Ashia Gibbs, catching up on her Amistad history, was preparing to send her pen pal a letter in Sierra Leone. But, she learned, computers aren’t widely available there. And snail mail? Spotty.

Gibbs is a student in Eden Stein’s 8th grade social studies class at the Worthington Hooker Middle School (in its temporary quarters on State Street). Her pen pal is 8th grader Samuel S.S. Sesay, a student in the Government Model Senior Secondary School in Freetown, Sierra Leone, New Haven’s sister city.

Sesay had won Freetown’s essay contest on the significance of the Amistad slave revolt, one of the many events, from Halifax to London to Freetown, occasioned by the ongoing tour of the Amistad schooner. The schooner — commemorating New Haven’s role in the Amistad saga — left New Haven on June 21. It is now on the midway point of its voyage in Sierra Leone to mark the anniversary of the end of the transatlantic slave trade. Students at eight city schools are participating in pen-pal exchanges like Gibbs’ and Sesay’s with students in Freetown.
 
Despite the technical hurdles, they need not worry about their messages arriving, Kai Perry of the AMISTAD America Foundation told Hooker students during a visit Friday. Perry should know. In addition to being the communications director for the foundation, which organized the voyage of the replica of the iconic schooner, Perry was both a swimmer and a sailor in high school and college.

“That was pretty unusual,” she told a rapt group of Stein’s students (including Chavone Hampton, the front row left). “And I had friends really make fun of me, because, you know, there’s a stereotype that African-Americans don’t do those sports. Well, let me tell you, in Sierra Leone, those people know more about boats, swimming, and the sea than the people in Mystic [where the replica of the Amistad was built]. I’d like to have those friends see us now.”

Howdy Bowdy

Kerry got students like Michael Jefferson (pictured with his teacher Eden Stein) interested in some phrases she had learned in Krio, the pidgin English that is the lingua franca, especially among the unschooled, in Sierra Leone–where there is no education, by the way, except if you can afford to buy it.

“‘Howdy Bowdy,’” she explained, “means literally, ‘How is your body?’ and is generally the greeting for ‘How are you?’”

Jefferson answered Perry’s question about why Lisbon had been a port of call (after London) on the Amistad’s voyage. “The Portuguese,” he said, “were very involved in the slave trade.” “That’s right,” Perry answered. She reminded the kids that La Amistad was the name of the Cuban cargo ship the captives took over. The Tecora, the huge slave vessel, specifically built with horrendous racks for carrying hundreds of slaves on what came to be known as the Middle Passage across the Atlantic, was the Portuguese-built slave vessel, from which Singbe Pieh and the others escaped.

And so the lesson went. The kids wanted to know what Perry’s most moving moments were. In addition to being a hand on the Amistad in Sierra Leone (there’s a female captain as well as an old-guy Captain Emeritus, Bill Pinckney, who was the first black man to sail solo across the Atlantic), she said, from her heart that she had longed to go to Sierra Leone to touch base with her African ancestors. She spoke of the dire poverty of the country after its recent civil war, of the way the locals put her on a pedestal and called her wealthy just because she was an American. That was distressing, she said.

“Still,’ she said, “it was a dream come true.”

One of the kids wanted to know the cause of the recent civil war. Stein said they’d study that before they composed their letters to Samuel Sesay.

Getting the Mail Through to Sierra Leone

Oh, and how will the letters be exchanged? Perry explained that, to overcome the vagaries of the postal and computer systems, or non-systems, teachers in Sesay’s and other participating schools will gather the letters and bring them to the American embassy in Freetown. There the letters will be emailed and posted on the Amistad web site. The letter replies from kids at Worthington Hooker, Cross, Ross Woodward, Truman, Cross, MicroSociety Magnet, and Hillhouse will be posted there in return.

After more blessings, libations, and festivities in Freetown, which is New Haven’s sister city in Africa, the Amistad sets sail next week for Senegal and a visit to Goray Island’s infamous slave fortress. Then, by way of Cape Verde, she tries to make Charleston in May, and then triumphantly home to New Haven on June 21.

To check out the (soon to be written) letters from Ashia, Michael, Chavone, and all the latest on Amistad as she sails on her freedom tour, click here.

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