Personal Narrative of the Middle Passage

It has been almost two months since our village was raided and attacked by the neighboring tribe, since I had seen my whole family gunned down right in front of my eyes, since I had seen our village burning in the on-setting twilight. The red of the fire stood in stark contrast to the deep purple sky. Those who had survived the raid were shackled by our necks and forced to walk towards the west for days on end. The boy behind me had been wounded during the confrontation and was bleeding profusely from a deep gash on his bulging thigh. It did not take long for the flies to settle in and drink from the crimson blood that never stopped streaming into the sand. Slowly I began to feel him get weaker. With every step we took I felt the tension on the chain get tighter until eventually he could take the walking no longer and collapsed to the ground taking the whole group down with him. Our captors quickly answered our conundrum with the stings of whips and biting words. When they finally realized what had happened my arms and back were raw with stripes. The boy behind me would not make it another day under the strenuous conditions we found our selves in. They broke the chains of his bondage and left him for dead. As we passed I saw the blood from his would slowly dripping into the sand.

It took us two weeks of walking with little water and even less food to reach the coast. When we reached the massive body of clear blue water I saw the craft that had been spoken about around the campfires of our village. It was taller than the tallest tree I had ever seen. As they forced us into the walls of the holding cell I lost sight of the spectacular vessel and would not see the ship for another week. I began to regain my strength inside the walls of the prison although the rations were meager at best. The skin on my neck had begun to wear raw. Eventually the whole prison was full of men, boys, and the occasional woman. When the prison walls were finally at their breaking point they again stood us up and forced us through low corridors until we almost reached the last doorway. Before the light of day peaked through I saw what they were doing, they were loading the groups of men onto small boats and taking them out to the huge vessel. I protested our forced march through the doorway. I grabbed onto anything I could to keep from never seeing my beloved homeland again. My complaints were quickly met with the stings of whips and prods of sticks. I realized my hopes were futile and proceeded through the door. We loaded the ship to its full capacity and more. With the craft hardly floating above the water we proceeded towards the large ship. As we approached the large vessel I saw a group of men who decided a life with out their families was no life at all jump from their boat. The weight from the chains was too much and they began to sink towards the bottom of the sea. We eventually reached the ship and were forced onboard. I caught a glimpse of the blood red sun setting in the west. That sight was the last time I would see the sun for almost a month.

If the conditions in the prison were bad the conditions on the boat were worse. It was so hot and so cramped that I often found myself gasping for the putrid air, which stank of sweat and human waste. We were rarely allowed above deck. When we were all I could see was the blue of the ocean and the grey of the sky. Everyday the poor souls that did not make it through the night or exhibited signs of sickness were thrown overboard. After over a month of endless blue and gray passed before land became visible. The dark foreboding vista was so different from my home. As we pulled into the dock, all of the men and women were unloaded and taken to markets, not like the markets at home, these markets are where humans buy humans. At last my dreadful journey was over; little did I know that it was just the beginning of the horrific journey that was to become my everyday life.