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« on: May 28, 2009, 10:28:41 AM »
I wrote this story a while (read a couple of years) back for a piece of History homework. It's not amazing, but it's kinda interesting I hope. It's set in the 1700s at the time of the slave trade.
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[big]The Diary Of Plurod Odawe[/big]
Capture
Africa. Africa. A name – how foolish the Europeans are, to believe that such a vast, diverse area, so rich, so beautiful, so magnificent, so alive, could be summed up in just a single, short word! I tell you, and heed my words, that there is no word that could describe Africa, no book, no song, no poem, no, not even if it were written on a sheet of paper that covered the world, it could not describe my homeland. This was the world I had hoped to spend my life in – a world where men worked hard, and saw the rewards, and were satisfied. But it seems this is not to be. I was walking down to a farm not far from my hut that fateful morning, for the Farmer’s son was sick, and my wise tutor in herbs and medicine was busy with other matters. The trees provided cool shade and stopped the sun beating down onto my back, and as I sauntered down the track I listened to the raucous cries of the many creatures of the forest, and watched the clouds float carelessly overhead. I had just reached the farm gate, when I heard a great noise behind me, a banging, cracking explosion, and I spun around…
Only to find I was looking into the face of an Ngrol hunter, from the neighbouring tribe. He carried a weapon which I had seen only occasionally before, what was it? That was it, a gun. A fire-stick that killed people as easily as a sharp knife kills a defenceless tree frog. I yelped and turned to run, when I saw a faint plume of smoke beginning to rise from the thatched roofs of the huts. I slowly turned back to the hunter, ho was looking at me almost wolfishly, his eyes narrowing as he thought of his reward for my capture. “Walk” he rasped. “And don’t try to run”.
His gun was trained directly onto my chest – in fear for my life, I gave up and allowed his fellows, who had just arrived from capturing the farmer and his family, to tie my hands and lead me up a track that led, surprisingly, away from their village. In fact, I realised, it led to the sea.
My head was awash with questions, but in my fear I voiced none of them, just kept walking on, and on, and on, until at length we reached a bay or inlet, where a large ship of a type I had not seen before, only heard about was moored. It was, in fact, a mighty wooden vessel of the sort that the English, Spanish, French or Dutch might have used to transport spices, goods or food to and from their colonies – but it was not goods that this ship was to carry. Its cargo was people, and there were multitudes assembled in line there, each person tense and trembling, desperate for some kind of certainty in a life that had been thrown into turmoil and darkness. A few hunters, similar to the ones who had captured me, were striding up and down the lines of people with whips, striking anyone who talked, or faltered, or in an way seemed to be doing anything other than standing still and in line. A girl in the next line of no more than my own age, maybe a year or so younger, faltered and was cruelly beaten until red welts showed up across her back. She cried out, and was kicked brutally until, shaking, she stood up once more. I cried out indignantly at her treatment, and received maybe forty lashes with a hunter’s whip for my pains. She briefly glanced at the blood that seeped from my back then closed her eyes tight, trying in vain to rid herself of the memory. The farmer, whose name was Ohlaga, and his wife, Nurmale, exchanged glances, two kindred spirits in an uncertain world.
After this, we were all herded onto the ship, like cattle to the slaughter, and the men and women were separated. Nurmale gave a slow, sad look of farewell to Ohlaga before disappearing, along with many others, into the darkness of the hold. Ohlaga called out to her, but quickly felt the hard lash of a white sailor cut deep into the flesh of his back. His teeth visibly clenched together, he went ahead of me into the black nightmares that awaited us below. My first glance into the hold was one of apprehension, followed by a feeling of simple, blind fear. This hold was barely higher than my shoulders, and I had to bend down and squeeze myself in to the pathetically small space I was allowed by the press of other people and the very limited movement allowed by the heavy manacles that we were held with. I shut my eyes - there seemed to be nothing else I could do.
Despair
I have few memories of the first week or two on the ship, other than meeting my fellow sufferers. There was Ohlaga - embittered by the loss of his farm, he rarely spoke, and when he did, it was almost never in words, just in harsh, painful, rasping gutturals - though many of the slaves’ captures had broken their bodies, Ohlaga’s had broken his mind. Ohlaga was a man of about forty, still very able-bodied and strong, with a shaven head and piercing dark eyes that you could see the fear and madness reflected in. Hrudo was chained on the other side of me; his story was that of betrayal, his own clan chief had sold him to the white men. He was not five years older than myself, a young man with a world that had, like a lamp falling to the floor, been shattered and extinguished. His wife and child had been taken too, and his father had been killed, leaving him a desperate man. Finally, Guhli, an old fisherman who had had some experience of white men, was chained up facing me. He was old, and had no hair and few teeth, and was crippled in the leg because of what he had faced at the hands of the enemy tribe who had sold him.
I say there is little else I can remember, and this is the truth, for there, in the hold, away from the light of day, away from the certainty of firm soil, away even from hope itself, there was nothing but a void into which all thoughts, memories and feelings drained slowly away, save that of despair, which was manifest. This was the test of souls, and few in number were those who could truly say they passed it.
We were fed, after a fashion; a sort of slop, of the kind animals might be fed on, was half poured, half spooned onto our platters in quantities that would not have fed a child of three. The slop was mostly, I think, rice, with yams and possibly beans mashed into it. On occasion, we were also given dry and tasteless biscuits or small portions of meat to eat (or rather, attempt to eat, for there were few of us whop had the strength to eat properly, starved as we were). We were allowed to drink just twice a day, no more than a single half-pint ant any time. Those who refused to eat were tied to the wall and had food forced down their throat. Merhli, may his soul be at peace, was a farmer chained up near to myself - he lasted just nine days before he began to have uncontrollable diarrhoea and bowel pains – he died in torment two days later, the first of many who would fall to the scourge that was dysentery. Scurvy, too, became quickly apparent – when it as mealtime I saw several people’s skin beginning to discolour, and was afraid that the disease might spread from person to person so that in time there would be none of us left.
All this while we were still unsure to where we were headed – Guhli informed me that the sailors were English, but other than that we had no knowledge of who our captors were. By his time many of us felt that we could b afraid of nothing any more. We were resigned to our fates in this hold, which now smelt foully of human excrement, and all we could think of was the futility, the hopelessness, the sheer, rancorous, foul, fearful despair.
Disease and Dissent
I fell ill in the third week of our voyage. By that time I was weak from lack of food, and I was frequently violently sick upon the decks. By the time the white men noticed me, I was so weak I could not stand or even eat normally. I was taken away from those of my fellow prisoners who were still well, and left, unchained, on the deck of the ship. They did not consider me a threat, and indeed I was not one, being too weak to stand, I merely lay, a mewling scrap of a man, on the harsh wooden boards; the sun and rain beat down on me in equal measure, but away from the cramped conditions below deck my health, by luck more than anything else, slowly began to improve.
It was one day when my health was beginning to improve noticeably (but when I was still unable to do much other than walk a few feeble steps a day and eat) when I heard a most frightening crash from below decks. And then another. A British sailor stuck his head out of the trapdoor and called out, before he was seemingly dragged back into the hold. I watched in terror as the British sailors readied their muskets, and watched…
The slaves came rushing out of the hold. “No! No!” I screamed, but they slammed open the hatch and charged as one, led by… Ohlaga. Like a crazed lion he raged, hurling grown men with his bare hands and smashing their faces. About half of the slaves followed behind him, yelling and whooping with the clamour of the fight. But it was then that my yelled warnings became apparent. The sailors on the rigging and in the bows fired into the massed ranks of the slaves. About twelve died in the first volley; maybe a few more in the next. Ohlaga was still fighting though, and this compelled my fellow slaves to keep fighting, charging en masse towards the gunners at the helm of the ship. But then a bullet struck Ohlaga in the chest, then another. Then another. He kept charging as he died. Charging on... and on... grabbing a young British sailor… on, on, and over the side of the ship, taking the young man down with him in a dead man’s grip. Now, though, the slaves had no one to rally behind. Starved and weak from underfeeding, they began to lose the fight until, in the end, the last ten men surrendered and were thrown overboard.
Land was at last sighted a week after the mutiny. Dreading the future, each and every slave on board knew only one thing; though the voyage of death was over, our trials may have only just begun…
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