Dear diary,
It’s been three months since
I’ve last seen fa and ba; had mint tea with them in the early mornings, three
months without any clothes on- from head to toe, and three months with the
agony of having to be hauled around behind these unknown captors. I have made
some friends along this devastating journey; Chekura was a home lander but
unfortunately, he was not on my side. Sana was a big bellied woman when I met
her, and I even helped deliver her baby girl, in which she named after me-
Aminata.
After I’d been captured at Bayo,
we’ve been passing through at least one village a day; we would have to walk on
our bare feet for timeless hours not knowing where we were going. Whenever we
rested at the end of the day, the captors would take off our yoke, and we were
left to rest up for the future. As exhausted as I was I found it very difficult
to sleep; I would scream in my sleep and quiver my legs, until Fomba reached
out to me and warned me to stop. As the evolutions of the sun went by, I
noticed that more innocent people were being forced to join the coffle.
I’ve walked through many
revolutions of the moon, still chained to the coffle, barefooted, naked, and
mentally drained. One day, I GOT IT! I got my period, blood ran down my legs,
my stomach was aching, and I felt exhausted. When we stopped that evening,
Chekura asked women in the nearby village to help me, and they gave me a
cover-up for my private part. A couple of days later, Chekura and I were
chatting, and he had told me where we were going- a ship. Chekura had also told
me that I didn’t have a choice; it was either I die, or I go on the ship.
When we were entering the ship,
the stench of the rotting bodies had me feeling terribly sick! Once I made it on
to the ship, I was lead to this box where all the women were. On the boat we
were given some millet, but I wasn’t hungry, I was more anxious to see what was
going to happen. Later on that day, we were taken away from our group
separately, and we were branded. The toubabu’s pinned me to the ground, and
held this stick with an animal print on it and dug it one finger above my right
breast. The agony of this “branding” was very discomforting and the embers and
heat was unbearable. I felt like my life was over, the pain had just taken over
my body.
The next morning I was once
again on the ship, absolutely clueless of what was going to happen, but
whatever did happen I knew that I would do the very best that I could, in order
to stay in the battle. I was one of the youngest people there, at eleven rain
seasons, I knew how to deliver babies, and plant, and even work in the indigo.
Wherever I was I believed in myself, and did everything on my parents’ behalf.
- Aminata
