Slave Ship example essay topic

MY INTRODUCTION TO SLAVERY We don't have the same limitations as other people of different tribes do. I am a free woman, or shall I say I was a free woman. I am the wife of our tribes chief -Jan kay Boto, that's where I got my surname, Boto. Before my marriage I was a T ouray.

My father, or Paupa, was the chief of the tribe Adance. The two tribes, Adance and Denkyira, my husband's tribe, are in the same village, Juffure. The two tribes have been friends for as long as anyone can remember, I mean they have been friends for since like ever. That's how I got married into this tribe.

As these tribes are very close to each other I can visit my Paupa's house whenever I want. I, being the daughter of the tribes chief, was allowed to study but up till a certain age and when that age I came I wasn't willing to stop my studies but my father and my brother wanted me to leave school and help my mom in the rice plantations. However this didn't satisfy me, so I oppose this idea up till my male relatives agreed on me having further studies and I did succeed, thanks to my mom. Now I teach to small children in my tribe and they are quite happy with me. My students include my 2 children, Brima and Saloum.

I do more of religion there, I teach my students about Islam -my religion. My name is Y aisa Boto, and now you will learn about my life in detail. I had a very respected position in my tribe. People came up to me for consultancy because of my high experience of life. Apart from teaching I also did some house works with my slaves. I did not want to lay a heavy burden on their shoulders, I believed in justice not injustice.

My husband and I had a couple of fights involving the slaves; he disagreed on the fact that I had to work with them but I ignored him. I did not want the slaves to do a lot of work. They just cleaned the house prepared the meal and did other such things. My slaves were not treated as slave; they lived in a comfy condition, they were never mistreated. I never saw them as slaves. The only two things that gave them this name, slave, were that they weren't paid and they didn't have the right to own property.

I was never harsh towards them. It is the most hateful thing in my sight. I have seen a number of slaves leaving in terrible conditions in different households. Seeing them in that condition made my soul tremble with fear, with the fear of being in their place. They weren't treated as humans. Slaves were, normally, either prisoners of war or criminals.

They were turned to slaves as most people thought that they had lost their right of freedom by getting involved in crimes. This was the case in many households but not mine. When I place my self in their position, I feel like killing my self, I cant live in those terrible conditions. Anyways, so to lessen the work of my slaves, not to a very high extent though, I help them at home and do some the work outside the house.

One day, one of my slaves, Ahmed, came up to me and said", Madame, there is no water at home for cooking nor there is any for any other thing, if I have your permission can I go and draw some water from the well across the village."No, Ahmed u can't", I replied " as you can see that I am free, and have no such task coming up that will keep me busy, so I can go and get the water from the well". But Madame, it's not safe for you. Haven't you heard of the raiders raiding villages and capturing villagers from their houses?" I have heard about it, Ahmed. But if its not safe for me its not safe for you either. So you stay right here and look after Brima and Bint a. And I would seriously dislike any further arguments."Yes Madame I can't go against you, can I"I asked him to get two buckets from the cooking room, which he did.

Later he explained me the safer route to the well, which I listened carefully. After he was done with his explaining, I left for my journey. The safer route was longer than the original route. I had been walking for the past whole hour and I couldn't take it anymore so I decided to change routes and take the shorter one instead, the dangerous one. I took the route thinking that I'm the daughter of the chief of tribe Adance and wife of the chief of tribe Denkyira and nothing could happen to me but I hade forgotten two things.

One, that not everyone understood all the different languages different people spoke and two, that I was a female. I mean I was not of the same social class as the males of my families were. These two things were completely out of my mind when I had stepped on the route full of obstacles. On my way to the well, I passed a village. In it I saw people of the same colour groups (I mean black people not white), forcing the villagers out of the house and they were chaining them. That group of people had throwing spears in their hands and on the power of that weapon they were forcing people out of their own houses.

This scared me to death; I dropped the two buckets, which I brought to fill up with water, on the ground and ran for my life but it was no use I was already in their sight and one of them was after me but I didn't give up. I kept running for as long as I could but I soon gave up, I was soon breathless. When I stopped to take a deep breath the raiders caught me. I was pleading them to forgive me and let me go, I even told them who I was but it nothing helped. They didn't understand my language. And then something shone right into my eye and what I saw was an assegai in their pocket.

I took it out and stabbed it in the raiders leg, making him incapable of running, and I ran away. On reaching my village, I saw that everything was here and there which meant the raiders had been there and left already. I ran to my house to look for my children but they were nowhere in sight. Tears started rolling down my cheek when I wasn't able to find my children. I sat there in the corner crying when I heard Brima crying "Mamma, open the door we are here in the basement" I ran to the basement and got them out of there. I was only, still, hugging them when a white man with big moustache's came on the door " there you are, now come out", he demanded " you good for nothing creatures".

He had a gun in his hand he pointed it to us and got us out of our house and chained us. We had handcuffs in our hands (fig. 1) and leg shackles in our legs And soon we were following the white man with the rest of the villagers. My children and I were following the white men and then he chained us with the rest of the villagers and joined the rest of the raiders team at the front. My husband and my father were nowhere in sight. I didn't know how to look for them, I was helpless because my children wanted water and I couldn't get it for them. This is because of what happened to my cousin brother when he asked for water, by miming it, as they didn't really understand our language, and wat they did was whipping, they whipped him so hard in the leg that he started bleeding and couldn't travel any further.

By this he was making the rest very slow so the European raiders got him out of the coffle and shot him, just like that. The reason why they did this, as to what I think, was because they wanted to raise fear in the hearts of the slaves, which they did because now I would never do the mistake of asking water or do any such thing. I don't mind being shot, but then what would happen to my children. It's not just my cousin brother who was killed in this manner but also number of other people who made the whole group slow were taken out of the coffle and shot, just like that.

A lot of people died on the way to the coast. Some committed suicide by eating the soil and then choking themselves to death. This was because of the awful circumstances they were living and will have to live after they were transported to America; they wanted to escape the intense torture given to them by the Europeans and also because of the appalling pain they received from the chains. The chains, by our constant actions, had worn through our flesh to the bare bone. The ulcerated wound had become home to thousands of flies, which had laid eggs in the cavities. It was unbearable, and I couldn't see my children bearing so much of pain, no mother could.

The constant whipping of the Europeans filled with wounds, their continuous whipping proves that they were in some sort of a hurry and this 'hurry' of theirs bought us pain. By just looking at the number of deaths, I just willed my self to death but then something stopped me. It was a signal from Allah, asking me to live for my children; questioning me on my children's life after my death and such other questions that helped me survive. After days of marching we finally reached the coast. When we reached the coast, there were, already, thousands of other Africans suffering in the big barracoon's or prisons; these were overcrowded dark, airless prisons and these were partly underground.

On the coast there were number of forts like these with different rectangular shaped pieces of cloth with various different designs on it. Anyways, I was describing the atrocious conditions of the slaves. These barracoon's were very tightly packed leaving no space for them to even breathe and no fresh air to enter. I had been hearing about this raiding for the past couple of years, that people were captured form their land and brought to the coast.

They were kept at the coast for a long period of time until some huge monsters came and took them away. There was also a buzz that these captured peoples were turned to slaves, outside Africa. When I was asked to guess who these raiders were. I was clueless but did know that they were not Africans but people from a different place. But I was just partly right. The Europeans held these raids but they never did it, with the exception of times when they were desperately in need of more villagers to fill in the empty space left in the ships.

The Africans worked under them, they traded the villager for things like rum, weapons, and etc. but I didn't believe in all these I thought that these were just bedtime stories but now I can see al this. Not only see but also in fact feel their pains. I can see their eyes filled with pain. These Europeans thought and saw us as burden on the world and they made us think that our own colour is our biggest and worst enemy. Our colour separated us from them; it took away our right to live, our freedom and also our right to be called humans. The Europeans made me hate my colour.

If they can accuse my for my colour, then why cant I accuse them for their colour? Why do we poor people have to suffer? Life is so unfair, earlier I was accused for being a female and now for my colour. I always kept asking myself these questions.

These things always upset me a lot but then, always, I would remember a quote, which my father told me once but I remembered all my life". In 'Khudahs' (Allah's) house, lateness may rest but not darkness". This either means that wait has a sweet result or that Allah may make us wait a lot for even small small happiness but he promises us that we will get what we desire, though, at times, after years of waiting. This always calmed me down.

The bodies of the Africans were worth seeing, I mean they scars all over; blood had come out of their wounds and even dried. Lucky for us, we didn't had to stay there for a long time, just couple of days I think, I would have known the exact time I had spent in those barracoon's, only if I had been allowed out or even look outside. We stayed in the dark but what I can say is that it wasn't very long. When we were taken out a huge monster was at the coast waiting for us. We were taken into it. During this whole time I had positioned my children very close to me from the fear of misplacing them.

Oh Allah, please help us get out of this mess. The couple of days in the barracoon's were nothing compared to these 5 to 11 weeks in the ship. After being in the ship for sometime, I heard a lot of people talking to each other. I couldn't understand all the languages but I sure did some.

What I heard was that this was a ship, a mean o transport, a vehicle to travel across seas and also that we were being taken to America, a very big piece of land. There we will made to work without being paid, we would be SLAVES there. Isn't this so weird, I mean some time ago, I was the one who had laves and now ill have to be someone's slave, strange but true. This is what I call 'Destiny', the twists of life. Any ways, everything happens for the good so lets see what does this bring us.

I think that almighty Allah is punishing me for even having slaves. Changing tracks, now that I now that I am going to be turned to a slave in an unknown land, I should also be aware of the fact that this journey will be a very long one and that its tortures will not come to an end Our packaging was very tight. All of us were laid down, still chained, in such a manner that we did not even have enough pace to turn ourselves. We were partly lying on top of each other. We did not have enough space for breathing; we were so close o each other that we were actually breathing out right on the face of the one lying next to us.

Our breaths were colliding. And we had to stay that for about two months. A lot of people died in this whole journey, about 10% of people died and the Europeans were aware of this but they still did it for the sake of money. I even heard that one captain of a ship bought in a lot of people and killed them for the insurance money. It's so cruel. They wanted to take as many as possible with them in just one shift.

Upon this, we had another problem, the smell. It was dreadful; I bet you could smell a slave ship, tightly packed, from ten miles away. The smell was because of our abysmal conditions. We were locked in the deck and if a European from upstairs would come in, he would die because of the smell cased by the tight packing.

We were still chained together and this made it even hard for us to survive. My children were still with me. I kept them with me all the time, even when they went to the toilets. And guess how the toilets were? -Buckets, yes, BUCKETS. And about hundreds of people were forced to use just three or four of those.

Eww ! In the ship, the horrible conditions made many people suicide. They choose different ways to kill themselves and free themselves from all this. One, they jumped in to sea.

Two, they willed themselves to death -they would shut themselves without food and three, they starved themselves to death. But when they refused to eat, the Europeans used the method of Force Feeding. They used an equipment called Speculum Oris to feed them; this would go down to their throat. But despite all this, more people died in Africa than on the ships. We were to be sold by auction. They first held an auction in the deck, for there most valuable costumers, and then later on in America for all the citizens.

So When we were about to reach America, they organised various ways to make us fit. But the most used was that they would make us dance. If we refused to do so then they whipped us. While we all were dancing upstairs, the decks were being cleaned but only some parts of it. First they force us here and then they force us to dance, this was really too much. As the ship got near America, they wanted us to be in good conditions so that we are sold for good price.

They got us ready for the auction, they used brush or a piece of cloth to get all the lose skin off, later, on it, they would rub salt. It was so painful, well this was in my case because I did not have a lot of wounds but for those who did have and the Europeans were not able to get the lose skin off, they applied tar to their skins and then oil to make it look shiny. They were all such big cheats; they cheated their own people. We were to be sold by auction and there were two auctions in total.

They first one were held at the deck, this was the one held for their most valuable costumers, and then later on in America for all the citizens. My son, Saloum, was taken away from me in the first auction, at the deck. That was the only time I last saw him, he was taken away from me forever. They separated a son from his mother and a mother from his son.

These were the most vicious human beings I've ever seen. My heart sank when I saw him leaving. When we were taken off the ship, to the land for the main auction, we saw a lot of fly ers with all sorts of false in formation written in it like this one: The auction next stole my daughter away from me, Brima. I had no one no, I lost my husband far behind somewhere and now I have also lost my children. I wonder how many people are here who grow up together and suddenly they are separated and they don't see each other for the rest of their life. The Europeans took everything away from me -my house, my family, my freedom and my everything.

I'll never forgive them for this, NEVER..