Suddenly the ties binding me to the person in front were pulled tight and I was forced to move on with the convoy. As we travelled through the darkness there was an occasional scuffle. Someone would break free and try to run away. They always got caught and what happened to them after that was so horrible it made me cry and beg them to stop. Even when everyone was weeping and pleading with them to stop they wouldn’t. Our captors were cruel and showed us no mercy. However, we hadn’t seen the worst of what they would do yet.
After walking for many hours we were stopped. I was used to walking on the scorched African earth but the soles of my feet were sore and red raw. My legs ached and my stomach rumbled in protest at the want of food. It was now day and looking around at my surroundings I did not recognise where I was. People from my tribe and others I did not know were sitting around me huddled in groups, looking for family. My family were near by and I wanted to go and sit with them, but the chains binding me in line stopped me, so all I could do was exchange worried and scared expressions.
That afternoon, after walking some more, we arrived at the most wonderful place. To me, it seemed like the edge of the earth. The ground stopped and an expanse of water stretched out as far as I could see. Back home we relied on water from a close river. The water was murky and brown and tasted funny when you drank it. This water in front of me now looked so clean and blue as it sparkled in the sunlight. A lot of people around me were amazed at the water too, but I wondered where did all this water go to? It was almost eerie.
Soon I found myself stepping onto a plank of wood and rising up onto a vessel. As I passed onto the ship I came close to one of the white men I had seen before. I paused to look at him only to get shoved onto the ship and shouted at in a language I did not understand. We were taken down into the depths of the ship where it was dingy and the air was stuffy. Down in the hold, there were hundreds of us. We were allocated a space and told to stay there; I was in between to big men who pushed against me from either side.
For the first few days it was bearable. I talked to the men either side of me, met some other children on the ship and generally I was enjoying the experience. But the days dragged on and I lost count how long I had been on the ship. It seemed strange that we had been stuck down in the darkness for so long. Now it wasn’t so pleasant. The smell in the hold was disgusting and the conditions were appalling. Slowly the weaker people on the ship began to fall ill. The nights were filled with retching and spluttering and soon dead bodies scattered the floor. Disease was rife.
Sometimes I would see the blue sky again. On rare occasions our captors would let us out onto the deck to get some fresh air. This was greatly received by many but some panicked at the sight of water surrounding us. However when we were up on the deck, our captors sometimes took advantage of us and, for their pleasure, strapped straw to our ankles and set it alight. My ankles burnt with pain when this happened and I had no choice but to dance, yelling in pain, from one foot to the other. The white men laughed at us and drank from bottles as they watched us. They did not think of us as human beings.
Even so often when some people were ill in the hold the white men would come. They paced along the rows picking out the very ill. The ill would be taken away, away from us. I didn’t know where they went, but the man next to me said they went to be made better and get rid of their illness. I believed him and when they never came back I thought they were being cared for somewhere else.
After a month on the ship, I fell ill. I caught a fever and I lay on the hard wooden floor tossing and turning in pain. People tried to help me but there was nothing they could do. I got worse and eventually they came and took me away. I was glad and felt relieved that I could now be made better and saved from my illness. I was taken, with two other men, up onto the deck. Immediately the fresh air made me feel better and I looked around. It was a murky day and a bitter wind made me shiver. The sea still surrounded us as far as I could see but unlike before, it now looked cold and black. The two men in front of me were being handled by the white men. They were strapping cannonballs to their ankles. The two men coughed and spluttered, barely able to stand on their feet. I wondered what the cannon balls were for, maybe it was to do with making them better or maybe it was some kind of joke the white men were going to play. I watched wanting to know what was going to happen but also dreading it and the same time. They never played nice tricks on us, only ones that hurt. All of a sudden, the two men were swiftly pushed over the edge of the boat. A pause, a splash and they were gone. What was going to happen to me?