THE HORROR OF THE SLAVE TRADE
My Grandmother’s Stories of The Slave Trade Changed My Life
Learning to honour our unheard stories.
I see you beautiful writers who take the time to write on the sufferings of others — slavery, the senseless killings of black people like myself, and the terrible abuses women and children endured. I see you. I love you, but I don’t read you.
Say a novel, a movie, a piece, whatever, has a tragic end. I’m out. Nope. Sorry. And my excuse is pitiful too: I am just too chicken-hearted for tragedy.
Here’s why. Growing up, my grandmother sang and shared so many stories of her childhood. At her feet, I was filled with stories — many of which I have forgotten and deeply regret as she’s long gone now.
She talked about wars, specifically, slavery. How men go to the farms and never return. How women go to the streams and never return. How when warriors descended upon a village, children were left behind in huts or bushes because their cries will have alerted the invaders to the trails of escaping villagers.
On some level, I felt my grandmother’s pain but there was nothing I could do to alleviate it. The loss of one brother of hers who she lost to slavery was especially painful to her. She will talk about him, and sing songs for him but I never even cared enough to ask his name.
Then there was the fact that she was married away from her village to my grandfather’s.
In today’s world, movement is easy. In her days, it wasn’t. And as a woman — once you were married, you belonged to your husband’s family.
I really knew my grandmother when she was already quite old — over seventy. She was married around twelve or thirteen years old. She died at eighty. I look back and I cannot even imagine how painful it was for her that as she aged, she was never again able to visit her home. She only kept the life of her childhood alive through stories and songs.
I remember how she used to say that she was not sure she would remember anyone anymore, if they were still alive, or if the terrains of her childhood were still as vivid in reality as in her mind’s eye. I remember even then being too afraid to ask about her parents. She never shared, either.
When my grandmother died, I was fifteen. There were cars then. Why did no one care enough to take her home? Why did it never cross my mind to suggest it even to my father?
Stories. Everything was a story to me then. My grandmother’s stories have had a huge influence on my life. I regret that I did not have the empathy to realize that there was a soul behind all the stories. I regret that I was not more thoughtful. I regret that I was too young to think beyond myself.
Was my grandmother happy?
She birthed thirteen children but only three survived. She was the last wife of four. And in a society where male children were the ultimate, it was thirteen years after the birth of her surviving oldest daughter for her to birth my father, her only surviving son.
She told me stories of how she traveled far and wide seeking native doctors, visiting shrines, drinking potions after potions, and how the gods finally gave her my father. She drank a lot of palm wine and loved a good time but she had many sorrows too.
Is my grandmother’s pain the reason I shy away from clicking on tragic tales? I see the stories of slavery and I do not click on them. I do not watch the movies. I do not engage. Slavery was right here, on our doorsteps. It hits too close.
And how do I participate when I come from a lineage of warriors and slave traders?
I come from a lineage that was revered for its body count in wars.
Hear the stories of warriors who drank palm wine from the skulls of their enemies (enemies being the weak that were conquered). You ever hear stories of warriors who rammed through villages, taking men for slaves to sell off, taking their women, and killing their children?
Well, if you heard those stories and they were just stories to you, that was like me listening to my grandmother share hers. They seem so far removed in the present, but these were real stories of real people.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted 400 years they say. I want you to try to imagine the worst. Now imagine this — however dark your mind can go, the truth was worse.
You can never understand truly the layers of evil that slaves went through. In The Homefront, effeminate sons were sold off by their own fathers into slavery. Slavery was a punishment. You stole — slavery. Your parents deemed you unfit for labour — slavery.
Slave buyers continued from the slave sellers. Weakened from starvation, dehydration, uneasy births, sicknesses, and the like, sick slaves were just thrown into the sea.
The women were picked off to be raped and passed around. Slaves were not humans after all. They were objects — means to ends, as decided by their owners.
The colonizers bought and sold slaves for tin milk, slates, chalks, beverages, and mirrors. A friend told me that slaves were bought and sold in their area in exchange for names that the white men told them were better than theirs.
Popular surnames in their area today, include- “Black, Brown, White”, etc. The White man’s names were better than their names and for that — their people were bought and sold.
Between the local slave traders and the colonizers, slavery is inexcusable.
Please forgive me, Dear Writers who continue to shine a light on the tragedies of the black race especially the horrors of slavery. My soul supports you. My soul praises you. You can relieve the horrors of these tragic souls and still articulate it enough for us. I applaud you.
But I live in the cradle of this tragedy, and just like I couldn’t do anything for my grandmother while she lived, I fear I again will fail her even in death. I also will fail you. Truthfully,— It isn’t you. It is me. And I am just too chicken-hearted to either read these horrors or dissect the truth that I know.
