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I was one of the Stolen Children. So, in between Europa and the plantations of West Japan is this country in the tropics, the world’s greatest imperial power, the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa & the Canary Islands . It’s part of the continent of the mainland of Aphrika, which lies just over the Ambossan Channel to our right, which we also know as the Sunny Continent, of course, on account of it being so bloody hot here. The avenues have been swept smooth of yesterday’s sandstorm, and the hawkers selling takeaways - grilled corn on the cob, roasted chestnuts, fried plantain and little packets of fu-fu wrapped in leaves - have been sent packing. Gaana is the one-stop solution for all your music needs.
Food, fabric, people - what’s the difference? I held my breath as I walked past Demerara’s Coffee House. These men could sniff out a slave a mile away.
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But it’s the kind of trust that an autocrat who comes from a long line of autocrats has for slaves whom he considers to belong to a subspecies of the human race; slaves who appear to be as faithful as dogs. Of course we are, because if we aren’t we’ll end up losing a tongue, a foot or, yes, even a head. Some time afterwards, Bwana discovered Bamwoze had got a local slave girl pregnant and had tried to elope with her to Europa. Not getting the girl pregnant, which was a rite of passage of course, but wanting to cohabit with her, which was a crime against the gods, even though she was a lait au café and very pretty by all accounts. Having a little bit of coffee in one’s milk often meant privileges. Many of the mulattos who swanned around the big compounds doing “light duties” were actually related to their masters .
Another carriage rattled past with a laughing couple inside. It was that evil Madama Subria, she who got my Frank sent away. I had watched her with tears pouring over my heart as she had watched him strung up to a tree and whipped.
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I always hoped I would need them one day. For bribes, for food, as a relocation allowance when, if, I mean when I reached Europa. I quietly shut the door and looked around. I needed to take some food for the journey but I couldn’t risk going back to the main house. I crept up the garden and snuck through a spot in the bushes that led to a back alley.
Such was the demand for rum, extracted from sugarcane, that they ended up with chronic liver disease, alcoholism and permanent memory loss. Such was the demand for tobacco that they ended up with cancer and emphysema. I would be careful, but the Good Lord Above would decide if I made it. Yes, I still held on to my heathen beliefs, even though they ridiculed us as pagans and fantasists. Sure, I’d gone to Voodoo Sunday class.
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Some were agents for West Japanese planters, there to buy new stock. Others were owners of the slave ships, there to sell off newly arrived stock. But we can’t always have what we want, can we. In fact some of us never get what we want, ever.
It was always breaking down because of increased demand from escaping slaves wanting to cadge a ride out of the city, to begin the long journey back to the motherland of our dreams - to Europa. Sure, it was a pipe dream for most of us, but it was one which offered an impossible hope that somewhere out there was a place to which we could return, a home. I have always tried to console myself with the fact that, such was the demand for sugar, the price of a sweet tooth was a toothless smile. Such was the demand for sickly sweet coffee that they ended up with an irregular heart beat, osteoporosis and withdrawal headaches.
Just for a moment I saw that self-pitying look of the child I had once been forced to cradle. He’d never been denied anything as a child, ever, and so, as is the way, nothing was ever enough. And I could see he still felt sorry for himself. Bwana disinherited Bamwoze and kicked him out of the house. I don’t know what happened to the girl - dead or in West Japan, probably. We were all filled with a new-found respect for Bamwoze when we discovered he had forfeited his inheritance for a mulatto.
To get deep into the grooves, she explained, as we hid our venom behind impassive faces. The woman did not have an inner strength which made her powerful, I had long ago realised; rather, she had been given power over us. I wanted to print out the email and rush around showing it to everyone. But no, I had to control myself or I wouldn’t be going anywhere except the gallows or the electric chair. No leniency was shown to those who tried to escape.
I found the bushes with little effort, not looking to see if I had been noticed or followed, and used all my strength to open the manhole. I levered myself down and felt strong hands catch my hips. An elderly Ambossan man was holding a torch and smiling. Oh, all these thoughts were whirring around in my brain as I manically raked under the ground beneath my sleeping pallet and brought up a cloth pouch filled with a few hundred cowrie-pounds. I had managed to pilfer a shell here and there during nearly two decades of shopping for Bwana and his family.
There I would be met by a member of the resistance who would lead me through its dank subterranean tunnels. We slaves had to walk everywhere or use bicycles anyway. I used to hope that the celebration of Voodoomass would be the one day off in the year for us slaves. Oh, yes, Bwana trusts me alright.
It was how we slaves engaged in many a romantic tryst, myself included, although I was currently single, which thankfully meant I had no one to leave behind. I still held on to the concept of monogamy, even though the Ambossans ridiculed it as uneconomical and selfish when women outnumbered men in this society. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. I didn’t move and neither did he.
He stood next to her, looking so smug, as if he knew the truth, as if the whole whipping spectacle was to punish his wife for her promiscuous ways. As soon as they were further down the avenue, sand kicking up in their wake, I darted out of the alley. I had to get away from these awful people. I stood there, paralysed, peering down the avenue. I knew I was being such a wuss but I couldn’t help it.
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