Moreau Lislet, City Judge’.”

“If only they had known that they were proudly leaving their names in the records to be condemned by posterity!” Quenum said.

“In New Orleans, the tribunals were held on the second floor of the Cabildo while the captured insurgents were kept in the jail on the lower level. Six slave owners sat in judgment of the reels. The court was in session from January 15 through the 18^th and again on February 2, and issued death warrants for at least eight rebels. The slave owners on the tribunals included Louis LaBlanc, J. E. Bore, Daniel Clar, Peter Colssen, Stephen Henderson, Chas. Jumonville, Thomas Poree, P. Dennis LaRonde, James Villere, Jacques Villere, J. B. Labatut, and others. The judge was L. Moreau Lislet.”

“Thanks for leaving your names to be damned.”

“Although this revolt was ruthlessly quelled, the nasty action of the whites did not prevent the enslaved Africans from giving up the fight. Time and time again, in Louisiana and elsewhere, they rose up for their rights.”

“They couldn’t have done otherwise,” Quenum said. “The need to redeem their honor makes them fearless.”

“Yes, because of this tradition of heroic struggle, the descendants of these revolutionary fighters did not hesitate to proudly fight in the Union Army in the Civil War of 1861-1865 which put an end to this horrendous system of chattel slavery.”

“This war was an extension of their bold actions to be free.”

“What was notable in the 1811 Revolt was that leaders and rank and file maroons participated in it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Quenum declared. “Those people have always run away to freedom.”

“Yes. Some of the rebels executed after the uprising were runaways. We can cite Simon from the plantation of Butler and McCutcheon. Months before the revolt, the local and regional newspapers published ads in both French and English offering rewards for his return. One read thus: 20 DOLLARS REWARD RANAWAY from the sugar plantation of Richard Butler & Samuel McCutchon, on the second instant, a likely negro lad named SIMON, lately from Baltimore, about 20 years of age, 5 feet 6 or 7 inches height, has a scar on his left cheek, and one on his forehead, handsome features-:--had on when he went away, a tow linen shirt and trousers; black hat and sundry—other—apparel. It is supposed he will endeavor to get off in the shipping for the eastern states.—Ten dollars reward will be paid—if—taken within the county of Orleans; and twenty if out of the county, with all reasonable expenses if brought home, or delivered to Messr. Kenner and Henderson of New Orleans. Masters of vessels and others-are forbid harboring or taking off said run-away at their peril. July 4.”

“And it was Simon’s participation in the revolt to be free which delivered him to his hounds.”

“Yes,” Abdul agreed, “following his participation in the revolt, Simon was captured and executed in St. Charles Parish. An account released after the revolt mentioned two enslaved persons killed, two missing and nine in jail. Out of the nine, two of them: Apollon and Henri were tortured to death.”

“Who are the lunatics? I keep on asking.”

“Only the enslaved person Bazile, 36 years old and a native of Louisiana, tried to put out the fire. For his betrayal of his fellow enslaved persons, Bazile was freed after the revolt.”

Quenum soughed. “There’s always a Judas lurking somewhere. The slaves of Haiti were lucky fellows.”

Abdul nodded. “The only slave revolt which was a complete success took place in Haiti, then called San Domingue.”

“Yeah, the revolution which began there in 1791,” Quenum cut in excitedly.

“Yes. Under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Africans defeated the French soldiers after a decade of fighting, leading to their independence.”

“Yes, but at the cost of a ruined economy and much casualty,” Quenum said regretfully. “The Haitian revolution made us proud but the aftermath up to this day is a bitter pill for all self-respecting black people.”

“I think the Haitian Revolution had a huge psychological impact, only the moment wasn’t yet ripe to serve as catalyst for the freedom of the others. Look at what happened later on: the abolition of the slave trade by European nations, the slave populations in the New World becoming more Creole—locally born—and the growth and spread of churches enabling slaves not only to come together but also to hear message of hope and liberation. This revolution provided ingredients for rebellion and helped slacken the tentacles of white oppression.”

“Amen!” Quenum declared and they laughed.

“Another spectacular Negro rebellion was led by Denmark Vesey, a 55-year-old native of St. Thomas in the West Indies who worked as a carpenter in Charleston, South Carolina. His insurrection, according to rumor, would have involved some nine thousand people,” Abdul said.

“Ah, that brave Methodist!” Quenum said admiringly. “Another admirer of the Haitian Revolution, no doubt.”

Abdul nodded. “A young slave in Charleston, South Carolina, Denmark Vesey purchased his freedom with $1,500 that he won in a lottery.”

“That must have been a fortune in those days, and goes to show how much freedom meant to the enslaved.”

“During the following years he worked as a carpenter. Concerned about the plight of his slave brethren, he hatched a plot on May 30 for an insurrection involving thousands of Negroes in Charleston, South Carolina, and its vicinity which would liberate them.”

Quenum nodded proudly.

A feeling of compunction about what was to follow eclipsed any pride that Abdul felt in such cases. “Over a period of seven months, he planned to ‘liberate’ the city, encouraging slaves to seize weapons, commandeer ships, and sail for the West Indies. Vesey and other freedmen collected two hundred pike heads, bayonets and three hundred daggers to use in the revolt, but, before they could go into action, a house slave informed on them on June 16, 1822.”

Sighing, Quenum shook his head sadly.

“Authorities at Charleston, South Carolina, arrested 10 slaves who had heeded the urgings of Denmark Vesey. Vesey was arrested too. During his trial, Vesey defended himself eloquently in court, but he was found guilty and he and five of his aides were hanged at Blake’s Landing, Charleston, South Carolina, on July 2.”

“The contrary would have surprised me indeed,” Quenum said bitterly.

“More arrests followed, including 131 Negroes and four whites who had encouraged the project; 37 of them were executed.”

Quenum sighed.

“To prevent further such occurrences, several southern states tightened their slave codes. For example, the proprietors of inns and public conveyances were forbidden to receive persons of the African race; the idea was to prevent slaves from running away.”

Quenum shook his head.

“The stringent slave codes were to make slaves more submissive to slave masters who didn’t want to acknowledge that their tyranny was coming to an end.”

“But it was.”

“Yes, and blacks sought to make them understand that. Hence the peculiar institution received another serious jolt from the so-called Southampton Insurrection led by Nat Turner, a slave of Joseph Travis, in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 21 to 22, 1831.”

“Yeah, that proud bondsman gave the slaveholding south the jitters with the only effective, sustained slave revolt in U.S. history.”

Abdul nodded. “Turner was born on October 2, 1800, the same year Prosser led his rebellion and Vesey was freed. Raised by his mother and paternal grandmother after his father ran away, Turner became a skilled carpenter and a literate, mystical preacher who saw visions. Drawing parallels between the black slave situation and that of the Israelites, Nat Turner and other slaves believed that the social righteousness preached by the prophets of the Old Testament concerned their experience too. A similar belief is held by the African Hebrew Israelites, an African American group living in Dimona, Israel.”

“I see,” Quenum said in the manner of someone who didn’t know anything about a matter.

“So, while the slave-holders quoted parts of the Bible that admonished the slave to be faithful and obedient to their masters, the slaves seemed to mind rather God’s condemnation of the wicked and His using human instruments to punish oppressors. From these, they drew hope and inspiration. While growing increasingly intolerant of slavery, Turner’s concern for the plight of his brothers soared, making him even believe that he was divinely appointed like Moses in the Bible to lead his fellow slaves to freedom.”

“Wow!”

“As Turner’s conviction reached its height, there came the solar eclipse in early 1831. He interpreted this as a sign that the day of vengeance was at hand.”

Quenum shook with laughter.

“Maybe learning from the failures of Prosser and Vesey, Turner plotted his revolt over six months, leaving only a small band of four followers in the know to lessen the possibility of being betrayed.”

“That was intelligent.”

“In August, while 31 years old, Turner and his men gathered in the woods and then began their raid by attacking the Travis plantation where they killed the entire family.”

A whistle escaped from Quenum’s lips. “The poor things,” he sighed and Abdul stared sharply at him.

“By the following morning, Turner’s group, which had grown to 60 or 70, moved from farm to farm, slaughtering at least 57 whites and freeing the slaves, many of whom joined them. Thus, Turner’s ‘army’ grew as the revolt progressed.”

“I can imagine the carnival scene!” Quenum raved.

“Panic swept through Southampton and word of the massacre spread.”

“Luck always seems to be on the side of the wicked.”

“At one farm, they were met by armed resistance in which masters as well as slaves fought fiercely to stop the attack.”

Quenum stared at Abdul who as usual squirmed at the mention of such slaves, although he knew most of them were obliged by circumstances to be on the masters’ sides.

“Having run out of ammunition, and with some of his men killed and others wounded, Turner’s planned drive towards Jerusalem, the country seat, where they had hoped to gain additional support and replenish their ammunition, was stemmed. Soon the militia arrived and ruthlessly crushed the remaining band. By then some sixty white men, women and children had been killed.”

Quenum wanted to rejoice but wondered if it was appropriate for the sake of the women and children.

“A manhunt followed. Several of Turner’s followers were captured and executed.”

Quenum chewed his lips.

“Nat Turner himself was not captured until October 30.”

“Two months after the rebellion began!” Quenum marvelled.

“Yes, and less than five miles from where the attack had begun.”

Quenum soughed.

“Thomas R. Gray, a lawyer and plantation owner assigned to Turner’s defense, …”

“What?” Quenum howled. “A plantocrat to defend a rebel slave?”

Abdul nodded. “Gray interviewed Turner during his trial but stopped short of defending him.”

“There you are!”

“He even didn’t make any attempt to call witnesses to testify on his behalf.”

“Is that surprising?”

Abdul shook his head. “As a result, Turner was hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia, on November 11, 1831. His corpse was skinned and his flesh used for grease.”

“Who are the murderers and lunatics?” Quenum shrieked again.

“Yes, rebellious slaves were depicted as savages and brutes not worth freeing because they would pose a danger to society.”

“Goddamn them!”

“Submissive slaves however were made to look as children in need of paternal protection.”

“Goddamn them again!”

“Never were they seen as men who were fighting for their rights and liberties as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.”

“And that’s where all the hypocrisy hurts!”

Abdul tittered. “Gray even profited to publish a pamphlet, The Confessions of Nat Turner, recounting the story of Turner’s rebellion from his own point of view.”

“The profiteer sonofabitch!”

“Terrorized, the white South released a wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves. The proslavery, anti-abolitionist convictions became strengthened and persisted in that region until the American Civil War of 1861-65.”

“Why they didn’t see that their renewed effort to bolster the slave system and stifle the organized abolition movement in the South was destined for failure baffles me.” 

“They didn’t think anything of that,” Abdul replied. “That’s why the Washington City Council rendered the Black Codes harsher so that a black man who struck a white person was to have his ears cut off.”

“Savages and brutes parading as civilized people!” Quenum spat contemptuously.

“Fortunately such behaviour goaded blacks and abolitionists into action.”

“Yes, there is a direct relationship between resistance to bondage and the natural right of the individual or people to be free just as expounded by European thinkers like John Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau in the concept of a natural law. This was why the great Revolutions of the eighteenth century in the Western world were punctuated by the ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

“Yes, if freedom was the natural universal condition of the human being, it naturally included people of all races, colors and ethnicities. The African held in slavery therefore had the natural right to demand their freedom arbitrarily confiscated. And failure to get this right peacefully gave them the natural right to throw off the yoke by any means possible and be free, including the use of violence.” Abdul breathed like one out of breath.

“The slave rebel therefore, was a natural rebel.”

            “A people who calmly accept serfdom does not exist,” Abdul declared. “One pretends to submit to it out of the survival instinct. That’s why domineering systems must forcibly be violent. In our case they went as far as making zombies out of us in destroying our identity by renaming us or simply identifying us with a number. Thanks to our ancestral culture we kept a semblance of humaneness in us. Ancestral music and Saturday night dances in the woods proved a way out of the backbreaking—and why not, soul-searing—slave work and bonded the slaves into a community.”

            “In the same way slavery took away your names, colonialism also supplanted our first names with so-called Christian names some of which cannot even be found anywhere in the Bible and the bearing of which is nowhere recommended in the Bible. Also while European musical instruments were used in Church, Africans drums for instance were considered heretical.”

Abdul nodded. “But we always found a way around the dehumanizing tactics. For instance, to defeat slavery and severe food rationing, the slave did not hesitate to steal the master’s provisions and livestock. This surprises novices,” Abdul added and Quenum nodded silently. “Charles Ball, an ex-slave, explained that no slave felt guilty for stealing from his master, if that was necessary for his comfort.”

“I agree with him. Should one have qualms from stealing from one’s exploiter? You’re only taking back a fraction of what he denies you. Our people did similar things in colonialism. I guess that somewhat explains the lack of guilt in stealing from the government and in being lax to State work which has persisted up to today. Interestingly the Ge-Mina-Ewe word for government is fioxa: the chief’s allies.”

            “Weren’t they?” Abdul said and they laughed. “Slaves were also thought to be chronic liars, especially towards their masters and managers.”

            “The same belief was found in colonialism.”

            “Slaves would also work as slowly as they could…”

“…isn’t that what we’re seeing in this girl here?”

Abdul nodded. “Since the slave owner thought slaves dull and stupid, they acted likewise so as to do as little work as possible without being unduly whipped.”

“Gumption, isn’t it?” Quenum said, pointing to his head.

Abdul nodded vigorously. “This attitude was so prevalent among slaves that Africans were thought to be congenitally lazy.”

“Don’t they still think so of us?”

Abdul nodded. “One Doctor so believed it that he called this attitude Dyaesthesia Aethiopica.”

“What!” Quenum howled and laughed hard, giving Abdul a high five. “The poor fellow.”

Abdul nodded. “But the overseers labeled it rascality, meaning that the act was mischievous. For the doctor the symptoms of that imaginary African disease included breaking working tools and spoiling everything that needed to be handled with care.”

“Goddamn him,” Quenum added as they laughed their heads off. “Forced labor was also used by the colonialists in Africa and the same go-slow attitude was observed here.” In his ecstasy Quenum poured his beer too quickly and it foamed and poured over the rim. He soughed and quickly raised the glass to his lips and drained off the excess. Then he traced a path with his middle finger on the table for the spilt drink to drain off.

            “Ah, the barmaid,” Abdul said and opened his mouth and raised his hand to call out to her and to wave her over.

“No-o-o-o,” Quenum objected and Abdul froze. “I don’t want to see her display that go-slow ‘slave tactic’ again.”

They burst into laughter while Quenum traced a larger path for the beer to drain off faster.

Abdul was the first to pick up the conversation: “Even though slaves working in the Great House—the master’s residence—were considered lucky because of certain advantages attached to their ‘elite’ jobs, such slaves, especially female domestics, were perhaps more vulnerable to physical abuse due to their close proximity to their masters.”

“That’s true. They fell easy victims to the whims and caprices of the master and his family. Something like: out of sight, out of mind, for field slaves; and within sight, within mind, for the domestics.”

“Somewhat, because both field and house slaves were subjected to sexual exploitation. The domestics suffered more sexual harassment because they were constantly before the prying eyes of the occupants of the great house. The female field slave could not escape it because her socially inferior status among the slaves, her low condition as laborer, and the deprived material state of her existence made her to be considered as more readily available for sexual exploitation by her master, the white men on the plantation, and relatively privileged slave men.”

“Yet domestic servants did not find slavery easy to bear.”

“Yes,” Abdul agreed. “Domestic slaves also resisted slavery since they were often accused of being lazy and obstinate. Domestic servants became tell-tales or murderers to defeat slavery.”

Sucking a throat full of beer, Quenum agreed gutturally.

“There’s a story where, having overheard her master say that a certain slave was to be sold, a domestic servant informed the person and in the morning the slave had disappeared. In another, a fifteen year-old domestic servant girl in Jamaica poisoned her master and said she watched his death throes without a hint of pity.”

“Why should see have any pity?” Quenum sneered. “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”

“Slave women also killed their own new-born babies to prevent them from growing up into a life of misery.”

“How inhuman they made us become!”

“Running away was one of the earliest methods of escaping a life of chattel labor. Already in 1570 ten percent of the 20,000 slave population of New Spain had fled. The Cimarrones, as the Spanish called them, established communities in the wild known as Maroons. They survived by cultivation and hunting, or by raiding local plantations and communities. One of the most famous of these communities was the Maroons of Jamaica. Existing already when the Spanish ruled the island, the community had grown to 1,500 by the time the English gained control of the island in 1655.” 

“That should have shown those racists that our people also valued freedom.”

            “So much so that although measures were put in place to assimilate North American slaves, those in the United States did not hesitate to flee to the Northern States when they had the opportunity,” Abdul said. “And this, despite the fact that they could still be captured and returned to their masters; that specially trained dogs could be put on their heels; and that wanted ads could be run in the newspapers. That’s why for freedom’s sake, slaves fled further to Canada, beyond the operational area of American slave catchers. To do this, the slaves counted on black and white accomplices and the intricate system of transportation, the Underground Railroad.”

            “That was something, the Underground Railway.”

            Abdul nodded. “But slave owners did not as much fear slaves running away as revolting,” Abdul said. “Except for the United States, in most areas of the New World slaves often hugely outnumbered the white population. The population of Guadeloupe in 1789 was 103,200, of which only 13,700 were whites and the rest of 89,500 blacks.”

            Quenum reckoned for a while. “A proportion of almost 1 to 7.”

            “Yeah,”—Abdul also reckoned twitching his right fingers —“six point something.”

“This is a case of eating one’s cake and wanting it. Their own proverb.”

            “Ignoring the obvious, the slave owners employed several techniques to prevent uprisings.”

“Really, ignoring the obvious,” Quenum said. “They had minds but they failed to reason.”

“First, slaves were kept away from each other on plantations so as not to band together.”

Quenum continued to shake his head.

“Then division was brought into the ranks of slaves when they were grouped into classes.”

“Divide and rule tactics.”

Abdul nodded. “And violence in various forms was used as a dissuasive instrument. Slaves for instance were constantly whipped, whether they committed an offence or not, just to keep them disciplined.”

“May the damn souls of slave owners continue to burn in hell.”

            “Unlike in the Caribbean, slave revolts in the US were limited in many respects.”

Quenum nodded.

“They involved fewer slaves, and led to much less destruction of white lives and property. When Nat Turner led his slave revolt in Virginia in 1831 he mustered only about seventy slaves, while in Jamaican the number could go up to 400.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah. Slaves were not morons. They knew if they failed in their attempt at revolt, a tragic fate awaited them. When a slave uprising failed in Barbados in 1675, six of them were burnt alive and eleven others were beheaded and their bodies dragged through the streets.”

“Where are the lunatics,” Quenum sang his litany. “It makes me smile to know these people were calling us heathen and savages and themselves Christian and civilized.”

“But all the Negro sought was to overthrow the horrendous system of slavery and reclaim his scorned humanity,” Abdul remarked, took a long drink and licked his lips. The beer was beginning to work. “When we talk of abolitionist people think of whites.”

“That’s false.”

“Yes. In the New World, the enslaved Africans resisted slavery in many forms, including the ‘Back to Africa’ movement, the founding of ‘Maroon’ communities and, of course, armed revolt. The Haitian insurrection, in particular, was primarily instrumental in calling the whole institution of slavery into question.”

“Yeah, that opened wide the eyes of whites to a reality they’d been discounting.”

“Yet the active part taken by slaves who managed to run away and fought against slavery is very often unacknowledged in the accounts of the campaign for abolition.”

“Many abolitionists were of African descent, campaigning in Britain or in the Americas. This included: Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, a Fanti boy born in today’s Ghana and captured at the age of 13 and enslaved in the West Indies. His ‘Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery’, published in London in 1787, pleaded for an immediate end to slaving activities. Olaudah Equiano—alias Gustavus Vassa— an Ibo boy taken from Nigeria into slavery at the age of 11, published ‘The Life of Olaudah Equiano’ in London in 1789, in which he described his life from early childhood in now eastern Nigeria through to enslavement. A quarter of a century later the writer and journalist and former slave Frederick Douglass published his ‘Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass’ in 1845. While all these books played a significant role in the movement of opinion which led to the abolition of the slave trade, Douglass even traveled all over Europe campaigning for abolition.”

            “This is the history Africans and people of African descent must be taught.”

            Abdul nodded. “Unfortunately the crap we’re given in America is dead silent about those men and women who resisted slavery in Africa, during the Middle Passage, in the Caribbean Islands, Brazil, and the rest of the Americas, who organized slave revolts, and campaigned for abolition.”

            “May the Ancestors bless them,” Quenum said.

            “Yes. And curse people like Bossuet who wrote that to abolish slavery was tantamount to contradicting the Holy Spirit who, through Saint Peter, ordered slaves to remain under bondage and made no obligation on their owners to free them.”

            “May he remain cursed,” Quenum said, raising his cup.

Abdul lifted his proudly and they clinked them a little hard, causing the barmaid who was dozing to flash them a look and mutter something. But when minutes later they waved her over to clear the table, she broke into a bright smile on seeing the nice tip Abdul gave her.

Abdul and Quenum got to their feet, feeling slightly cramped, and shook hands warmly.

“Excited to meet you,” Abdul said sincerely. “It’s been a long and very informative and interesting talk.”

“You’re welcome, my brother,” Quenum replied proudly with a broad grin, patting Abdul’s right shoulder. “Don’t fail to stay in touch.”

Abdul thumbed him and he thumbed back as the motorcycle-taxis they had hailed moved towards their respective destinations.

Back at IPA Abdul called the curator’s friend, Lonlon Locoh for a rendezvous. An elated-sounding Lonlon asked Abdul to call him when he got to the border.