Chapter 1
The Slave Loder – The Year 1800

Before and after. Eden before, the nightmare after. And continuing in unending minutes, days, nights, months and years of unendurable pain, torture, beatings and abuse. The warmth and security of family had become a faint memory, erased in the stark reality of life as indentured labour, if you could call it life, but rather a life sentence.

Two worlds apart as heaven and hell. Heaven was Lemayakloo’s earliest years on his mother’s back, safe, warm, secure and in touch, lulled by the rhythm of her movements, by her singing and humming. As with his sisters and brothers, he was admired and cosseted by the adults of the tribe, kissed and cuddled by his extended family who touched, cared and attended without the need for beatings and brutality. He remembered the special scent of his mother’s skin, her soft and pliable flesh, the patterns, shapes and colours of her headdress, her headscarf.

His feelings towards his mother comprised emotions of pleasure and comfort, holding her, seeing and hearing her. Growing up, he became aware of others of the extended family around him, experiencing varied and complex feelings towards different people, different individuals, men, women, young, old, patterns of activities like eating, sleeping, bathing, waking and moving, others around him moving.

As he grew up, he watched the succession of younger sisters and brothers carried on his mother’s back. He felt the familiar feelings of warmth and nurturing all over again. He didn’t know about resentment or jealousy. The family shared, worked, ate and slept together, at first with the parents and then (as they got older) the siblings slept close for comfort and body warmth. The boys fought and squabbled, raced one another to the river in the morning to swim and bathe, aware of crocodiles lurking in the mud.

The sun shone high up in an intensely azure blue Alkeban sky. Brothers and sisters bunched together under the shelter of a banana-leaf lean-to, watching the torrential rain, which fell for days on end, especially in summer in the monsoon months of May to September. There was a rhythm, a time and a place for rituals of birth, initiation, marriage, children and death, a rightness that he felt but didn’t know until the opposite took hold. Grounded by the rain, they made up stories, scaring one another into wakefulness all night long.

The oldest brother whispered in ghostly tones. “The evil one came in the dark, riding a baboon backwards. He sprinkled his muti on the doorstep and rode away. We didn’t know who he was. He was naked. Wore a mask. In the day, he kept the baboon deep in the forest and fed him with beer.”

Big sister Zenani, thinking the tale was too tame, took up the action, elaborating.

“The baboon crept in at the window in the darkest night, wind howling, thunder and lightning blotting out the noise of his entry. Approaching the first bed, he reached out to a young boy whom he held in his arms and fed by means of a skull filled with blood.”

The youngsters hung on to every word, eyes wide, clinging to one another in horrified suspense. Not to be outdone, big brother Manaloo took up a new tale, this time in more dramatic mood.

“On the darkest night of midwinter, the witches gathered in the forest. Some flew in on bats or owls. Some came invisible, others disguised as a frog, a toad. Their helpers, slaves and servants, skulked at the edge of the clearing, waiting aggressively and impatiently for the potions they would take to their victims. Witch Toda’s helper was the dwarf Umkhovu, his tongue cut off so he couldn’t speak and couldn’t tell the witch’s secrets!”

“Wh … wh … what about the tokoloshe?” The young Jabu stammered in fear and ghoulish excitement.

“He was there,” Manaloo replied. “He came from the river. A hairy dwarf, running to the place where the witches met, slowed down by his giant phallus, which got in the way. So he flung it over his shoulder. But it kept falling down. So he stopped, wrapped and tied it round his waist before he too lurked at the edge of the clearing, watching the witches dancing and making muti.”

The children giggled at the lurid picture. Then it was time for bed. Manaloo and Zenani continued the drama the following evening. But they couldn’t decide who would tell their story first. In the argument that followed, the children shouted, laughed, cried and pointed at them in turn. “Witch-bitch! Wizard-lizard!” Till Zenani stepped down (generously) for her brother. He began with details of the fiends.

“Waiting impatiently, the witches’ helpers bickered among themselves, hissing, scratching and stirring up jealousies, especially the wild cat. He boasted he could bewitch them all to go off and antagonize the villagers, poison the pregnant women and strangle new-born babies. If they couldn’t do it, he himself would fly through the air, slip through the thatching into a family hut and do the dire deeds himself.”

Zenani continued.

“As soon as the witches’ brew was ready, Impaka (wild cat) begged his mistress, Witch Ntala, for a bowlful, to which she added some hair and nails from a village elder’s wives. ‘Go! Make haste!’ She hissed. ‘A few drops of muti in his beer. And he’ll hate them all. Except for the noble Luyanda who paid us handsomely for this service!’”

Hushed, attention focused on Zenani, the children jumped in shock and fear when (at that moment) they heard a cat yowling, fighting and spitting until they realized Manaloo was play-acting the realistic side effects. Then they rolled around screaming and laughing with relief.

One night Manaloo begged Big Uncle to tell them about wizards and sorcerers.

“Long ago,” Big Uncle began, “when the forest was thick with trees, when the people lived in small huts built on platforms between the trees, there was a sorcerer who lived near the top of a huge tree. He had long arms and could swing with ease up and down from tree top to the ground. Among his evil helpers, the red and black eagle controlled thunder and lightning. The owl was the sorcerer’s messenger of illness and death. He had a magical Impundulu bird, which was a kind of vampire. On the night of the new moon, so dark the sorcerer had to feel his way to the Impundulu bird’s cage, he opened it and sent the bird out to suck his neighbour’s blood. Then he sent out the owl to hoot and cry to warn the people of the man’s death. Because the next morning, the neighbour’s wife saw a hornbill hopping on the platform of her hut. And she found her husband stiff, cold and dead.”

A real owl hooted nearby. The children shivered, moving closer to one another. That night they slept, arms around each other to ward off fear and evil spirits.

Lemayakloo grew up sturdy, ebony-skinned and good-natured. He helped his father, mother, older brothers and sisters on the piece of land that sustained them, planting beans and chickpeas under the wheat and barley. He used an ox-drawn plough as his ancestors had done from generation to generation, planting a mixture of onions, tomatoes, garlic, gourds and cilantro
by hand.

The villagers lived together more-or-less in harmony. But in the event of conflict or disputes, they consulted the chief and the circle of elders. Their combined judgment and final words were law, undisputed. After the old chief’s death, his son took over the leadership of the tribe. A man unlike his father, he was impatient and irascible. In the four years of his tenure, he showed signs of greed and power-mongering, which emerged in particular in his attempts to force out the old circle of advisors, replacing them with those who followed and obeyed him, uncritically and without judgment. They were sycophants who would benefit by their association with him. The interest and well-being of the individual members of the tribe were not their concern.

The growing unease among the people was still to gather momentum before they were moved to act. Their inertia and apathy would have tragic consequences presaged by the arrival of a small band of twelve black strangers with a young leader.

“Do they think we’ve got gold?” Lemayakloo speculated in conversation with his eldest brother. “And the strong men? … Powerful, muscular giants!”

“You’re envious!” His brother teased. “Think of the women competing for such a man!”

Lemayakloo preened, flexed the muscles in his arms, thighs and calves, mock-seriously stood on his toes to look taller. He was a handsome young man, a Greek god sculpted in ebony, not too tall though well-proportioned. Ploughing, hoeing and planting had developed his muscles. He knew he was attractive, but still he regretted his lack of stature. If only he were as tall as the visiting strangers!

Serious now.

“Do you think Theramala would fall for one of the giants?” He asked anxiously about the young woman he’d recently been courting.

His brother, Manaloo (pretending to give the question long and weighty consideration) teased him.

“Perhaps …Who knows what goes on in a woman’s mind? Be patient and you’ll soon find out. But don’t forget. She’s given you the white beads to say she loves you.”

Like any fiery young man, Lemayakloo found it hard to contain his ardour for Theramala. Gamine, mischievous and (to him) irresistibly sensual, she was bound by tribal tradition to communicate her desires through the language of beads, in a particular ritual of patterns, geometric designs, colours and colour combinations. The custom meant that they (the young couple) could avoid the sensitive subject of personal relations without direct confrontation and discussion about their courtship.

She met Lemayakloo in her family hut, in the presence of her father and older brothers, to present him with a five metre long necklace of white beads, on one end a tassel of blue and white beads. He wound them around his neck as a token of their engagement, a public display of the couple’s intention given to the village society. Lemayakloo’s older sister Zenani helped him to respond to the token by creating a beaded love letter as an answer. She explained the forms to him.

“The main shape consists of a basic triangle. It represents father and mother at the base, the child at the apex. Since you and Theramala are still courting, we need to use the colours of courtship – white for purity and blue for fidelity. If you like, we can add a little red.”

“For passion, for my love. I’m bursting with love for her!” Lemayakloo confessed.

“Pay special attention,” Zenani continued, “to the Hadeda Ibis and his mate. They represent the ideal couple, the couple you should strive to be when you marry. You always find them together looking for food and shelter or grooming each other with great care. When the female sits on the nest, the male defends the territory, protects her and the family-to-be from invading enemies.

Also pay attention if Theremala gives you a love token of bluish-purple beads, the colours of the Hadeda Ibis’s wings. It means she’s unhappy. She’s lamenting your lack of attention. Her lament is like the mournful cry of the Hadeda. Perhaps she’s trying to say, ‘If you do not fulfill your promises of courtship and marriage to me now, I will leave and not come back.’”

Meanwhile, courtship had to take second place to the visit by the thirteen strangers. In the tantalizing week that followed, there were discussions and meetings with the chief. The tribe became increasingly expectant and curious but were given no clue as to the nature of the negotiations. At last a meeting was called for the entire village, an important event, judging by the chief’s ceremonial dress, his leopard-skin cloak and macaw-feathered headdress. Beginning with the ritual praise of the ancestors, the acknowledgment of sun, moon and stars, the gods of protection and plenty, the wily leader eventually addressed them as follows.

“My people, your interests and your well-being are always close to my heart. Each and every man, woman and child among you is as my own family, my bloodline, my care and my obligation, both for now and for the future. With this in mind, I have taken up the generous offer of these emissaries from the western sea. These men have come to lead you to the new country, the land of Ommenrik. There you will live as in the place of the gods, in a land without famine or disease, a land where the sun shines, the rivers flow and where the soil is richly brown and fertile. You will till the soil and work the land as you have done in the fields of your forefathers. But your rewards will be richer, greater. They will come faster. Instead of the mud huts and lean-tos of the village, you will live in large buildings with clear walls lit up inside. Outside the trees hang heavily with fruit of every kind. Your wives will bless you with many children. They (in turn) will reward you with loyalty, gratitude and service as tokens for your brave decision in taking up this opportunity to go to strange shores.

This generous offer is limited to twenty-five of you: eighteen men, four women and three children. I beg of you. Do not let this event be an excuse to stir up conflict among you. Those of you who want this adventure can step forward. Now!”

A stampede followed. Mostly young men pushed forward. They stood in the sacred place before their chief. Lemayakloo was the only member of his family to reach the front, closely followed by Theramala, dragging by the hand her eight-year-old sister. The twenty-five ‘chosen’ laughed, caught their breath triumphantly. They were bound together by their good fortune and prompt response.

After brief instructions as to time (the following morning early), meeting place and minimal luggage, Chief Stematon retired, leaving the villagers in a mood of excitement and anticipation.

Chapter 2
The Slave Hunter Bugan

Once Bugan understood the main market in slaves, there were rich pickings. He’d walked away from his old life, his sparse and modest existence. Even though he was the tribal chief’s son, he would fish alongside the inhabitants of the small village at the sea. It was a harsh and never-changing life, which left him restless and dissatisfied. The occasional rumour reached the village about men captured and sold at the coast as slaves. After that they were loaded on to slave ships and transported across the oceans. Or else, men were seized during tribal wars and raids before being sold to white slave traders. There was an unsuccessful raid on his own village by ‘slave catchers.’ This provoked him into laying plans for his own escape from the confines of the village.

He would bide his time until the inevitable took place, namely that some of his fellow fishermen were captured by the slave catchers. Then he would vanish, never to be seen again. Perhaps he would become involved in the slave trade as a catcher or dealer himself. And so he shadowed the groups of young men who periodically left the village to hunt small buck in the forest nearby. Eventually some of the men were caught by the catchers right under his very eyes as he cautiously followed at a discreet and safe distance.

He made his way south following the coast until he came to the city of Salora where he managed to find shelter while he collected information about the slavers and learned about slave collecting centres called ‘barracoons.’ Here the slaves were kept in a holding area. Every day he stopped for some fish pilaf from a young man at a food cart near the harbour, close to the barracoon. The man was eager to show off his knowledge when Bugan asked him about the slave centre.

“What happens inside?” Bugan asked curiously.

“Well, I see them bringing the slaves past my cart, chained together around the leg in pairs, a chain attaching one to the other at the neck. They’re mostly in groups, six at a time. There’s a long column of them called a coffle. And they’re guarded by free men with whips and coshes.”

“So. What happens then?” Bugan was less interested in the details than the crux of the action.

But the young man was piqued at the interruption and refused to be rushed in his story-telling. He turned away, silent for a while so that Bugan was forced to wait patiently for the reply.

“They look dirty, tired and miserable. Then they’re taken to the barracoon to be cleaned, shaved, oiled and ready for the auctions.” He pointed to a large open area beyond his cart in the opposite direction from the harbour. “They’re displayed over there to the white traders who examine them carefully, one by one. It must be humiliating to be treated like a horse or cow or sow. Their teeth, muscles and genitals are checked as well as arms, legs, fingers and hands. There’s a bargaining between buyer and seller to agree a price. Sometimes the buyer walks away angrily and goes to another group.”

“The payment? What’s the payment?” Bugan asked impatiently.

“Hold on, I’m getting there.” The young man seemed to enjoy drawing out the information, whether intentionally or not to provoke Bugan. “I’ve seen them deliver huge rolls of cloth, guns, ammunition, knives, hats, iron bars, beads and brandy.”

Bugan looked at him suspiciously.

“How do you know all this anyway?”

The young man looked offended.

“I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I? I can see them coming past with the stuff taken off the slave ships. One day I’ll be a slave dealer myself.” He boasted.

Running out of cowrie shell currency, Bugan had to act boldly and immediately. He loitered near the slave ships but the crew ignored him. They continued with their work, offloading goods. He discovered the cargo was mostly sugar and tobacco, aside from the cloth, ammunition and other items. The food seller had described them as payment for the slaves purchased by the white slavers. Next, he went to the slave auctions where he observed the action and the procedure. Then he positioned himself near a sign, which said Binada’s men. As soon as a man with obvious authority appeared with slaves, he seized a twig broom and swept the display platform on which the men stood quietly in rows waiting to be inspected. Someone pushed him aside and the inspection and bargaining began. A week of unsolicited sweeping and eventually he came to the notice of the black slave dealer Binada. Whether or not he valued Bugan’s ingenuity was never established, but within a period of two weeks, he started to work for Binada as a guard en route from the interior to the coast, a tiring job involving a forced daily march of about eight hours, covering a distance of approximately thirty-two kilometres a day. The slaves were chained together, sometimes fifty or a hundred in a long caravan.

Strong, persistent and detached, Bugan was not popular and yet he was sought after and acknowledged as though his chieftain kinship were felt and his authoritative air recognized unconsciously. He breathed a quiet strength and dignity. Before long, he’d forged sufficient contacts to become a successful slaver himself, feted among the white traders as a young dealer who delivered promptly and consistently. He was always on the lookout for new markets, new sources for acquiring slaves, more challenges and more money. He’d grasped the basics: that the heart of the slave trade was concentrated on the west coast of Alkeban. And yet as time went by, he (as well as other slavers and slave catchers) had to penetrate further and further into the interior of the continent for manpower.

As the west coast countries jostled for precedence in the slave trade, dropping conventional and traditional industries for the sake of the growing and phenomenal demand for labour on the fast-developing plantations over the ocean in Ommenrik, so Bugan investigated which nations were the biggest traders. He found the emerging new regime of Gedevi to be the most successful, if the most brutal in the pursuit of human slave labour.

What he didn’t know, but could quite easily have deduced, was the fact that over decades the emphasis of wars and conflicts had changed profoundly. Instead of wars being fought after which slaves were taken as a consequence of the conflict, wars were being fought more and more for the primary reason of enslaving the people, especially the males. Gedevi’s royal court controlled the armies, which raided for captives. They even had a women’s army for that purpose, and the country had become known as a slaving state.

Bugan came to the capital of Gedevi called Aboma to gather information about how the king conducted the slave trade. And just how and what services he could offer the potentate. He found the people in the city to be strangely noncommittal and uncommunicative about the ruler and their lifestyle, the laws and the general activities. And yet mostly wherever he went, he saw banners and signs saying New homes for the people, pictures of a smiling king saluting his people. He noticed soldiers patrolling the streets, squares and meeting places, the back lanes and the outdoor markets. Even so, the atmosphere felt relaxed and slow-moving. People chatting in groups on the streets. Soldiers sitting at ease in the sun or in the tea shops, sipping a cup of oriental chai. Was he imagining dire things in this peaceful, sunny city?

Two weeks after his arrival, he noticed a bustle and stir around the parade grounds of the summer palace. As he sat in a by-now customary teahouse sipping his first cup in the early morning, he questioned the aged teahouse owner who surveyed his shop (and the world) with a hangdog look and rheumy eyes. The man replied, “Haven’t you heard? The king’s wife (the second senior) tried to poison him. He’s had her thrown in jail. And at 11 o’clock there’s a public hanging, right here on the parade ground.”

“So the king is still alive?” Bugan asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes!” The teahouse owner elaborated. “The palace wives are in disarray. Some support the senior second. They say she’s being punished unfairly through a vicious rumour spread by the youngest wife to discredit her so that her sons lose their place of precedence to the throne since wife number one has no heir.”

Conspicuously absent from the sensational hanging, the king had left the gory procedure to his Chief Justice and the head of the military. The immediate spectacle proved to be tense and dramatic. The king had acted swiftly, savagely and cruelly. The second wife, a dumpy, homely, middle-aged woman dressed in the dark brown of a servant was dragged on to the parade ground, sobbing and hysterical. The huge crowd gathered there didn’t seem to know what to do or whom to support until a soldier called out, “Kill the traitor! Save the king!” At which the crowd started to boo, hiss and chant as in a refrain. “Down with the traitor. Down with the poisoner. Kill! Kill! Kill!” Over and over again. A hushed few minutes followed. After the executioner placed a sack over her head, she was hoisted up to the wooden gallows with ropes. Her shrieking and moaning muffled in the confined space of the bag. The minute the executioner let go of the rope and she hung doll-like, small and floppy, the crowd went berserk, screaming, whooping and ululating. The onlookers began to throw rocks and stones, which they’d either picked up along the way or brought purposely to vent their anger.

The value of human life had become meaningless in Gedevi, an attitude also clearly shown in an annual festival. Here human sacrifice dictated by voodoo and witchcraft dominated and was carried out on a large scale. Servants and gladiators were killed in a ritual slaying so that they could continue to serve their masters in the next life. In the months that followed the queen’s hanging, Bugan carefully laid his plans and drew up his business proposals for the king. First he had to cultivate the right people within the royal circle with the aim of obtaining an audience with the king. Urbane and wealthy by this time as a result of many profitable dealings in the slave trade, Bugan was in a position to arrange elaborate dinners for the court ministers and advisors in the tavern where he lodged. The banquets were sumptuous enough to set tongues wagging about the rich stranger in the city who also happened to be a slaver. Much was at stake, including his life. If there were any problems or hitches, he knew the king would show him no mercy.

“We have a singular mode of living in the winter palace,” the Mehu informed him. “The palace is situated in the town of Alissa, with unique security in the form of a mud wall nearly ten kilometres long. Six gates at intervals for entry into the town. A ditch one and a half metres deep, filled with thorny acacia branches running all along the wall. The palace itself has earthen walls nearly half a metre thick to keep the interior cool. The courtyard walls are decorated with bas-relief panels made of earth from anthills mixed with palm oil, the colours of the panels made of vegetable and mineral pigments. They depict religious rites and conquests of war. The king’s lineage goes back two hundred and fifty years, his elevated status symbolized by a golden stool as throne.”

Bugan went through the motions of sycophantic admiration, hoping the Mehu would broach the subject of his audience with the ruler. As if on cue, the Mehu indicated how busy the monarch was at this time. Nevertheless, he would try to set up a business discussion. Eventually within three weeks, Bugan’s presence was requested after the full moon of the following month. Grateful that the Mehu had filled him in with details of the winter palace, he was still taken aback when the Mehu himself conducted the entire meeting. The king was nowhere to be seen. No word was said by his advisor.

The Mehu questioned Bugan in detail regarding the slave deals. The wily slaver didn’t give much away, aware that the man could use the information against him. He already knew the advisor had contact with traders from Whitland who had come to the southern port of Leboma. Bugan could, however, offer to buy about a thousand eight hundred slaves from the king every year, or a hundred and fifty per month. The information appeared to satisfy the Mehu, at which point he called for refreshment.

In spite of not seeing the king himself, Bugan relaxed and enjoyed a glass of palm wine, the delicately flavoured fish, freshly prepared, served with rice and vegetable sauce. After that he had to wait for a further summons from the advisor to confirm the offer.