Barbados marks its Golden Jubilee anniversary of
independence this month. In recognition, I'm sharing here the dramatic
monologue that I wrote and performed for NIFCA* thirteen years ago.
This piece was, and is, a challenge to all of us Barbadians alive today to live
up to the great debt we owe our ancestors — a reminder that we are, literally, “the
living fulfillment of the dreams of heroes past.”
“I will call
into the past, far back to the beginning of time, and beg them to come and help
me. At the judgment I will reach back and draw them in to me—and they must
come. For at this moment, I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”
—the
character Cinque in the film Amistad
Very
early one morning, many years ago, a young man in his late teens was kidnapped
while working in his family ground in the Asante region of Ghana in West
Africa. What this young man’s name was, I do not know. They boy did not
recognize his captors but it was obvious that they were Asante like himself.
They
bound his hands and tied him with ropes and, taking the cover of the forest
that day, they forced him to march 12 miles to the sea, to the port city named
Cape Coast. There they threw him into the prison cells of Cape Coast Castle.
Locked
up with him in the dungeon, the boy found other young men, woman and even
little children: some kidnapped, some prisoners of war, some criminals. Within
a few days the tiny, dark, stinking cell became a tomb and the young Asante saw
many prisoners die while in that place—but he was numbered among the survivors.
After
20 days the boy was violently awakened very early one morning and herded out of
the castle with the other hostages. They were forced out through a narrow
opening to the sea that he heard the others call The Gate of No Return.
The
boy was loaded into a canoe with about twenty other prisoners and taken out to
what looked like another castle: a castle made of wood and cloth, floating in
the water off the coast.
And
so began this young man’s Middle Passage.
The
young Asante was kept along with the other men, bound in chains of iron in the
cargo hold of the great ship. There was no room for him to ever stand up, all
he could do was only to lay flat or crouch down. There was barely enough air to
breathe. Day after day, the heat of the sun and the smell of the endless
sea—mixed with the stink of sweat, piss, excrement, blood and disease—were
unbearable.
Twice
a day the young Asante was herded above deck to be fed: yams or beans and a
little water. And many days, young men and women refused food and prayed for
death instead. Some threw themselves overboard and succeeded in their resolve.
Those who were caught were savagely beaten as a warning to the rest. Others
simply willed themselves to die and their spirits flew away home in the night.
The bodies of dead Africans were thrown overboard and they became food for the
sharks that followed the ship.
The
Asante boy spent the next 40 days inside this ship’s hold. There were nearly 400
other black souls on board, a tiny portion of the 15 million Africans who ultimately
were shipped to the New World as slaves...
Chains (The Sounds of Blackness):
Chains
Chains
Chains.
Why were my
people brought in
Chains
Chains
Chains?
Why were my
people sold as
Slaves
Slaves
Slaves?
God, won’t you
free us from these
Chains?
(Never say
die…)
Many
women, men and children did die
during that awful crossing of the Atlantic. But this particular young man was
strong and he survived until, very early one morning, the island of Barbados
took shape on the horizon and the ship landed in Carlisle Bay. There he was
taken ashore, washed and oiled and then sold to a sugar planter for maybe 50 or
60 British pounds and transported to the plantation where he would spend the
remainder of his natural life.
How long the
young Asante lived, I do not know. But while he lived he worked the sugar lands
six days a week, from sunrise to sunset—and seven days during harvest-time. He
lived—and loved. And the woman he loved bore him a daughter and she grew up a
slave. But, thank God, in her lifetime she was privileged to see the day of
freedom!—the day of the legal end of slavery in Barbados. But she did not see
the end of hardship for herself and her people—or the end of hunger or
homelessness or devastating hurricanes that killed thousands. But she survived
and her children survived.
New
generations came and passed. How many exactly, I cannot tell. But I do know
that, eventually, one of their offspring bore a son—who is the man standing
before you today.
So,
this evening: I am a survivor because the blood of survivors literally flows in
my veins. And I am strong because I am the offspring of those who were strong
and those who overcame.
And
so are you. And we—you and I in this place today—are the living fulfillment of
the dreams of those heroes past. And, in a sense, we are, at this moment, the
whole reason our ancestors have existed at all.
Think
about that: that you are the reason
some Asante boy held on as he sailed across an unfamiliar and vast ocean
towards an unknown future. Your freedom
was the hope in some black woman’s eye as she labored in the cane-ground or in
the kitchen, her belly heavy with child.
So
will you allow yourself to become a slave once
again—to a spliff or to a leaf or to a coke-pipe? No! Young men: instead of
chaining the dog, will you allow your ‘pit-bull’ to make you its slave again?
No! And will we allow this generation to be bound in chains again by HIV and
AIDS? No!
___________
©
2003 Samuel Brathwaite. All rights reserved.
*National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA)
Cinque
quotation from the film “Amistad”, written by David Franzoni, © 1997 HBO Films.
Chains
from the album “The Evolution of Gospel” by The Sounds of Blackness, © 1991
Perspective Records Inc.
Photographs
by M. Baldeo, © 2003, courtesy National Cultural Foundation, Barbados.
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