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Freetown - Tribute to Sengbe Pieh's Homeland - December 9th, 2007 - February 3rd, 2008
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Written by Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski
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Saturday, 03 January 2009 |
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Happy New Year!
I, Amadou Barry, AMISTAD America's webmaster want to recruit you to my lending team, Amistad Salone, on Kiva, a non-profit website that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world. You choose who to lend to - whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restauranteur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq - and as they repay the loan, you get your money back.
I am not asking you for a donation! I am inviting you to become a micro-investor. You will not earn any financial profit on your micro-loan but contrary to all those "smart investors" who placed their funds in Bernard Madoff's hands, you will see the full return of your money and an enormous "feel good" profit! Check this - the delinquency rate of our Sierra Leone field partner is 0.02% and the default rate is 0%!
If you join my lending team Amistad Salone, we can work together to alleviate poverty in Sierra Leone. I strongly believe that it is a legacy of Schooner Amistad's visit to Sierra Leone.
There are several low-income entrepreneurs from Sierra Leone who will benefit greatly from our collective effort. Once you're a part of the team Amistad Salone, you can choose to have a future loan on Kiva "count" towards our team's impact. The loan is still yours, and repayments still come to you - but you can also choose to have the loan show up in our team's collective portfolio, so our team's overall impact will grow!
Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski aka Amadou Barry
AMISTAD America's Webmaster |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 04 January 2009 )
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Freetown - Tribute to Sengbe Pieh's Homeland - December 9th, 2007 - February 3rd, 2008
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Written by Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski
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Friday, 19 December 2008 |
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Webmaster's comment: December 11th marked the first anniversary of Amistad's landing in Freetown, Sierra Leone - that visit touched each and everyone from Amistad's team who was privileged to visit Sierra Leone. We all became Friends of Salone (that's how Sierra Leoneans casually refer to their country). We follow reporting from there and simply are thinking how we can help our friends.
Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN | | High maternal mortality levels in Sierra Leone contribute to its low human development rank (file photo) |
DAKAR, 18 December 2008 (IRIN) - For the second consecutive year Sierra Leone has come last in the UN Development Programme ranking of human development indicators of 179 countries.
Some analysts say Sierra Leone is nonetheless advancing in some areas and that the impact of the country’s 11-year civil war must be taken into account for a full measure of progress.
The UN Human Development Index measures development based on three principal dimensions: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. These are measured by life expectancy at birth; adult literacy, and combined gross enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education; and per capita income in terms of purchasing power.
Life expectancy in Sierra Leone is 42, or just over half of the life expectancy in the top 20 ranked countries. Just 25 percent of women are literate, with the level at just 37 percent for the entire population.
“Sierra Leone’s placing on the index should be a call to action for everyone who is interested in the well-being of ordinary people in Sierra Leone,” Engilbert Gudmundsson, World Bank Sierra Leone country director, told IRIN.
Read the full report published on IRIN website
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 04 January 2009 )
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Web Lookout
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Written by Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski
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Friday, 12 December 2008 |
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A new website: The Voyages is a "must have bookmark" in a browser of anybody with interest in history of slavery. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The Voyages website itself is the product of two years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.he story of the slave trade and the Africans who became part of the largest forced migration in modern history.
 The Voyages has an African Names database with details on more than 67,000 slaves who were captive on slave vessels during the 19th century.
None of those Africans made it to the Americas, though—the ships were captured by naval cruisers after Britain and the US outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. For that reason, and because Africans were identified by given names only, it's unlikely that African-Americans will find their ancestor there.
Schooner Amistad's 2007/2008 Atlantic Freedom Tour was one of the very few American events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of abolishing Atlantic slave trade - known in UK as Wilberforce Act. As a historical reminder it is worth to mention that Britain abolished slavery altogether in the British West Indies in 1838; the United States prohibited it in 1865.
A Voyages database details nearly 35,000 journeys of ships (but not the passengers) that did deliver slaves to the New World—you'll see the name of the ship, captain's name, year, and where slaves were purchased and sold.
Through its essays, maps and charts, the site sheds a fascinating light on the slave trade from 1514 until the last recorded slave voyage to the Americas in 1866. Estimates show 12.5 million African slaves were transported across the Atlantic between 1525 and 1866. As late as 1820, nearly four Africans had crossed the Atlantic for every European.
See Voyages' Understanding the Database section for in-depth guidance on using the site.
I highly reccomend to play a video demo showing how to use the website
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Last Updated ( Friday, 12 December 2008 )
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Captain John Beebe-Center
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Written by John Beebe-Center Captain of SV Amistad
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Thursday, 11 December 2008 |
Greetings, All!
This is an effort to convey what Freedom Schooner Amistad and her crew have been doing since I wrote last.
Following the wonderful visits in Cambridge and Chestertown, Maryland, where Amistad was hosted as a part of the fleet of Tall Ships touring the Chesapeake, it was finally time to turn our ship North towards Mystic, Connecticut and the long planned for Winter maintenance period, so necessary after the prolonged voyaging to Europe, Africa, and North America.
It was late in the season before we were able to put out of the Chesapeake and the weather was not entirely cooperative. On November 3rd we departed Chestertown with a large low moving into the North East of the US. This was promising to bring strong North and North East winds into our course track. Therefore, we pushed hard up the Bay trying to stay ahead of the weather and, in that, we were lucky. Turning the corner out of the mouth of the Delaware River, we ran straight up the New Jersey coast towards New York with the low pressure over taking us from the South. We slipped Amistad into the anchorage at Graves End, New York just hours before the wind began blowing strongly off-shore. The weather service breaks down its forecasting into regions along the Jersey coast and it was interesting to hear that the area we were in had benign weather while the area we had just cleared was announcing gale conditions.
From Graves End we rode the tide up through the city, through Hells Gate and by Execution Rocks (cheery names…) and made our way to Port Jefferson late in the day of November 5th.
By midday the next day, the weather system had moved off to the North East and we muscled our way East along Long Island Sound anchoring off the mouth of the Mystic River late in the evening. On the morning of the 7th, we cleared in through the Mystic bridges one more time and made our way to our Winter berth at Mystic Seaport.
Our return to the Seaport signaled the end of our sailing season and the beginning of the end of the terms of contract for our valiant sailing crew. With that in mind, it was our job to down-rig and winterize Amistad in as short a period of time as possible and prepare her for the Winter work, which would be undertaken by only a few crew and contractors familiar with the ship. The crew worked like heroes to accomplish this, unbending all sails and lines, sending down all spars except the lowers, and winterizing all machinery and plumbing. This work was finished on the 21st of November and the crew “paid off” with tears and hugs to make it home for the holidays or join their next ships. I hope to see them all again soon, on “the next tack”, as we say.
That is, all but two went; Emma Westling and Mukanku Mpoyi agreed to stay and do the winter work. Joining us is Paul Peloquin, an old shipmate of several other vessels, and together we are spreading a lot of varnish, tar and generally doing all those work items that will make Amistad sparkle as she sails the 2009 season.
Best to you all in the upcoming holidays. Keep Amistad in your hearts and dreams as we strive to continue to tell her story for the benefit of all.
Cheers!
John Beebe-Center |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 15 December 2008 )
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AAI Publications
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Written by Wojtek (Voytec) Wacowski
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Sunday, 07 December 2008 |
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I just can't believe that it is already one full year since Schooner Amistad sailed into Freetown Harbor in Sierra Leone.
Anniversaries are usually good excuses to relive some events and look at them from a changed perspective. A quick reminder for those who have not followed Amistad's 2007/2008 Atlantic Freedom Tour: on June 21st, 2007, Amistad set sail from her homeport in New Haven, followed closely by media - BBC, and here. (more links)
William "Bill" Pinkney, Amistad's first captain and now her Master Emeritus, noted to a reporter from New Haven Register that the idea of such a voyage by a re-creation of the original La Amistad, arose during the tall ships parade in
New York City during the 1976 Bicentennial. "The dream has come," Pinkney exulted during a news conference on the Thursday before the Amistad set sail. "This is the third leg," he said. The first was building the new Amistad in Mystic in 1999; the second was taking it to ports around
America over the past seven years. "This time," Pinkney said, "we're going to the world."
And AMISTAD America went to the world.... While the schooner and her crew was plowing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the AAI staff was preparing the visits in Liverpool, Bristol, London, and Lisbon.
As the visit in Freetown was to be the longest, most important and logistically most challenging port stay during the whole Tour we have even established a temporary AAI office in Freetown.
Finally, after several adventures, Amistad made it to West Africa and on December 7th we had our "soft landing" in Freetown.
For some reason, Amistad's Atlantic Freedom Tour gained much more attention in the international media than in the US mainstream press. I am as baffled by that as I was a year ago... It seems that there was not enough blood, sex, or scandal involved to get more publicity - maybe this is a hint how to lead PR efforts in the future... (This is the
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private opinion - I will be obliged for readers' advice about how to bring more publicity to future Amistad voyages.)
Amistad is now slowly recovering from her long journey, wintering at Mystic Seaport. New England in December is cold and the skies are gray. It is very interesting to read the articles and crew blogs posted a year ago and describing Amistad's visit in Africa. It brings me back to the tropical sun and amazing warmth of the people of Sierra Leone. Great memories to help survive another winter and stimulate hope for new exciting voyages of the Freedom Schooner Amistad in 2009.
Stay Tuned.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 23 December 2008 )
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