I
asked myself a question one day, a question I was not prepared to get the
answer for. It opened a door for me that
I wish I could shut. Life was much
simpler when I did not have to re-examine everything that I knew as truth. One day, when I was in deep meditation, the
spirit of a strong willed African woman came to me and lifted my veil of
illusion and confusion. Let me recount
for you the true story she revealed to me.
One
beautiful, glorious early morning, this young woman rose to greet the sun and
face another day in harmony with the earth.
She was greeted by the gunfire and weapons of white men that raided and
attacked her village. She fought but she
was beaten and subdued. She saw the
bodies of her family and community, massacred around her as the stench of death
and blood hung heavy in the air. She was
dragged away, kicking and screaming as she saw the crying and anguished faces
of the young and the old that were left to die like useless livestock.
For
months, she walked alongside the horseback prone pale men that raped her and
beat her at will. Her feet were bloody
and raw, she was lonely and hungry and she ached for rest but they did not and
would not let up. She was chained to the
bodies of men and women that were dead, sick, fatigued and dying, yet she had
no choice but to carry on under the whip of the slave traders. She learned quickly to stifle her cries of
pain and anguish because they seemed to bring the sting of the whip that much
more. It was clear her pain served to
amuse her captors so she resigned within her soul to not give them that
pleasure.
They
waved strange items in her face, two wooden sticks tethered together and a
coded document of some sort that was bound by a dark piece of cow hide with
golden symbols on the front. They would
yell and scream at her in a strange tongue and seemed to take much pleasure in
kicking her in her private parts or even her head while screaming this strange
word over and over again. They were
brutal in their torture, pushing her body past the human limits for pain. The only way she survived the excruciating
pain was to call upon her God to save her.
She prayed and chanted, she did rituals in the dark of night when her
captors were fast asleep, all to help her survive this unknown journey into
darkness.
Arriving
at what she thought was to be her final destination on earth; she was ushered
beneath the ground to a hole with a stench so awful she could not hold anything
on her stomach for days on end. She was
separated from the people in her village, most of whom hadn’t even survived the
journey to the coast, and she was housed in a room made of stone with more rats
and insects than humans. The other women
there ministered to her, even though they were from different tribes and did
not speak the same language; they bonded with her sharing the same evil
fate. They anointed her body with oils
and herbs they were able to procure by having sex with the guards of the dark
place. She longed for a medicine woman
to come to help heal the weeping and oozing sores on her body and to heal her
ripped flesh of her vagina, torn savagely as the men inserted any many of
things into her body. Her period had
stopped on the journey and she was sure she was no longer a woman but an empty
shell to be beaten and left to die. She
was sure she was going to be a sacrifice to the heavens for a crime she had not
committed.
For
months she lay in the urine, feces and blood of the stone rooms while she
called upon the holy names of Obatala, BabaluAye, and Orunmila to protect her,
to deliver her from this nightmare. She
prayed fervently, pleading with them to deliver her prayers to Olodumare to
spare her life so that she might live to survive to the glory of the Universal
Father/Mother, the Creator, The One Most High.
She sent up prayers constantly because that’s all she could do. Her body was so severely malnourished she
could scarcely put up a fight when the men came to defile her with their sick,
twisted and perverted pleasures. Branded
with the searing hot iron at the hands of the captor men, she was called a name
that was not a name her had tribe had ever used. She learned quickly her new name was to be
Nigger, but it seemed odd to her that all of her brothers and sisters in
captivity had the same name as well.
Just
when she thought she could go on no longer, she saw the light of day only to
find that her fate was worse. She was
boarded on a ship, packed tightly one body on top of another, scarcely enough
room to breathe. Some days, the only water
she would get to drink was the rancid piss of the people that were chained to
the deck above that would drip through the rotted planks of the ship’s
hold. She clung to life in whatever way
she could, so she could die of her own choosing, not at the hands of the evil
men. Her plan was to jump overboard to
end her own life and not have it be taken from her by her vile captors. That was not to be the case; she survived,
clinging to life with the tender caresses of the others who had not gone insane
from the pain, dehydration, disease and despair.
For
months, she had no way to comprehend time or space. They landed in a place where she was poked,
prodded and inspected like cattle only to be put on another ship to land at
another strange destination. Once again,
she was paraded around, inspected by the stringy-haired men, and she was put in
the back of a wagon with other Black people and taken to a farm with an
enormous cottage, the likes of which she had never seen before. The king was a pinkish man who would come to
her at night and use her in ways a man was never supposed to use a woman. During the day, she was forced to work the
land. Her tears fertilized the crops as
she worked in silence alongside the people that spoke the same language as the
brutal pale people.
Many
times, she would sneak off into the woods at night and dance and sing and
escape in her mind to her home where she could be carefree and happy
again. She would offer her prayers up to
the orisha, pouring out libations on this unholy ground, and begging them to
wake her up from this horrible nightmare.
She prepared a secret alter to present gifts to the heavens and; it was
her place of solace and refuge and it was her reminder of her peaceful but
distant home. She longed to wear colors
again, she needed to eat food that gave life, not the garbage the captors threw
away, longed to dance and sing, and to feel joy again. She longed for the sensual touch of a man,
not the brutal attacks she endured that made her die a little inside. She was slowly losing the sensation of dignity
and self-respect, traits her fellow slaves never knew.
One
day, in the solitude of the woods, she anointed herself a high priestess. She
had secretly fasted and prayed for one full rotation of the moon and gathered
the herbs she needed to burn to put herself into a trance to pass through the
spiritual portal to the heavens. With
only the stars in the sky as her illumination, she uttered the holy words she
had heard the spiritual elders say back home along with a prayer that the
spirits would forgive any misspoken words in her solitary and extreme
conditions. She knew that if she were
caught, she could be killed instantly; the whites in charge were insistent that
every African denounce all that was holy and good from their homeland. She couldn’t share her secret place with
anyone, the blacks that were born in captivity in this new world knew nothing
of the spiritual beliefs that kept their parents and grandparents alive on the
bowels of those horrible ships, they ridiculed her for her language, stories,
songs, and traditions, telling her that only the God of the evil white man was
good. She wept for their souls; for they had never known what it was like to
truly be free. All of their beliefs and
thoughts were dictated by their owners and they would never know truth or
independence all the days of their lives.
Her
secret place was not to be a secret for very long because one of the guards
followed her one evening, found her alter, and flew into a rage. He slapped her body to the ground and dragged
her to the front of the big house. He
tore her meager garments from her body and began to lash her back with a
whip. The leather tore at her flesh as
she screamed out in anguish. The blood
ran from the open wounds as she lay defenseless on the ground. He was screaming at her to accept Jesus as
her personal lord and savior. She would
never accept the God of these evil men and she prepared herself for death as
she felt the flesh ripped from her body with each lash. Fatigued and frustrated
from administering such a relentless beating, the man poured salt into her open
wounds and forbade anyone to touch her.
He admonished everyone that if they didn’t accept Jesus, that they would
get the same treatment or worse. For
hours she lay on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness, floating
between life and death, visions of her homeland calling out to her.
That
night, the others came to collect what they were sure was her lifeless
body. How had she survived such a brutal
beating? The word that clung to her lips
was faint yet determined, “Yemaya, Yemaya.”
The fact that she went on to recover physically was nothing less than a
miracle.
The
years passed, she learned the language of the people, she gave birth many
times, her children not hers to raise; they were sold off to other slave
owners, never to be seen again. She
wanted desperately for her children to know their real names, to understand
that where they came from was a much better place, to pass on the history,
culture, language and traditions of the place that she knew to be home, the
people she loved and missed. She didn’t
want them raised to be niggers, dead to the ways of life and conditioned to
believe in their inferiority.
Her
last child was the child of the slave master, and she was allowed to keep
him. She would sneak him off into the
night as a young boy and teach him the traditions of her homeland. He learned quickly and showed great promise
and enthusiasm. The slave master heard
rumors that she was teaching her son the ways of Africa in secret and
threatened her that if she didn’t stop her teachings immediately, if she didn’t
teach her son to worship Jesus and denounce her African beliefs, she was going
to witness her son being lashed until death in front of all that could see. The
pain she felt inside was the greatest pain she had endured since her nightmare
had begun. She knew that she could not
bare the thought of seeing any harm coming to her child but she also believed
that his only chance for freedom was in the saving grace of Olodumare to
deliver him from the false perceptions that surrounded them.
She
watched her son grow to manhood; he denounced his mother and her African ways
and wore a cross around his neck exactly like the one that she had seen so many
years ago around the neck of the men that first raped her. He called upon the name of Jesus for his
salvation and he refused to study anything but the leather bound book that
justified the reason for the enslavement of his people. He looked down on her in disgust for her
flawless skin the color of rare ebony.
He cringed in horror at the sight of his mother’s natural hair,
completely convinced that the hair of white women was somehow more beautiful
because he believed that white people were better than blacks. He could not comprehend that the wooly hair,
thick lips, wide nose and high cheekbones of his mother were in any way
beautiful for he had been told all his life that only white women were
beautiful. He did whatever he could to
separate himself from being a nigger because no one in their right mind would
want to be that.
I
wish that was the end of my story. I
wish that had only happened in isolation and this was a fictional but tragic
story. Sadly, it rings true for every African
American who has ancestry in slavery.
The details might be slightly different but the experience of capture,
transportation, spiritual annihilation, and mental enslavement are the same. There is a lineage of survival and courage in
our veins that are at unrest because we, the children of the great ones, are
practicing the religion of the people that made them endure the most horrific
torture possible. They cry out to us to
look back, to feel their presence, to understand that the lies of the slave
master were only to justify his evil actions and the beliefs that we were
inferior. Africans were not heathens,
Christianity was not a gift to Blacks, we were not rescued from a savage place
we were kidnapped and stolen to live life lower than an animal.
Today,
the beliefs of the slaves are still so much a part of our psyche, that most
Black people reading this will react violently at the thought of threatening
their religion and reality. They will do
anything to hold onto the beliefs of the whip that told us that Africans were
saved by slavery. They will justify the
lessons taught by white people and they will insist that other Africans sold
their ancestors into slavery and that it wasn’t white’s fault, completely
absolving whites from any guilt in their participation in the slave trade. They will say, “God had a plan and that was
to bring Christianity to us through slavery,” justifying the torture and abuse
of our African ancestors that survived so that their legacy might live on in
honor and in glory, not in captivity. I’m sure they could find no equal
justification if even one white person were to endure that same treatment
today. They would never find the “silver
lining” in the brutal enslavement of white people yet the very blood that runs
through their veins is from those that endured more than their minds will even
try to grasp. They will say, “I’m not a
victim,” incorrectly assuming that to be a victim means one chooses to be weak. They will not understand that if they do not
see the horror and errors of our collective past, they are victims of
brainwashing and lies.
Perhaps
there is one however that will read these words over and over again, looking for their own answers, putting
together the pieces of a long forgotten puzzle. Perhaps there is one who will go into
meditation and prayer and call out to the one that refused to let go of their
beliefs during captivity and died knowing that they were truly free. Perhaps there is one that will ask the questions
that reveal the ultimate truth.
The
spirit that called out to me lives in these words. Her blood was not spilled in vain because it
sustains me and gives me life so that I might share her story with those
willing to hear. I must be her vessel
and her voice.
Copyright
2005 Scottie Lowe
