Page 5 of Camino Ghosts

The men were spent and exhausted and soon fell asleep. For the captives, though, sleep was impossible. Physically, they were too uncomfortable. Emotionally, they were devastated and wanted to go home to their children and husbands.

At daylight they began walking farther away from their village. The jungle thinned and the sun rose high and hot. By midmorning they were in a valley most had never seen before. The oxcart stopped and the women were led to a tree and told to sit. The teenager built a fire and cooked another pot of red rice and okra. The men ate first, from one wooden spoon. The leftovers were offered to the women, who let Sanu eat first. She said no, she had no appetite. The sparse amount of food was carefully rationed by the others and everyone took a few bites. They were starving and needed water.

In sad single file they moved onward; the only sounds were the axle of the oxcart and the constant rattling of the chains that stretched from neck to neck. The men took turns riding in the back of the oxcart where they napped. They also watched the women constantly, as if sizing them up for the night. At a creek they stopped to drink and rest for an hour or so in the shade of a cotton tree. Lunch was a small apple and a piece of hard bread. After eating and getting enough water to drink, the women were allowed to wade in the creek and bathe themselves.

After dark on the second night, a woman named Shara was selected. As the men removed her neck cuff, she tried to free herself and fought with them. They beat her with a walking stick, then tied her to a tree and bullwhipped her until she was unconscious. They cursed the other women and threatened the same punishment for those who resisted. The women were terrified and crying and clutching each other.

One of the men walked over and pointed to Nalla. She knew better than to resist. Shara had fought back and was now practically dead. They took Nalla into the trees and raped her.

Though exhausted, starving, dehydrated, frightened, and in pain, the women found sleep almost impossible for the second night. Poor Shara didn’t help matters. Still tied to the tree, she groaned pitifully through the night. At some point during the night, the groaning stopped.

5.

At dawn the men began arguing. Shara had died during the night and they blamed each other. They forced the women to walk close to the tree as they left. They cried as they said goodbye to their friend. The neck cuffs made it impossible to turn their heads, but Nalla managed one look back. Shara still hugged the tree, her hands bound to it with rope, her naked body covered with dried blood.

For days they walked the hot dirt paths and grew weaker and weaker. They knew they were headed west and the ocean was getting closer, though they had never seen it. It was part of the lore, the legend of their Africa. Their village was so far away now, they knew they were not going home. For over two centuries the Congolese and other West Africans had been attacked, chained, taken away, and sold into slavery to the colonists in the New World. The women knew what awaited them. Nalla’s only remaining hope was that she would see Mosi again.

The days blurred into each other and time meant nothing. Survival was their only thought, when they could contain their emotions. The fierce and unrelenting sun made everything worse. The hunger and dehydration wore them down, hour by hour. At night, when the winds blew from the north, the women piled even closer together to stay warm while their guards slept by a small fire.

When they were out of food, the men began to argue. They ordered the teenager to turn the oxcart onto a trail heading south. At dusk they smelled the smoke of cooking fires and came to a small village at the edge of the woods. Fencing of boards and wire encircled a farmyard that was filled with captives like themselves. Dozens of them, with the men separated from the women and children. Slave pens. Several of the guards had rifles and they watched as the women approached. A gate came open and they went inside where their shackles and chains were removed. A gray-haired African lady in a sack dress soothed their blisters and sores with animal grease from a bowl. She gave them beans and tasty bread and they ate until they were full. She and her husband owned the farm and charged a small fee to the slave traders who passed through. They would probably be sold to another gang who would take them away. She was sorry for their plight but could do little about it.

There were several children. Nalla and the other mothers from her village watched with longing and pity. They ached for their own lost children, but weren’t they better off being left behind? Surely the older villagers would take care of them. The poor children in the pen were weak and hungry. Many had sores and insect stings. They did not play and smile and skip around like normal children.

The pen was divided by a tall wire fence. The men and the women met there to examine one another, to look for a familiar face. Mosi was not there, though Nalla did recognize and speak to another man from their village. He said they had been divided into three groups after the first day. Mosi was led away with some others. No, Nalla had not seen his wife or his two daughters.

It rained hard that night, with fierce lightning and heavy winds. There was no shelter in the slave pens. They packed together between the stilts of a small hut and slept in the mud. In the morning the gray-haired lady brought bread and red rice, and as she distributed the food she noticed a rash on a child. She feared it was the measles and took the child inside a hut. She said that three children had died of smallpox a month earlier.

After a week in the slave pen, the women were divided again and told they were leaving. A different group of guards rounded up twenty women and three children and brought out the chains and shackles. Nalla and her friends had just been sold for the first time.

There was a new device, a new form of torture. It was called a coggle board and was nothing but a crude plank of wood six feet long with metal loops at each end, one for each prisoner. The loops went around the necks, so that the two women were not only joined firmly together but would have to support a heavy piece of wood with each step. A chain went around their waists and was looped through a shackle around the neck of a child, who walked between the women and under the board. To make bad matters worse, the guards placed water and supplies on the coggle boards to further burden their prisoners.

After a few minutes on the trail, Nalla almost missed the iron shackle around her neck. It really didn’t matter. One form of torture was as bad as the other.

Days passed and the sun grew hotter. The women became weaker and began fainting from heat exhaustion. Attached by a coggle board, one fainting caused both women to go down. The guards reacted by offering water, and if that didn’t revive the woman, they pulled out their whips.

Justice arrived in a small dose when a guard, the most sadistic of the three, stepped on a large green mamba and went down screaming. The snake got away as the prisoners scattered in a panic. They were corralled and shoved under a tree, where they rested in the shade and watched in both satisfaction and horror as the guard convulsed, wretched, vomited, and groaned until he died. Good riddance.

One day they topped a hill and saw the ocean in the distance. The blue water was somewhat comforting because it meant the end of an arduous journey. It was also devastating because they knew the ocean would take them away forever.

Two hours later, they approached a village and saw small boats anchored in the bay. The oxcart squeaked along and came to a stop at an encampment called a “fort.” The women were led to a shade tree and told to wait. Through the perimeter fencing they could see others inside the fort, women and children close by and men in another large pen. They searched in vain for familiar faces.

The boss finally appeared, an African, but he wore Western clothes and army boots. He barked at the women and told them to stand up. Then he immediately began examining each one. He fondled their breasts, probed their pubic areas, pinched their backsides, and in doing so tried to seem bored with it all. He took his time, and when he was finished he told the two guards that they had brought him a nice selection. Twenty women, all young and somewhat healthy and likely to be good breeders, and three hungry children who weren’t worth much. The boss and the guards began talking money and the conversation grew animated; a lot of headshaking, some arguing back and forth. It was obvious the men knew each other and had bargained before. When they finally came to terms, the boss pulled out a small bag of coins and paid for the captives.

Nalla and the others were sold for the second time.

They were led through a gate and into a dirt yard where the coggle boards, chains, and cuffs were removed, and they were allowed to move around. They met other women of their tribe and swapped stories, all of them dreadful. Some of the women had open sores across their backs where they had been whipped. Almost all were young mothers who cried for their lost children.

On the other side of the fort was a larger pen where several dozen men were loitering and trying to see the women. Nalla and the others walked as close as possible but saw no familiar faces.

Bread and water were served and the women retreated to the shade behind one of the huts. A ship had left three days earlier with almost two hundred on board, but the fort was filling up again. The slave trade was booming. No one was certain when the next slave ship would arrive to take them away. The only certainty was that they were not going home. Everyone had lost either a husband or a child or both. Nalla admitted she had been raped and some of the others did too, reluctantly. All of the women were gaunt, underfed, and naked.

The terror began each evening after dark when the soldiers came around. For a few cents, the boss allowed them into the fort to assault the women, all of whom were fair game.

Conditions in the fort were deplorable. Most of the captives had no shelter and slept on the ground. The few huts were given to those suffering from dysentery and scurvy. A brief rainstorm turned the red dirt to mud. Food was sporadic and consisted of hardened loaves of old bread and whatever fruit the boss could find. The only effort at sanitation was a large hole filled with raw sewage in one corner. Using it was treacherous. Its walls were slick with waste and at least once a day someone fell in. The entire fort was a breeding ground for rats and mosquitoes, some as large as hornets. At night, no one protected the women. The guards were as likely to assault them as the soldiers who were always lurking.

And so they waited, day after day. The fort slowly filled up, with more people meaning less food for everyone. In desperation, the women began looking at the harbor and wishing a slave ship would appear to take them away.

6.

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