West African American Dialectical Journal

SLAVE GIRL

“They call me Rain. I have long forgotten my real name as I was very young when they came into my village and took me. I can’t remember much from my life before being a slave girl, but my masters have told me I am from a small village in West Africa.” Late one night, in a small village in Africa, when all had gone to sleep, they came like ghosts in the darkness. They took Rain from her mother’s arms and bond her father. They were crammed into pens on the back of carts like animals. The men from the boat did not speak and Rain quickly learned not to speak to them, as they were whipped for talking. They traveled through the rain forest in the dark, and stopped near the coast where Rain and the others
This was too much to bear for some of the slaves, and they committed suicide in many horrible ways. When all of a sudden, the crew started to treat the slaves slightly better; they were given more food and water, and allowed to walk around the deck more often. Finally, the ship started slowing down after months at sea, and the slaves knew that they must have arrived somewhere. It was strange those first few months and days off the boat, as soon as the ship docked the slaves were cleaned up and given fresh plain white clothes. Then they were locked in huge warehouses overnight. “Thankfully Rain said, they did not separate us again and I was able to stay with Elisa and Dar, said Rain.” She tried not to think of her mother and whether she would ever see her again, instead, Rain tried to concentrate on what would happen next. Over the next few days, the men from the ship, held huge meetings, where the slaves stood at the front, on platforms, and many bidders examined them. Once the crowd would pay up their bids, the slaves were all taken off the platform, and then given to their bidders, white people that they had never seen before. Rain says, “now that I look back, I realize just how lucky I was to be given to an elderly man with a greying beard, and wrinkly eyes, which made his face, look old and weary. I was the only one
“I am around seventeen now and had come to realize that my old dreams of returning home would never happen, and that my family were either dead or working on those horrible plantations, that I had so narrowly escaped being sold to. My master was truly kind and I came to love him, like all the other servants.” He was getting old now and ill quite often, so his only son returned home to care for him. The servants were all relieved to find that he was just as kind as his father. When Rain’s master finally passed, his son took over the estate and offered to release them from his service, but Rain along with the rest of the servants, knew that they would only end up being resold to plantations or other homes, so they all agreed to stay and serve him as they had his